How does Bierce make Peyton Farquhar a sympathetic character in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?
Peyton Farquhar is a slave-owner, a Confederate sympathizer, and a saboteur. Bierce has no trouble making him sympathetic even to Union sympathizers because of several factors.
- Farquhar is facing his death courageously. He knows he was taking a risk and realizes he has to pay for it with his life.
- Farquhar has a wife and family.
- Farquhar is all alone against a large contingent of the Union Army. We tend to root for the "little guy," and Farquhar is certainly the little guy here.
- We naturally sympathize and identify with a man whose life is in danger if we are kept in his point of view. Another example is the unnamed protagonist of Jack London's "To Build a Fire." Yet another example is Meursault in Albert Camus' novel The Stranger . We don't necessarily have to "like" a character as long as we are held in his point of view...
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- and identify with his motivation. In Farquhar's case, he wants to live, he wants to go home to his wife, he wants to escape hanging. Bierce has an easy time creating sympathy for Farquhar. We could identify with almost anyone, even the worst type of criminal, if we were in his point of view and identified with his common human motivation--love, hate, fear, survival, greed, revenge, etc.
How does Ambrose Bierce develop Peyton Farquhar's character in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"?
Bierce uses both direct and indirect characterization in order to create the story's protagonist, Peyton Farquhar. The narrator does, at times, describe Farquhar's character directly, as when he says,
He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good . . . His eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
We learn what Farquhar looks like as well as a bit about his lifestyle, occupation, and what kind of person he is from this description. The narrator tells us, directly, this information that helps to sketch out Farquhar's character. This direct characterization continues into Part II of the story when the narrator says, in part, that
Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause.
In fact, he believed "at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war." This description alerts us to the fact that Farquhar will be willing to do anything, no matter how deceptive or even, perhaps, dastardly, in order to preserve the way of life that he sees as so honorable and deserving.
Therefore, it does not require much for readers to infer that Farquhar has attempted to "interfer[e] with the railroad, [or] its bridges," and that this is why he is now being hanged. The man who turns out to be a Federal scout in Part II actually names the Owl Creek bridge and explains how it could be quickly destroyed as a result of "a great quantity of driftwood [that had become lodged] against the wooden pier." Here, Farquhar is indirectly characterized; the narrator does not tell us exactly what he thought or planned, but we can gather that he not only whole-heartedly believed the scout but that he also seized this apparent "opportunity for distinction" of which he's dreamed. We see, here, that Farquhar is, perhaps, a little gullible as a result of his zealotry to protect and defend the South and distinguish himself in the process.