Farquhar’s Family Symbol Analysis

Farquhar’s wife and children lie beyond the enemy lines, and as the soldiers prepare for his execution, he wonders feverishly if he might be able to escape. He thinks, “My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance.” Then, miraculously, he suddenly finds himself free from the noose, and struggles madly to return to his home and family.

In one sense, the family represents hope: a kind of purity and joy that pulls Farquhar through his dark journey. This appears most prominently at the end of the story, when Farquhar believes he has returned home to find “his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet.” The power of that emotion is enough to pull him through his feverish (and at times nightmarish) escape, and even though it ultimately proves to be just a dream, it suggests a hope worth holding onto until the last instant of life.

This is also a story set during the Civil War, and in that context the family can be seen as a stand-in for antebellum society itself. It’s the world Farquhar thinks he’s protecting, a world where families like his live peaceful and dignified lives. Bierce, who fought for the Union and was involved in abolitionist causes from an early age, understood that that lifestyle was built on the fundamentally unjust notion of slavery. Once stamped out, it couldn’t be revived. In that context, Farquhar’s family represents an outdated way of living, one that Farqhuar and those like him can never go back to. Hence, they’re pulled away from him just as he reaches them: denying their comforts to both him and the cause he died for.