By Mary Evans Ramsey – A Review of Our First Friday Classic Book Study of William Faulkner’s, The Unvanquished*
Let me begin by saying that William Faulkner’s work can be challenging for readers for several reasons. Those who have read Faulkner might say that his subject matter is no longer relevant. Leave the past in the past! Who wants to argue the Civil War again?
Leave the past in the past! Who wants to argue the Civil War again?
Faulkner would have a ready response —to him “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” One need only look at our continued struggle in this country with racial issues to understand what he’s getting at. They might also say that Faulkner’s use of shifting narrators and stream of consciousness writing can make the narrative difficult to follow. Faulkner’s use of these techniques is intentional. He wants readers to get into the minds of his characters so that they can understand not only what they do, but also why they do it. Finally, some readers will tell you that he likes to use words that are often unfamiliar and seemingly unnecessary when simpler and more common words could easily convey his meaning. I can only surmise that Faulkner, who didn’t graduate from high school or college, was trying to prove that neither was necessary for a well-read and skilled writer. With that said, I would argue that the payoff for reading Faulkner’s work is worth the added effort because no other writer has more clearly evoked life in the old American South than William Faulkner.
No other writer has more clearly evoked life in the American South than William Faulkner.
In fact, the writing of every major Southern writer since Faulkner has been measured against his work. If you are at all interested in understanding those lingering racial issues I mentioned before, reading his work may give you some helpful background information. Contrary to what you may think, Faulkner was no apologist for the South. In fact, he believed that it [the South] would be paying for what he called the “sin of slavery” for generations. His work explores the ways in which this “sin” led to the inevitable destruction of the economic and social structures of the “Old South.”
The Classic Book Club recently agreed to take on the challenge of reading Faulkner, and on Friday, Sept 6th, we met to discuss The Unvanquished. This title may be less familiar to you than his more famous works of As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and, Absalom! Absalom!, but I chose this one because it has all the major elements of a Faulkner story (race, place, caste, and past), and it has a more linear narrative than most of his other works-making it easier to follow. Originally written as a series of short stories that were published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Unvanquished is a classic “coming of age” story about two boys growing up in the South during the Civil War. One boy (Ringo) is black and the other is white (Bayard). How and why their “coming of age” differs demonstrates the impact of race on each boy’s life.
The novel opens in the summer of 1862 when the two boys are twelve years old. Up until this point, they are relatively equal. They were born in the same month, nursed at the same breast, worked, played, ate, and slept together. Readers will no doubt notice that Bayard sleeps on a bed and Ringo on a pallet on the floor and that Bayard gets more turns at being the good guy, i.e., the Confederate, in their war games, but they are equally disciplined by their grandmothers—both white and black (Granny Millard and Louvinia). Early on, Faulkner lets readers know that Ringo is by far the smarter of the two. By the time he is fifteen, Ringo is an active and equal partner to Bayard’s Granny in a scheme involving swindling the Union army. Bayard is only a bystander who observes that “he [Ringo]was taller than me now, maybe from the exercise of riding around the country, listening out for fresh regiments with mules, and he had got to treating me like Granny did—like he and Granny were the same age instead of him and me.” But because he is black and a slave and Bayard is white and the master’s son, we know that no matter how intelligent or competent Ringo is, the power in their relationship will eventually shift in Bayard’s favor. This shift begins when Granny is killed.
Her murder is the first of two pivotal moments in Bayard’s “coming of age.” As a white Southern male, he is bound by the Southern Code of Honor to avenge his grandmother’s death. As he rises to meet this challenge, Ringo takes a step back and assumes Bayard’s role as a bystander. Although they hunt Grumby together, it is Bayard who kills him while Ringo simply looks on. Here, finally, they have reached the obvious point where race divides them. In the patriarchal society of the Old South, Ringo has reached and perhaps even exceeded the limits of his personal development, while Bayard is just getting started. Killing Grumby signals the beginning of Bayard’s “coming of age” as much as Ringo’s inaction signals the end of his potential development. Ringo remains on the farm as a laborer. Later, when Bayard is sent off to college to complete his law degree,
And, in the novel’s second pivotal moment when (at twenty-four, both boys are now men) Bayard is again called on to avenge a death, Ringo continues to be a bystander. This moment represents the final shift in the balance of power between black and white. But this time Bayard challenges the Code, the community, and himself by refusing to kill simply because he believes it’s the right thing to do. These are the actions of a man who adheres to his own code, not one imposed on him by his community. Readers have no doubt that Bayard Sartoris is a man now, but what about Ringo? He began with far more promise than his white counterpart, and even though by the end of the novel he is no longer a slave, he is suspended in the same place he reached in adolescence. But, why? The answer is as simple as it is wrong—his race.
Readers are left to wonder how far we have come from a time when race was the determining factor in what we can do in our lives. This is why you should read William Faulkner. His writing continues to compel us to think about this and if we, like Bayard Sartoris, are willing to do the right thing.
This Column has Been Written by Mary Ramsey Evans, a Book Club Member and Litchatte.com writer. Write her care of this column or via Murray.
* Contact Litchatte Editor and First Friday Book Club Coordinator, Murray Ellison, at ellisonms2@vcu.edu to particiapte in person or online.
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