# Great Gorham — Poetry character guide

> Great Gorham in Poetry by Ambrose Bierce.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Gorham

**First appearance:** 0000-poetry

## Snapshot

A looming figure of outsized reputation in Bierce's satiric landscape, whose grandeur the poet measures against the smallness of ordinary men.

## Who they are

Great Gorham stands as one of Bierce's grand-scale personages, invoked with the mock-heroic solemnity the poet reserves for the overpraised and the self-important. His greatness is asserted more than demonstrated, and the gap between reputation and reality becomes the poem's quiet joke. He matters to the early arc because he establishes the collection's recurring target: the inflated ego that poetry exists to puncture.

## In the story

### [Two Delegates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se/chapters/two-delegates)

Enters a restaurant demanding an ounce of bacon and a bean; his fierce presence terrifies the waiter.

### [Indicted](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se/chapters/indicted)

Quoted as having said of Pixley that the prison yawns before him and the turnkey stalks behind.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se/characters/great_gorham
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se/characters