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Peyton Farquhar In An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

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Sometimes people have dreams that are so real that it shakes them to the very core. They wake up with chills that race all over their body. The dreams seem so splendid, but sadly when you awake you find that the dream was just a figment of your imagination. In Bierce’s story, Peyton Farquhar had a dream that seemed so real that it couldn’t have possibly been true. He may have dreamed that he was journeying back home to his loved ones, but in reality he was in for a most unpleasant surprise. In Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the water, the bridge, and the marks on Peyton’s neck all develop a common goal and that goal is to represent Farquhar’s journey to death. In the story, the water plays a significant role in symbolizing …show more content…

As the story goes on, the marks on Farquhar's neck grow darker and darker. He also begins to feel more and more pain as the rope strangles him to death. This quote shows the first sign of struggle and pain that Farquhar had, “ His neck ached horribly… His whole body wrecked with an insupportable anguish!” (Bierce 4). This quote, however shows what the marks looked like and felt like after a protracted period of time, “His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it” (Bierce 6). The marks are a sure and definite sign of Farquhar’s …show more content…

Similes do not contribute to empathy because they are basically just describing what the scenery looks like from Farquhar's eyes. Take a look at this quote from the text that proves that similes are nothing but a way to describe his surroundings. “... the strokes of the water-spiders like oars that had lifted their boat…” (Bierce 4). Descriptive meanings are also not very beneficial to the empathy created throughout the story. Just like the similes they only describe Farquhar’s surroundings not the emotion that he expresses. In closing, symbolism does not contribute to stirring empathy because it is just a way to show that Farquhar is dying. Symbolism has no effect on how the reader may be feeling and is just trying to clue in the reader that Farquhar will die. Therefore, symbolism, similes, and descriptive meaning does not have much of an effect on the empathy in the

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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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