Peyton Farquhar And The Rope In Jane Eyre By John Bierce

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The story starts out as Peyton Farquhar is about to get hung. Somehow, he gets free with a snap of the rope. Throughout the story Peyton Farquhar talks about how the soldiers are after Peyton and continues about his escape. As Peyton approaches his wife, after getting home of traveling all night, the story he had told was a dream and he is hung. Throughout the story, Bierce describes every detail in the simplest of details but in the most elaborate picture. Starting out the short story Bierce did not just brief the hanging, no she had gone into full detail; the rope, the cross-timber, and the executioners’ placement. “A rope closely encircled his neck It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners…” (Bierce …show more content…

But this isn’t just the opening scene. Bierce paints a picture throughout the whole short story. Bierce paints a well enough picture as though you had witnessed the whole thing and had been listening to Peyton Farquhar tell you his plan on escaping the hanging, “”If I could free my hands”…I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home.” (Bierce 8), with this I just wanted to visually leap through the book and help Peyton run to his home where he talks about is his wife and two children waiting for him. But first you have get Peyton Farquhar out of Ambrose Bierce’s literature trap. But, while Peyton Farquhar is on his way home, Bierce paints a dream that makes you feel as if you were dreaming

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