The elements of Naturalism at play in this story are present on the description of the scene where the story takes place. The description of Farquhar’s executioners is especially telling. “Two private soldiers of the Federal Army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a sheriff” demonstrates that war is not far removed from a civil life, as the sergeant is executing a man just as he would if he were a sheriff. Further along in the story Bierce describes Death as “a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.” By this statement, Bierce gives death a personality that links it with the human obsession with death. Further examples of realism are the descriptions of the environments that Farquhar imagines himself to be in. These depictions of things that are surreal and impossible lends to the desperation of the last vestiges of life to cling to the world. The passages that mention how clearly he can see his surroundings are examples of this. The best link to Naturalism in this story is the final description of the death of Peyton Farquhar, “Peyton Farquhar was dead: his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek…
Throughout this story Bierce describes Farquhar’s lifestyle by using flashbacks to portray him in a better light and not just…
In his afterword, Bissinger vocalizes that “of all the themes raised in the book, the tragedy of Boobie Miles is the most important, and the most enduring one” (394). Bissinger may have originally explored the town for a story of friday night lights, but what he got in the end was the tragic development of lost dreams. As he followed the development of Boobie Miles, H.G. Bissinger was able to encompass the moral of the friday night lights to reveal the underlying themes of the town, the team and the dream. With his heavy and enduring diction and ever constant tone changes, Bissinger revealed a heart wrenching story within a small, bigoted…
Bierce jumps around in the story and tells different aspects of the time line in separate parts. Part one being where the audience finds out who the story is about, and the circumstances he is currently in. His writing techniques bring part two in as a flashback as to why the events of part one are happening in the first place. The time line flow follows a, Present to Past then back to the Present. This technique gives the reader a much needed answer to all their questions that might have accumulated during part…
He conveys these ideas through techniques such narrative voice, dramatic irony, juxtaposition, setting and symbolism. In the end of the book, the author states that “Of course this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age” Boyne refers to the current conflicts and issues currently happening, and implies that these events are still being mirrored. Boyne has written an extremely intricate and though provoking…
1. Introduction: "Every work of literature leads up to one great moment of insight, one instant in which the truth stands revealed." - T. Melos. No matter what piece of literature is read there will be a moment when things become simple and all the fog is lifted off the truth. Many works of literature prove this to be true. Ambrose Bierce's 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge', helps the reader see the truth by building up to the climax, a moment, where they can then see everything clearly for what it really is.…
Man's questioning of faith and the idea of noticing what is there rather than what is not, is the central thesis of John Irving's novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Questioning of faith occurs when one fails to connect to beliefs and others. The key motif in the novel, that reiterates the questioning of faith, is the amputation motif. Beginning in chapter one, Irving introduces the motif and it inevitably provides the foundation for the theme.…
As Gordie Lachance once said, “That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear” (293). Gordie Lachance, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio were best friends who had taken a journey to Harlow to find a dead young boy. King uses an experienced speaker, has an atrocious occasion, speaks with a diverse audience, conveys a valuable purpose, and communicates a beneficial subject to help the reader feel nostalgic and acquire the lessons Gordie Lachance learned along his adventurous expedition.…
In the end, Bob gets arrested and loses his friend. This work relates to the critical lens because Bob payed the consequences for the things he has done. In this situation, Bob was a wanted man in Chicago. As a result, Bob was arrested and turned in by his friend. The author makes use of irony to illustrate the critical lens. For example, "Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn't do it myself, so I went around and got a plain clothes man to do the job. JIMMY." In addition, the author uses dialogue. For example, "It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one." This shows that Bob's punishment for doing crimes was by getting arrested and losing a close…
The book had affected the narrator to a great extent. At first he did not care for the book, until the stranger selling Bibles said “the number of pages in this book is literally infinite. No page is the first page; no page is the last”. This intrigued the narrator’s mind. After he had bought the book, he began investigating. He noted down things in the book. He began losing sleep from the investigation and when he actually got sleep, his dreams were about the book. As it states in the short story, “At night, during the rare intervals spared me by insomnia, I dreamed of the book”. He had grown an obsession with the book, which altered his lifestyle and forced him to hide the book in the library.…
In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, " Bierce focuses on detail and the dramatic revelation of Farquhar's dying thoughts as he desperate tries to escape the hangmen. This creates a suspenseful journey that seems to see him freed from his noose and carried almost home to the loving arms of his wife. "As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved…
Robert Cormier’s novel, After the First Death is filled with many themes and messages. Cormier attempts to relate the characters, although radically different on the surface, to common themes. The reader bears witness to Cormier developing the radically different characters in high tension environments to result in witnessing their most intimate motivation as human beings. The most prominent theme that results, patriotism, is most prominently emphasized with the characters of Ben, General Briggs, and Artkin.…
To understand the narrator, it is helpful to analyze the masterful first-person voice of the story. The narration is arguably one of Carver's most vivid. The narrator is forthcoming with his listener, both in terms of what he shares (his insecurities are myriad) but also through the personal qualities he reveals. He's crude and he's mean, but he's also glib. There's a wicked humor in the way he talks. While he certainly is detached from himself at the beginning, he is unusually talkative and clever for a Carver narrator. It's a voice worth reading aloud, especially when one notices that the glibness is noticeably absent from the final pages. This absence delivers as powerfully as anything else how shaken and affected the narrator is by this experience.…
In the story there are numerous times the narrator makes a claim, but has no real evidence to back it up. These claims are assumptions, and they can be very dangerous. They are dangerous because if these assumptions turn out to be false, they can be extremely harmful. One example of this in history was when president Busch in invaded Iraq, thinking there where weapons of mass destruction there. There whereat any, and this caused many problems. Although the assumptions in the story are not on such a large scale, they still carry a great weight. So when you begin to look at the story as a whole, when he is making a assumptions like "I'll bet he spent a little time in jail". There is almost no way for him to know if that is true or not. When he assumes something like that, he could tell others that, and it could show the man in a bad light. There is also the assumption that whatever he is building, could be bad or harmful. The whole tone of the story is that the narrator thinks that whatever the man is building cant be good. Why would you automatically assume that when the man has done nothing bad. The only things he has done is been a little different, and has kept to himself.…
The story begins with Benecke tied up with work while his wife is getting ready to leave and attend a movie. Insisting that he must finish the work that he has spent a month compiling, Benecke allows his wife to leave alone. Upon her exit, a gust of wind blows the one page with his work out the window of his eleventh-story apartment above Lexington Avenue. The paper lands too far beyond his reach, and because Benecke cannot duplicate all of the work he has completed, he climbs onto the narrow ledge; beginning what becomes a physically dangerous and emotionally agonizing journey to retrieve the paper.…