He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "if i could free my hands," he thought, "i might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. by diving i could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. my home, god, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance." what theme does the motif of hands represent in the excerpt and throughout the story?

What theme does the motif of hands represent in the excerpt and throughout the story?

The theme the motif of hands represent is the indistinct line between dreams and reality and also the perpetual struggle against fate and the idea of justice .

Explanation:

The setting of the story is in northern Alabama during the Civil War, where both Union and Confederate soldiers rarely clashed but many Confederates hailed from.  The story was first published in 1890.

Some of the most important themes in the short story are the distortion of time, reality versus imagination and death which are explored with the sub-theme that war is unnatural namely the American Civil War. Ambrose Bierce liked irony and to have a twist at the end of his stories.

Parts of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" are narrated from a strictly objective point of view by what is customarily called a third-person omniscient narrator, presumably the author Ambrose Bierce himself. The narrative remains in Farquhar's mind and his point of view almost to the end of the first section.

manifest functions are the recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern, while latent functions are those unrecognized and unintended consequences. to analyze the manifest functions of any social institution, we have to study its contribution to the continuation of a group, community, or society.