As a reader when do you begin to sympathize with Farquhar before or after his introduction in section II? Why?

There are two ways in which a fiction writer creates identification, empathy, or sympathy with a character. One is to tell everything from that character's point of view. The other way is to give the character a problem with which it is easy for the reader to relate. In the opening of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" we are kept strictly in Peyton Farquhar's point of view. For example:

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."

Peyton Farquhar's problem is very simple and very easy to identify with. He is going to be hanged and he would like very much to be able to live. Wouldn't we all? In fact, it is his strong desire to live and to return to his plantation and his beautiful wife that shape the remainder of the story. Although he can't actually escape from the situation he is in, he fantasizes about doing so while he is falling to his death with the noose around his neck.

A problem in fiction usually involves a motivation. Farquhar's motivation is to escape. He has a real problem because he is surrounded by Union soldiers, has his hands tied behind his back, and has a noose around his neck. A problem is not necessarily solved in a story. For example, the problem of the unnamed protagonist in Jack London's story "To Build a Fire" is that he wants to get to safety without freezing to death. He has the problem because of his motivation to stay alive and get to the cabin where there will be shelter and warmth. Jack London's attitude towards the human condition is not much different from that of Ambrose Bierce. In spite of the protagonist's strong desire to survive, he ends up dying in the snow. We have been hoping all along that he would make it to shelter.

Peyton Farquhar's original motivation to burn down the Owl Creek Bridge was what got him into the situation he was in. Then his motivation evolved into wanting to get away. We identify with him from beginning to end. We are pleasantly surprised when it appears that the hanging rope broke and he is in the creek with a chance to escape. We identify with him up to the moment when he seems to have reached his plantation and is about to embrace his loving wife. We have been imaging ourselves to be in his predicament all along. It is the ability of human beings to identify with others that makes drama and fiction possible.

Then with his characteristic cynicism, pessimism, and nihilism, Ambrose Bierce shows us how foolish we are to expect miracles to happen for us in this world.

As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.