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How Does Bierce Use Irony In An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

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Ambrose Bierce wrote An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, throughout this short story he uses literary techniques to foreshadow and create a shock effect. Bierce wanted there to be shock in the story to help with the suspense towards the end. Bierce’s main character, Peyton Fahrquhar, is sentenced to death. The short story starts out on a bridge for Fahrquhar’s death. Throughout this story there is a lot of detail, so we can understand the story better and so the readers can receive more shock and suspense. In An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Bierce uses symbolism, a literary technique, to help readers to foreshadow. One example of symbolism is Fahrquhar’s watch. The soldiers take his watch and when this happens it symbolizes the soldier taking away Fahrquhar’s time. Another example, there is a soldier with grey eyes and Fahrquhar has grey eyes. Grey eyes are symbolizing a line between reality and fantasy. The last example is soldiers are trying to shoot at Fahrquhar but they keep missing, this symbolizes Fahrquhar getting his hopes that he will get away. …show more content…

One example of irony is Fahrquhar is dropped into Owl Creek and he is underwater for a long period of time, this creates shock and suspense by not knowing when he will die or if he will get to the surface in time to live. Another example is near the end of the story Fahrquhar is running and he thinks he got away and he is footsore. The last example is when he finally rises to the surface of the water and notices that his sense have been amplified, he sees every bug, the soldiers grey eyes, and he also mentions seeing a drop of dew on a leaf in one of the trees. Irony plays a huge factor in this short story because it helps create more shock and suspense than most literary

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a story created by literary genius Ambrose Bierce and is set during Civil War times… The short story tells the narrative of Peyton Farquhar, a sympathizer of confederates who has been sentenced to his end by lynching from the Owl Creek Bridge…An occurrence at owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce shows why having an imagination is critical in making it through impossible times… An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a richly formulated observation on the flowing nature of time and need for imagination when a person going through tricky situation in his life… In the short story, the main character, Farquhar, generates his dream world out of desperation… Farquhar is on the verge of death, and imagining that escape

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was a story written by Ambrose Bierce. He wrote it to be a suspenseful and confusing short story. The suspense brought on by Bierce employed to clench one's attention throughout this short story by using numerous literary techniques. With his use of imagery Bierce displayed that, in his mind, Farquhar, while being hanged, still had all of his thoughts and he believed that he was escaping the army, bringing suspense to the story. Farquhar thought that the rope had snapped and that he had fallen into the water, he imagined himself escaping the military by swimming away.

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How Does Bierce Use Irony In An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

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