Ignoring the pain in his neck and the "circle of black" on his neck, Farquhar runs to his beloved wife. A few more steps and he would be in the arms of his love. In a flash, Farquhar was dead, near the "black circle" under the Owl Creek Bridge. Peyton Farquhar, the main character of the historical short story "An Event at Owl Creek Bridge" written by Ambrose Bierce, is hanged by the Union Army after being framed by the Federal soldier. The reader is misled by Bierce into thinking that Farquhar escapes and survives. In reality, Farquhar is hanged and imagined himself surviving. The author uses many subtle allusions during Farquhar's "escape" to show this. Using literary techniques: imagery, supernatural plot elements, and allusions, Bierce foreshadows the true fate of Peyton Farquhar. At the beginning of Part Three, Bierce first mentions the pain and feeling of the rope around Farquhar's neck after his fall. “…by the pain of strong pressure on his throat, followed by a feeling of suffocation. Vivid, poignant anxieties seemed to well up from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. Although this sentence never mentions that Farquhar still had the noose, this is implied since there was no statement before it claiming that he had removed it. Farquhar's neck would also have been good, because if he had escaped, the pain would have lessened since the pressure of all his weight would have disappeared. In reality, if he had actually escaped, his entire focus would have been on swimming instead of feeling the "pain" in his neck. After supposedly removing the noose and coming out of the hanging, he still felt pain in his neck from the noose. “His neck hurt horribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had had the flu... middle of paper... on the sides. This is a reference from Greek mythology to the River Styx, a river that separates the living from the dead. The black bodies of the trees show that it was dark and, according to the paintings, there were walls of darkness around the River Styx. The River Styx is also a path to death or the path of death. Bierce uses the River Styx to foreshadow that Farquhar is actually “at death’s door”. Ambrose Bierce uses the following literary devices: imagery, supernatural plot elements, and allusions to foreshadow the true ending of "An Event at Owl Creek Bridge." The author has misled readers into believing that Farquhar survives even with this subtle foreshadowing. With the ominous mention of the "black circle" near the end of the story, readers are further misled by Farquhar's plausible imagination. Peyton Farquhar finally succumbs to the “black circle” »”.