Ambrose Bierce wrote the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Ambrose Bierce’s story takes place during the Civil War. Ambrose Bierce designed this story to be very interesting and to keep the reader’s attention throughout the whole story. Ambrose Bierce writes a suspenseful story about a man named Peyton Farquhar being hanged. Ambrose Bierce uses many different literary techniques to create and maintain suspense in the story.…
Foreshadowing in Owen Meany (612-617) A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving gifts us with the story of Owen Meany, a small, miraculous boy with a big mission. Owen Meany knows that he is ‘god’s instrument’. He later finds out, in a dream, when he is going to die, how he is going to die, and he is going to die a hero.…
The movie The Prestige follows an intricate and remarkable story about the rivalry between the two 20th century magicians, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden. Directed by Christopher Nolan, this movie’s story grows from simple acquaintances to taking drastic measures just to one-up each other, and be the better magician. The movie contains many plot twists, the largest of which was that Borden and his ingénieur Fallon were actually twins in disguise. This and some of the other plot twists were heavily foreshadowed in the movie. This is demonstrated in Fallon’s relationship with Jess, Fallon’s importance to Borden, and with some theatrical foreshadowing.…
Packed with surprises, action, and drama, Tangerine offers a variety of twists and turns to enhance the story. This novel is about a middle schooler named Paul Fisher whose family moved from Houston, Texas to Tangerine, Florida. Paul endeavors to reveal the truth about his older brother, Erik, who his parents fawn over about and viewed as a hero, but Erik is genuinely a manipulative, deceiving, and a violent person that will do anything to have it his way. Although Paul has a tampered eyesight, he deems that he can see everything, he identifies matters that his parents cannot. Fear had made Paul feel like a prisoner under Erik's grasp of dominance, but once he conquered Erik's intimidation, he was no longer afraid of Erik and his sidekick,…
On Christmas, Melinda received a sketch pad and she considers “...almost [telling] them right then and there… I’m sure they suspect I was at the party. Maybe they even heard about me calling the cops. But I want to tell them everything as we sit there... When I was stuck at home that night, they weren’t in the house. Both cars were gone.…
In the short story The Rattler, the author questions the justifiability of taking any life. Understanding the reason for a killing can allow one to sympathize with a killer, finding his cause sufficient, or alternatively empathize with the victim. In The Rattler, the author presents two opposing sides, one vindicating the man’s killing of the snake, and the other finding it wrong that the snake was killed. The author’s use of language and details causes the reader to empathize with the man for the killing, feel sympathy for the human-like snake, and experience both sympathy and empathy through the description of setting.…
Throughout “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, specific literary techniques are used to demonstrate that human nature can easily become violent and vulgar. Bradbury presents the idea that humans can quickly become vicious through amplification. When George sits at the table waiting for his house to serve dinner, Bradbury uses amplification in his thoughts and George thinks, “They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really” (4). After considering the idea that Wendy and Peter might be too young to understand or wish for death, he thinks over this again and comes to a contradictory realization that they likely do understand it.…
The theme of death is evident in countless works of literature. Kazuo Ishiguro develops this theme in his short story, “A Family Supper” in a unique and effective way. " A Family Supper" foreshadows by informing the reader that there is a possibility of another death occurring in addition to the death of the narrator’s mother. Ishiguro alludes to this theme by explaining in detail how the consumption of Fugu fish can be fatal and how prominent death is in the life of the narrator’s family.…
Beartown: Suspense Among the lines Frederik Backman creates a sense of suspense in the novel Beartown, by using a number of foreshadowing in the plot and as well as using the limited time used for each character. Backman does this in the novel in order to keep the reader entertained while still engaged while feeling curious of what’s coming up next through the chapters; this adds an element of surprise and suspense while reading the novel. First, Backman is known to use a lot of foreshadowing tactics before an extreme event occurs in the novel. This is first introduced on the first page, when the narrator ends the first chapter with “Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into a forest,…
Little hints suggesting of a darker theme are dispersed throughout the beginning half of the story using foreshadowing. One of the first examples of this is the name of the island which Rainsford and Whitney are passing, dubbed Ship Trap Island by superstitious sailors who have a “curious dread of the place”. The sinister tone of the name and the aversion the sailors seem to have towards it instantly makes the reader suspicious, however Rainsford dismisses the stigma surrounding the island as ridiculous. Later, when swimming towards the island, he hears a “high screaming sound, the sound of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror” followed by a pistol shot. Rainsford has hunted every animal known to man, so it is unsettling that he does not recognize this one.…
Never to be Unstuck, Always to be Eaten Away at “Midway along the journey of our life / I woke up find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path / How hard it is to tell what it was like, / this wood of wilderness, savage, and stubborn / (the thought of it brings back all my old fears) / a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitter” (1.1-6) In these very first lines of Inferno from the Divine Comedy by Dante, there is a foreshadowing of another dark wood to come ahead.…
This causes her demons to take over and the tragic death to occur at the end of the novel. If Alaska had a better family or support…
In the short story “A Sound of Thunder” there was a lot of foreshadow used. It seems like the most used one of all was the exaggerated importance of staying on the path and not doing anything that could possibly change the future. Travis used the phrase “stay on the path” at least four times in the beginning of the story. This is a huge hint that Eckels would possibly go off the path later on in the story, and also because he seemed to be unconvinced that it was a big deal saying things like “So what” and “Why not.”…
Looking for Alaska was published in March of 2005. The novel begins with the protagonist Miles Halter or aka “Pudge”. Miles feels like a loser and feels, as he has never done anything exciting with his life so he goes off to a boarding school to discover a “Great Perhaps”. When he gets there he meets Chip Martin or aka “The Colonel” his roommate and Alaska Young, a wild, unpredictable, and unstable girl that Miles is immediately attracted to. All three become great friends and start a series of pranks on the Weekday Warriors, a bunch of rich kids that also attend the boarding school.…
The poems Because I Couldn’t Stop For Death by Emily Dickinson and Death Came to See Me in Hot Pink Pants by Heather Royes both represent the theme Death. In both poems Death is personified and is depicted as a gentleman caller. Yet Dickinson’s poem is a recollection of the persona’s death and Royes’ poem is the recalling of a dream the persona once had in which she struggled with Death and won. In the poem, Because I Couldn’t Stop For Death, the persona is reminiscing on the day she died.…