An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Death Essay

Shadows of Death In the story, Peyton Farquhar dies, but as a reader, we do not learn this fact until the very end. Ambrose Bierce hides this fact until the end by providing an adventure through the mind of a dying Peyton Farquhar. Along the incredible journey of “escape”, Bierce alludes to the inevitable end to which the reader is captured by the idea that Peyton Farquhar could actually get away. The short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has several literary techniques that capture the reader’s attention. In the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” Bierce uses imagery to foreshadow the death of Peyton Farquhar. He does this when he says “ As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words,

This foreshadows Peyton Farquhar’s death because no living person would be able to see all of what Peyton Farquhar says he sees. Bierce also demonstrates this technique when he says “The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye…”. These things are just so extraordinary that they could not have happened, which just adds to the foreshadowing of Peyton Farquhar’s death. Bierce also used the technique of allusion to foreshadow Peyton Farquhar’s death. He does this when Peyton Farquhar says “The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective.” This pathway symbolizes the long journey of death. This technique also appears when Bierce says “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 is alluding to heaven’s