You can infer that the jealous ostler told King George’s men that the highwayman would be visiting Bess. They are setting a trap to capture him. She shoots herself so the highwayman will hear the sound and know to avoid the inn. She shoots herself so the highwayman will hear the sound and know to avoid the inn.

The highwayman goes back to the inn the next day after hearing what happened to Bess. He’s terribly angry and feels as though he should take revenge. He rides and curses the sky. The highwayman also has his sword at the ready, prepared to kill the red coats her caused her death.

Learning of her death, he is killed in a futile attempt at revenge (“so they shot him down on the highway, like a dog upon the highway”). In the final stanza, the ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights.

Why do you think the highwayman was hurrying back toward the inn after hearing that Bess had died? He wanted to get revenge against those responsible for her death.

Just before she kills herself, Bess is transfigured by love: “Her face was like a light.” After her death, Bess is “drenched with her own red blood,” which symbolizes Bess’s passion for the highwayman. The highwayman loves Bess just as passionately. After hearing of her death, he makes good on his promise to return.

Terms in this set (10) The redcoats are villains and the Highwayman is the hero.

The red coats come marching in to set a trap for the highwayman. They know that he will return for his love, Bess, the innkeeper’s daughter. So, the soldiers plan to use her to get to the highwayman. The soldiers are very disrespectful and do not care who they hurt.

Bess is tied up with a gun at her chest, and she wriggles around until she has her finger on the trigger. Then, when she hears the highwayman’s horse, she fires the gun, and gives her life to warn him about the ambush.

: a heavy square-rigged sailing ship of the 15th to early 18th centuries used for war or commerce especially by the Spanish.

His pistol butts a-twinkle, his rapier hilt a-twinkle under the jeweled sky. Noyes could have written that there were stars out that night. However, by referring to the sky as “jeweled,” Noyes suggests that the stars are not only out, but are sparkling and twinkling like jewels in the sky.

After a loss, it’s important to move forward in life. Dying for the sake of a loved one is a foolish choice.

Why does Bess struggle to touch the trigger of the gun? Bess struggles to touch the trigger because she plans to shoot herself. The shot will warn the highwayman of the danger at the inn and he will ride away before he is shot and killed.

When King George’s men come to the inn and wait for the highwayman, tying up Bess to lure him there, the poem says that ‘there was death at every window’. But this personification of death tells you that someone is going to die and that it is a bad thing that King George’s men are there to capture the highwayman.

Personification Question

PERSONIFICATION: Giving human characteristics to an animal, object, or idea. Ex: The hours crawled by like years.