Literaty Analysis of "An Arrest" by Ambrose Bierce

Analysis of “An Arrest” by Ambrose Bierce

This short story written by Ambrose Bierce, An Arrest, is a very quick story of this man who is guilty of murder, and tries to escape. After he escapes, he gets captured again by a guard and kills that guard too, but instead of walking away, he turns himself in. Throughout this story Ambrose Bierce calls this man brave. Brower is brave because he tries to escape despite the fact he knows he will never be free, and because he could have gotten away after he kills his captor, but he turns himself into the guards. This literary analysis was done on the last three paragraphs of “An Arrest.”

Bravery can be defined as a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger of pain without showing fear. Throughout the last paragraphs in this story, Brower never shows fear, he is on his way to go back to prison and he does not seem fearful at all. This is a man who is described as brave multiple times in this story, yet he is a man that brutally murdered someone. Usually, brave is a term to describe people who do good things for others, not for people who murder others.

Despite this, Ambrose Bierce still describes this murderer as brave. This is a man does have those qualities of spirit mentioned above. Brower escapes from prison knowing the search for a murderer will never stop. It takes bravery to try to escape from a civil war era prison, because if you don’t successfully escape, you will surely be beaten. On the other hand, if you escape, you will be hunted down like an animal, and then you will be beaten worse for escaping.

When one is attempting to escape from a prison, the ultimate goal is freedom. What does it say about a man when he tries to escape anyway when he knows he will never be truly free? It takes a great deal of bravery and courage to try to escape a prison knowing you will be caught and beaten. The cowardly thing to do would be just sit there in your cell, and wait for your execution. This man is obviously facing pain and danger when he gets caught but he isn’t scared in the slightest. He is walking thorough the forest with one guard with him and doesn’t even turn around to look at the guard, except only once, when he knows the guard can’t see him. This man is marching to his beating without even looking back at the man who caught him to see if he can run away, or if the guard isn’t paying attention.

Brower is walking through the town and walks into the corridor of the prison. He is still being followed by his captor, and his captor is unarmed. Brower kills him. It does not take a brave man to kill an unarmed man, but it does take a brave man to do what Brower does next. After murdering an unarmed guard, he walks right into the room with all of the other guards. Well, it would have been a lot easier to turn around and run away. But, Brower learned his lesson of escaping already he will never be free and he knows it. He is now facing a great deal of danger and pain when he pushes open that prison door without anyone telling him to.

Guards are much like policemen, they consider each other brothers, so when one of their brothers get killed, they are not very nice to the dumb guy who did it. So, when Brower walks into a room full of guards after just killing one of their brothers, he is in a world of hurt. Brower was going to be beat anyway, but now he is going to be beat repeatedly until the guards get tired or Duff’s wife stops crying. You can bet the house that Brower knows this, but with that knowledge, he walks in that room facing those men and ready to take on whatever pain they can do to him and he is not showing any fear on his face.