Owl Creek Bridge Foreshadowing

The first example of an allusion, is when Farquhar becomes unconscious while he is traveling home. “Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking,” (489). This alludes to the fact that he is dying. This is because no one falls asleep while moving. Also, sleeping resembles death in the idea that the victim is not conscious. An additional sample of an allusion is when the soldiers are standing at parade rest. Parade rest is a position in which the soldiers have their guns on their shoulders. They would not hold their guns like this if they thought they may need them. This shows that they are confident that Farquhar will not get away, and that he will die. Yet another example of an allusion in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is when Farquhar falls through the bridge. “As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead,” (484). The fact that he almost dies once here alludes to his actual death later in the short

Numerous examples of foreshadowing are present in Crow Lake. The main focus of foreshadowing, as a matter of fact is the Pye family. Through the complete book, it’s been revealed that the Pye family is a problematic family. From the beginning of the very first chapter, Kate mentions a catastrophe that had occurred for the Morrison’s, which involving another family. She states, “ The other thing we didn’t know was that the Pye nightmare was destined to become entangled with the Morrison dream.” (7)

For example, the first time death is symbolized in this story is when the family passes a graveyard. “They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. ‘Look at the graveyard!’ the grandmother said, pointing it out. ‘That was the old FAMILY burying grounds.’” (99). O’Connor purposely mentions the specific number of graves, one grave for each person in the car. She also mentions that it was a “family” burying ground. This symbolism foreshadows that the family will soon face death. When the family is driving through the town, the grandmother remembers the old plantation is called “Toombsboro”. This plantation’s name is brought up to remind the reader of death. Toombsboro sounds like the tomb, symbolizing the family will soon face their tombs. Another description that is given to symbolize the deaths is that of the Misfits car. “It was a big black battered hearse-like automobile” (103). A hearse is a vehicle designed to carry coffins for funerals. This description also foreshadows the death of the family before the Misfit arrives. Lastly, the “woods, tall and dark and deep” (105) represent the family’s death. The woods symbolize the unknown and fear we have for death, which is considered dark and deep. The Grandmother stood in front of the woods reminding us that death is always near and behind us. Just like the woods, death can be a scary thing

In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Bierce starts her short story on the edge with Peyton Farquhar, a 35 year old planter from the south, standing on Owl Creek Bridge with his hands tied behind his back and a noose around his neck. There are soldiers from the north surrounding him. Two soldiers, one on each side of him, take away the plank in which he is standing on. Falling to the water, Farquhar focuses his last thoughts on his family, while also having hopes of freeing his hands and diving into the water below.

“The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce tells the story of a man being punished for a crime. While he is dying, he vividly imagines his escape, the one thing that urges him on is the thought of his family. “White Heron,” by Sarah Orne Jewett follows a girl named Sylvia who lives in a small country home with her grandmother. She has a simple life: walking with her cow and hanging out with the forest creatures. However, when a young hunter arrives on the scene with a very alluring offer, Sylvia is faced with a tough decision. The setting of the short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, is in northern Alabama during the Civil War. The short story, “A White Heron”, takes place in New England during the summer on a farm. Throughout the short stories both Jewett and Bierce, describe the similar scenes a pond, a forest, and a faint sunlight.

This is an example of how the closer he comes to death, the slower time seems to move for him. In one moment the river is moving rapidly and in the next it is described as sluggish. Yet through the anticipation time is speeding up. It is as if the suspense has frozen time all together.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” uses symbols that all relate to one thing. The Thing is time and how slowly it moves when you are on your last leg or in your final minutes on earth. The main symbols used are the water and thing in the water and the protagonist’s watch. These symbols use imagery to show how slow everything is moving. “With their greater infrequency

The last sentence of this story is, “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge.”

This shows in great detail the use of foreshadowing and how it affects the story. Another case of O’Connor using foreshadowing near the beginning of the story affects the reader's thoughts and anticipation, leading to an uneasy feeling on what may happen at the end of the story. Furthermore, the author's use of foreshadowing through scenery descriptors is another great way she foreshadows the story's ending. A prime example is when the family was driving along the backroads to find the plantation that did not exist in Georgia, they drove past “5 or 6 graves”. This is important to the storyline since there were 5 people in the car or 6 people including the baby and this shows how they are driving towards their deaths and to their graves.

“Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge”. This line seals the fate of Ambrose Bierce’s protagonist, who believed that he could change it. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek”, Ambrose Bierce tells the story of a man struggling to face his reality. Symbolism enhances the total effect of Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek” because it leads the reader to the protagonist’s fate, adds to the imagery, and makes the reader connect smaller details to a deeper meaning.

The use of Farquhar’s perspective allows Bierce to include the protagonist’s observations that directly reflect his actual mental state. Farquhar’s self deception is the product of his inability to deal with the situation at hand, causing him convert it into a skewed reality that is easier for him to comprehend. When he jumps into the river, which begins his skewed reality, Farquhar experiences an internal battle, puzzling over his fate after death. This is represented by his sinking and eventual resurfacing from the water-- a battle between hell and heaven. After Farquhar escapes the soldier’s bullets, he contemplates his surroundings, noting that “a strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of aeolian harps” (312). Because the story is told through Farquhar’s point of view, it can be inferred that this was an observation that his subconscious wanted to experience, rather than a part of reality. Farquhar skewed his own reality to calm his fear of the future by reassuring himself that he would go to heaven. Later, when Farquhar is running through the newly unrecognizable forest to get to his home, he establishes his own perspective in the skewed reality, noticing “how softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!” (312). At this point in the real world,

You are in 6th period math; it’s near the end of the day and you are too tired to pay attention to anything. As you are staring at nothing in particular, you dream about how you would save people if you were a superhero; you are thinking about your dream so much that pretty soon, you’ve come up with an entire story about your superhero self. Then you hear your name, and again; there it is again. Finally, you snap back to reality just to see everyone in your class staring at you and the teacher with an angry look on her face and a detention slip in her hand. In the short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce, during the Civil War, a man name Peyton Farquhar is about to be hung. He imagines his family and his determination to return to them helps him escape his foes. He evades his enemies and makes it home to his family only to find out that he had been imagining his escape the entire time. A major theme in the story is that it is easy to imagine yourself doing something but it is harder to actually do it. This is supported several times in the story when the main character supposedly eludes death multiple times, when he wishes he was a soldier, and when the author uses literary devices to portray the theme.

In William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily the order of events, though ordered un-chronologically, still contains extensive uses of foreshadowing. Faulkner Foreshadows Emily’s inability to perceive death as finality, Homer Baron’s death, and the fact that she [Emily] is hoarding Homers dead body. Faulkner also uses precise detailing and dynamic repetition in certain areas that contain foreshadowing, to grasp the reader’s attention.

One way in which An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is an example of literary realism, thus supporting Becker’s and Pizer’s definitions of realism, is through its abundance of verisimilitude of detail. The narrator attempts to thrust the reader into the shoes of the subject, James Farquhar, by using descriptive terms that are very realistic in nature. The story’s opening scene takes place on Owl Creek Bridge, a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, with Peyton Farquhar being hanged. Ambrose Bierce, the author, uses many seemingly unimportant details in the opening scene and throughout the story in a great attempt to make the reader feel as though he is there himself. One such example is when Bierce describes the actual platform on which Farquhar is standing. He writes, “Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners” (Bierce 1476). This is seemingly unimportant, but after reading the story in its entirety, I realized that it was intentionally written in this manner

Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” illustrates a theme of illusion versus reality distorted by the human mind. In the story, a man named Peyton Farquhar is about to be hanged on a railroad bridge towards the end of the American Civil War. Farquhar, a Confederate citizen eager to help the Confederate States of America’s cause, ventures out towards Owl Creek Bridge at the advice of a Union scout in disguise. Unbeknownst to Farquhar, Union troops captured the bridge and surrounding territory, and upon capturing Farquhar, elect to hang him on charges of being a Confederate spy and sympathizer. As he is being hanged, however, Farquhar is able to escape his fate by falling into the river below. He manages to return back to his home, only to find out the entire experience of escape was an illusion created by his own imagination. The story concludes with the revelation that he actually died on the railroad bridge. Farquhar’s mind was able to create a whole new reality for himself. This reality was vivid, and it seems real to the reader until the very end of the story. The hallucination also spanned hours, yet in reality time passed for only a few seconds. Ambrose Bierce’s story demonstrates the impeccable powers of the human mind and its ability to distort time and reality for itself.