The Hitchhiker Symbolism

Throughout the entire story, there is death imagery. At the beginning, as the Grandmother gets ready to go on the trip, she dresses in a way that is foreshadowing of her own death. She says she dresses so that "anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady (O’Connor)." While on the highway, they pass five or six graves fenced in on the side of the road indicative of the deaths of the six passengers in the car. Finally, as they see the Misfit's car, it is described as a hearse - a vehicle in which the dead are carried. These images all foreshadow the death of the grandmother and her

In conclusion, the story of “ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” relates better to perception and consciousness than the film version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Bierce takes the reader from reality to one man’s perception of reality and plays each idea off the other. Meanwhile, Enrico takes the audience through the actions of this man’s reality. Both the short story and film show their views on the stage of the dying man through their own unique

In the story “The Hitchhiker,” Lucille Fletcher uses flashback to build a mood that is a mood of unknowing . Six months ago I left Brooklyn to drive to California.... ( Fletcher 2 and 3)“Mother I’ll be back. I’ll only be on the coast three months”. ( Fletcher 2 and 3) This shows that Adams is flashing back to six days ago when he left Brooklyn. Another example for the story would be “I suppose not.What, ah-er-ah-What about hitchhikers.” ( Fletcher 6) This shows that Adams is flashing back to remember that he saw a hitchhiker and he is asking the man that is working the store if he saw any hitchhiker around lately. For a follow up it the story it said. “After I got the car back on the road again, I felt like a fool. Yet, the thought of picking him up, of having him sit beside me, was somehow unbearable. At the same time I felt - more than ever - unspeakably alone.” (Fletcher 8) This also shows that the author Lucille Fletcher used flashbacks in the story “The Hitchhiker.”

Adams is also frightened during his trip, mainly of the hitchhiker who seems to follow him. He appears frightened when he sees the the hitchhiker turn up in

Robert Frost and William Shakespeare have been celebrated by many people because of their ability to express themselves through the written word. Here we are years after their deaths analyzing these fascinating poems about life and death. It’s clear they had similar thoughts about this subject at the time of these writings, even though their characters could not have been more opposite. For both poets, life is too

This much is true with no one more than the title character, as his actions reveal more about the time’s ‘concept’ of death during his friend’s execution and burial rather than going too deep into his own personal feelings about this particular death. Tennessee’s Partner quickly compares his friend’s burial to all the other drunken trips his shouldered with Tennessee in the past and seemingly moves on from the finality of the situation with ease.

During the time that the hitchhiker was in his snow plow, the narrator was having flashbacks from the war. This could relate to how his son went “missing” or was killed. He may have killed his son by pushing him into the hog pin when he was having one of his flashbacks and didn’t even realize that he was doing it. After the hogs had devoured half of his son, he then came to a realization and pulled him out, revealing that there was only half a body left; that references to when Pancake wrote, “There was a big retard got killed up here, too. He was the only one they ever found with all his meat on. Rest of them, they just find their bones (Pancake, 2006, p.87).”

Death is a topic that unites all of humanity. While it can be uncomfortable to think about, confronting death in unavoidable. “Dying” addresses that discomfort and universal unwillingness to consider the inevitability of death. Pinsky’s use of imagery, symbolism, and tone create a poetic experience that is like death, something every reader can relate to. In “Dying,” Pinsky describes how people are oblivious and almost uncaring when it comes to the thought of death. Pinsky is trying to convince the reader that they shouldn’t ignore the concept of death because life is shorter than it seems.

In the beginning of the short story, as Brother reflects on Doodle’s life, the author uses personification and foreshadowing to create a mood of remorse. As he gazes out of the window into his backyard, Brother states that “the graveyard flowers were blooming. ...speaking softly the names of our dead” (Hurst 1). The flowers provide flashbacks of the past, and foreshadow a loss of life. The loneliness felt by Brother causes readers to consider how they would feel if their loved one was gone. As Brother observes the seasons, it is noted that “summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born” (Hurst 1). The personifications of the seasons as stages in the cycle of life and death creates an unsure and uncertain mood. The shift between seasons creates an idea of change and uncertainty of events to come. Hurst creates a mood of remorse through

Chuck Palahniuk once said, “The first step to eternal life, is you have to die.” In William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis”, he does not mention eternal life or anything religious, but speaks about death. He tells his readers that death is a natural thing and they should not worry about it. William Cullen Bryant, in his poem “Thanatopsis”, portrays a comforting view of death. Throughout the poem, Bryant encourages his readers by explaining that in death they are not alone, that death, like life, is a natural process, and that they will be among some of the finest people who walked the earth.

In “Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien’s own innocence is preserved through the memory of Linda, a memory that remains untarnished by the inevitable corruption that results from life. O’Brien’s writings “save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (236). Storytelling and memories preserve the value of Linda’s existence while simultaneously allowing O’Brien to process death and destruction in a way that maintains a degree of optimism regarding his own life and future. Juxtaposing the images of body and life emphasizes his desire to save the idea of Linda while accepting the loss of her physical presence. O’Brien rejects the idea of death as absolute and final; instead he suggests that “once you are alive, you can never be dead” (244). Linda’s death solidifies her importance in O’Brien’s own development; she teaches him about life and real love as much as in death as in life. O’Brien’s paradoxical statement defines the lasting impact of Linda on him; her presence in his stories keeps her alive through memory; memories that even her death

The Civil War shook the United States in 1861, forcing families and soldiers, both in the North and South, to reevaluate what it meant to live and die under less-than-ideal circumstances. In Drew Gilpin Faust’s essay, titled The Civil War Soldier and the Art of Dying, Faust goes through every change the Civil War made in the standard perception of death and mourning at the time and the lasting implications death in the Civil War would have for years to come. In every sense, the changes Faust outlines were put in place to cater towards the They of Heideggerian thought and ultimately did not help Civil War soldiers and families think authentically about death, but rather shaped social norms that still support the They and prohibit Dasein from authentically anticipating death as a possibility.

The main theme of the poem however, is the sadness and misfortune that accompany us on our journey through life. The Wilson River Road, in which the events of the poem take place, is symbolic of the road of life that we all travel upon. The darkness and the setting of the poem point to the seclusion and indecision that we experience when dealing with life’s tragedies. Many people feel as confused as the narrator does when he was “stumbling back of the car” (5, 911) in his attempt to do the right thing. In his moment of decision, though, the only company the narrator had was the silent and unheeding world around him.

The deceased deer is what forces the man to stop along the road, and death in general is what causes humans to stop along their path and take time to make decisions.

Reading and understanding literature is not as easy as it sounds. Being able to dissect each piece of information and connect it to the overall theme of the story takes lots of rereading and critical thinking. Reading the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” takes lots of critical thinking and understanding the literature in a different point of view than the average reader would. The theme of this particular story quickly came to mind after initially concluding the reading, the author is trying to convey that nobody can escape death and how thoughts in the mind are so substantial in the consciousness that it can take over the reality. The author comes to this theme by incorporating specific literary elements such a symbol, irony,