There is no evidence that any of the figures surrounding Wolfe in the painting were actually present at his death. All of them were senior military figures and would have been busy elsewhere in battle because Wolfe died at the height of the battle itself and not afterward. However, West's choice to show Wolfe's death in the figurative manner of a dying martyr, many comparing it to Christ, transforms Wolfe's death from a simple casualty of war to one of a hero that symbolized the British cause.