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Owl Creek Bridge Symbolism

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In Ambrose Bierce’s story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, symbolism is used to help explain how the main character, Farquhar, reacts to his execution. Farquhar imagines his escape from execution and his journey back to his loved ones before he realizes that his execution successfully took his life. The symbolism starts and ends with the bridge where Farquhar is executed and throughout the journey towards his unavoidable death.
The bridge symbolizes the connection between two worlds during Farquhar’s travels. The worlds are between life and death, union and confederate, and reality and illusions. The hanging from the bridge represents Farquhar waiting between these two worlds. Farquhar escaping from the noose symbolizes the breaking away
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Farquhar stands on the bridge, hands tied and able to see all that's around him. He stands over the river thinking of his family and the possibility of escaping. He begins to fall into the river and tries to make his way home escaping death. He finally arrives home with

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In literary terms foreshadowing is a method by which the author uses specific verbiage in a story to tell, or foreshadow, what is going to happen. The reader may feel as if they know what is going to happen before they read it, they could feel like a clairvoyant or that they are having a déjà vu experience. Ambrose Bierce’s story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has instances of foreshadowing that allude to the death of Peyton Farquhar before the story reaches the climactic point of telling of his fate. The first instance of foreshadowing is when Peyton Farquhar thinks that he can escape the hangman’s noose and swim home.

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Farquhar was able to deviate away from the reality of his death through his vivid imagination. He escaped all the pain that he otherwise would have felt. Upon falling down the bridge, his defense mechanism kicked in and led him to imagine an escape he desired. He didn’t feel any pain for he quickly “lost consciousness and was as one already dead.” He was not in fear during his last moments because he believed that “despite his suffering … he now (stood) at the gate of his own home.”

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(Bierce 7) Moreover, Bierce briefly states that Peyton Farquhar perished, and the diction is noticeably comprehensible due to Bierce’s direct statement. The excerpt’s syntax doesn't build up suspense because of its straightforwardness and simple nature. The reader knows that Peyton is dead, whereas when Bierce used more diction and syntax, it created more suspense. In Conclusion, in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Bierce deliberately utilizes the literary elements of dramatic irony, 3rd person limited point of view, and diction and syntax to build suspense for the reader about the fate of Peyton

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The story begins with Confederate farmer, Peyton Farquhar, staring down into the water, noose around his neck, surrounded by soldiers who are responsible for his unfortunate demise. In the moments leading up to his hanging, his reality and perception of time become distorted and, "A sound which he could neither ignore nor

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Despite the fact that his mind streams freely his body remains in one place. By making a flowing current vital to his story, Bierce influences his protagonist's meandering to mind his freewheeling creative ability fit ideal in. By sabotaging the bridge, Farquhar was endeavoring to dissolve request and connection, similarly as he disintegrates arrange by fantasizing, in the last snapshots of his life, about disengaging himself from his physical body. The bridge fills in as a go-between space, joining the creek's inverse banks it is neither one side nor the other yet a connection between them. Likewise, the bridge joins life and death for Farquhar.

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