Answer:
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 .
Step-by-step 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.