Joyce Bierce Literary Devices

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.”- Ambrose Bierce. This quote not only shows the deep moral insights from Ambrose Bierce, but also the difference analyzing can make. When analyzing this story there are 3 main things that foreshadow the main plot reveal. Ambrose Bierce uses symbolism to sneakily put the doubts of Peyton’s reality in our head like a reverse pickpocket. He uses imagery to make us use the words we are already reading and make us question them. The author uses allusion as well, to make us use experiences for our past reading to understand this one better. Ambrose uses these literary techniques to show that Farquhar is not in his own reality, even though it is not said outright. One of the literary techniques that Ambrose Bierce uses in this story is symbolism. When Farquhar springs forward with extended arms towards his wife it is symbolic of him leaving this world and going to a better place. Another wonderful piece of imagery is the feature of grey eyes on our protagonist Farquhar. This is symbolic of the fluidity of everything in this story such as life and death or reality and illusion. The final piece of symbolism is the driftwood. The driftwood not only is the first out

There were a long and haughty couple of paragraphs where nothing happened besides describing with acute detail the soldiers orchestrating the hanging. This is because the soldiers were real, and were more easily analyzed by the third person omniscient narrator we had then. Another interesting piece of imagery is when the point of view changes to third person limited and we know the details that Farquhar can notice when he has fabricated his own reality. The final thing is the pain around his neck. This is an obvious tell that Farquhar is in his own version of reality showing that pain around his neck growing even though he had already “escaped” from the