Differences with stories and wilderness

                I think there is a drastic difference in the way wilderness is portrayed in the captivity tales and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” In one of them wilderness is holding the people in a prison and will be the ultimate cause of their destruction. On the other hand, wilderness is the freedom that will lead one man to everything he loves.

                In the captivity narratives, wilderness is holding Rowlandson and Cabeza de Vaca back, especially in Cabeza’s case. In Rowlandson’s case, she is more focused about the acts of injustice that the Indians are committing to her than the harm the wilderness is doing. In both captivity narratives, the people have to fight to find food. When they do find food, it is often times things that today we would never in a million years imagine eating, like raw meat. These people are fighting with the land in order to just survive. After Cabeza de Vaca was released from his captivity, he says “The joy we felt can only be conjectured in terms of time, the suffering, and the peril we had endured in the land” (34). It wasn’t that he was glad to be away from the Indians, he was glad to be away from the land. Of course, Rowlandson would probably say differently, but the land was just as much her enemy as the Indians were.

                If you look at “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, wilderness is completely different. The wilderness is actually Farquhar’s freedom. The people are the ones that are imprisoning him while if he just makes it to the land then he will be free. “…the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view” (Bierce 1). He knows that if he can just make it into the forest, he will free and can find his family. Eventually he does make it into the water and to the forest. He travels all the way towards the forest where he finally reaches his house where his wife is. “He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine” (Bierce 6). The wilderness is so beautiful because he is finally home. The wilderness was his gateway to freedom.

                In one case the wilderness  is a danger for its inhabitants while on another man’s case it’s his only hope for freedom.