In the last three chapters of The Unvanquished, Bayard undergoes a significant identity transformation that deeply affects his sense of self. Granny and John Sartoris’ deaths are two events that thrust Bayard into a reconsideration of his role within the Sartoris family, but more largely, as the heir to a slaveholding and landowning white man in the American South. 

In his chapter “Destruction and Reconstruction,” Atkinson describes The Unvanquished as a narrative of dispossession, citing the ways that for Bayard, “dispossession imprints memory with trauma, initiating an ongoing struggle between the reality of absence and, in turn, the strong desire for recovery and return” (Atkinson, 230). While dispossession usually connotes a deprivation of land, property, or other material possessions, Bayard repossesses/recovers something more abstract: his coming of age as “John Sartoris’s boy” after avenging Granny’s death and his new identity label as “The Sartoris” upon his father’s passing. 

Bayard “proves” himself as worthy of continuing on the Sartoris name by killing Grumby in the name of revenge for Granny. Not only does Bayard shoot Grumby, he and Ringo grotesquely affix his dead body to the “old compress,” which I couldn’t find an adequate definition for, but may be interpreted as her gravesite. Uncle Buck lauds Bayard for this incredibly violent action, boasting, “…‘And if anybody wants to see that too,’ I told John Sartoris, ‘just let them ride into Jefferson and look on Rosa Millard’s grave!’ ‘Ain’t I told you he is John Sartoris’ boy? Hey? Ain’t I told you?” (“Vendée” in The Unvanquished, p. 186). By killing Grumby and avenging Granny, Bayard lives up to one key standard of masculinity that is expected of Southern men, which is using violence to solve problems and show strength. In an earlier section, Drusilla greets Bayard as “John Sartoris”, which I thought was curious. Later, Drusilla’s romantic associations with both John Sartoris and Bayard coupled with that strange greeting led me to believe that Drusilla has always viewed both men as one in the same, especially as Bayard embarks on the path to become his father. 

Uncle Buck emphasizes the importance of Bayard’s reputation in their town as well, as Bayard is poised to succeed John as his only acceptable heir. As head of the family, Bayard would be expected to protect the family’s property, wealth, and family members from harm. Once Bayard and Ringo pin Grumby’s body to the board above Granny’s grave, Ringo says, “Now she can lay good and quiet” (“Vendée”, in The Unvanquished, p. 184). Grumby’s gruesome display represents a recovery of what was taken from Bayard and the Sartorises, signaling that the debt has been repaid and Granny is able to rest. For the reader, this violence may feel uncharacteristic of Bayard, who in previous chapters wanted nothing more than to escape the horror of his reality and conceptualize the brutal scenes before him as matchsticks, toy soldiers, and horses. Although Bayard’s pistol was “level and steady as a rock” when he shot Grumby, he had a dreamlike fit of panic and sadness during his sleep following the event (“Vendée” in The Unvanquished, p. 183). This signifies Bayard’s recurring struggle and inability to fully come to terms with trauma and violence, revealing that Bayard is actually composed of the opposite of these hyper masculine standards to which he is held. Unlike his father, he is able to show emotion and vulnerability. 

Finally, by becoming “The Sartoris,” Bayard’s perception of Ringo shifts into what would be common of a Southern white man who owned enslaved people. Bayard reflects on his changed relationship with Ringo and notes, “I remember how I thought then that no matter what might happen to either of us, I would never be The Sartoris to him…maybe because he had outgrown me…” (“An Odor of Verbena”, in The Unvanquished, p. 215-216). Bayard realizes the weight of what it means to be “The Sartoris” by acknowledging the power dynamic that comes with inheriting his Father’s name and assets. But in this moment, Bayard still holds on to that shred of insecurity from childhood that Ringo has “outgrown” him and will surpass him in life’s journey. Then, Bayard calls attention to Ringo’s pseudo-family relationship with the Sartorises in a new way: 

“…but I rather think it was that same quality which used to enable him to replenish his and Granny’s supply of United States Army letterheads during that time- some outrageous assurance gained from too long and too close association with white people: the one whom he called Granny, the other with whom he had slept from the time we were born until Father rebuilt the house. We spoke one time, then no more…” (“An Odor of Verbena”, in The Unvanquished, p. 217-218). 

This “outrageous assurance” that Ringo gained while living with the Sartorises has the tone that Ringo does not and has never fully belonged in the Sartoris family. In a way that Bayard has never verbalized before, he and his family are reduced to “white people,” which illustrates a sharp contrast along racial lines. Bayard rhetorically minimizes Ringo’s relationship with Granny and himself by saying “the one whom he called Granny”, and “the other whom he had slept from the time we were born,” using “the one” as a way to depersonalize and distance himself and Granny from Ringo. Because Bayard is the narrator, the reader only gets to see one (unreliable/subjective) perspective of his relationship to Ringo. I wonder if Ringo had a piece of this narrative, what would he say? I would want to know how Ringo’s opinion of Bayard has changed as well. 

The deaths of his mother-like and father figure effectively seal Bayard’s transition from adolescence into adulthood. Although everyone around Bayard sees him as an image and successor of his father, Bayard’s sense of self remains tied up in his childhood trauma as he struggles to navigate the complexities and shifting nature of Southern society at the time.

Throughout The Unvanquished, Bayard is confronted with and often is forced to participate in scenes of violence. Although Bayard is fascinated by the war, he is woefully unprepared for the action that he is regularly thrown into. In Ambuscade, Retreat, Raid, and Riposte in Tertio, Faulkner takes a consistent and fascinating approach to describing scenes of war and violence by not describing them or transforming them into unthreatening micro-objects or sounds as seen or heard through the eyes of Bayard. 

In Ambuscade, Bayard and Ringo steal Father’s musket and shoot at what they think is a Union soldier, but they actually hit the horse instead. At the moment of the shooting, Bayard recalls, “…and then my sights came to level and as I shut my eyes I saw the man and the bright horse vanish in smoke. It sounded like thunder and it made as much smoke as a brushfire and I heard the horse scream but I didn’t see anything else…” (p. 26, Ambuscade, in The Unvanquished). Faulkner plays around with the dichotomy of sight/blindness in this quote, as Bayard needs his sight to complete the action of shooting a gun but closes his eyes so as to not see the consequences. The line, “as I shut my eyes I saw” connotes a kind of dreamlike state where Bayard may be able to convince himself that what he saw or didn’t see wasn’t real. This is a narrative style that Faulkner uses throughout these scenes to describe the psychological self-protection mechanism that Bayard uses to shield himself from traumatic situations. Bayard relies only on the sounds of this event to give him information about it, which can sometimes be less threatening or shocking than seeing the actual aftermath. 

In Retreat, Bayard actually gives voice to these protection mechanisms by reflecting, “There is a limit to what a child can accept, assimilate; not to what a child can believe because a child can believe anything, given time, but to what it can accept, a limit in time, in the very time which nourishes the believing of the incredible” (p. 66, Retreat, in The Unvanquished). This line is interesting because it contains a heavier and more complex wisdom than Bayard in his child state could put forth, which leads me to believe that this could either be an older Bayard reflecting back on this time or Faulkner himself inserting his own reflections. This pause in Bayard’s chaotic childlike narration brings the reader back to Earth for a second to grasp how traumatizing it must be for a child to exist in a space of war where violence is unpredictable and a father expects his child to join in on the action. In the next part of the line, Bayard says, “And I was still a child at that moment when Father’s and my horses came over the hill and seemed to cease galloping and to float, hang suspended rather in dimension without time in it…and looked quietly down at the scene beneath rather than before us…” (p. 66, Retreat, in The Unvanquished). This is another instance where Bayard creates a dreamlike state for himself in a time of stress by imagining a distance from it; an almost out of body experience where he gets to look down at the scene unharmed while it happens before him. 

In Raid and Riposte in Tertio, Bayard implements a new protection mechanism by imagining violent action as regular micro household objects. Because Bayard is deprived of his hearing due to the bridge blowing up, he is forced to use his eyes to process what is going on in front of him. He says, “I didn’t hear anything at all. I just sat there in the wagon with a funny buzzing in my ears and a funny taste in my mouth, and watched little toy men and horses and pieces of plank floating along in the air above the water” (p. 106, Raid, in The Unvanquished). Bayard is unable to remove himself from the situation here, so his brain creates a pseudo-playful image of toys, which reminds him of his status as a child and may even remind him of the comforts of home. Faulkner also plays around with scale too. Whenever possible, Bayard conceptualizes objects before him in a traumatic situation as “little” or mentally distances himself from them. By contrast, Bayard regularly describes his Father as “big,” which conveys the way that Bayard/Faulkner uses scale to measure things that are important to him or worth paying attention to. 

Finally, Bayard conceptualizes the worst trauma of all, Granny’s death, as a pile of “thin dry light sticks notched together and braced with cord” (p. 153, Riposte in Tertio, in The Unvanquished). Although Bayard is older now (?), his depersonalization of Granny’s dead body into inanimate sticks shows that he still holds on to the protection mechanisms that he used in his childhood to process emotional stress. This thread of alternative description of trauma and violence that runs through The Unvanquished allows the reader a glimpse into what life must have been like for a young boy in the South during the Civil War who saw far too much far too young. It also makes me wonder about Faulkner’s experiences and how this book may be his way of processing his own trauma and memories from his childhood.