The Unvanquished

The Unvanquished by William Faulkner

This is the story of the Sartoris family, during and shortly after the Civil War, as told by Bayard Sartoris. As the story begins, Bayard's father John is off leading Confederate troops in battle. John's mother-in-law, known to all as Granny, is managing the homeplace. Vicksburg has fallen to Grant's beseiging army, and at least one of the family's slaves is envisioning the fall of the entire Confederacy.

While Col. John is resisting the Union with fire and sword, Granny, Bayard, and his black friend Ringo resist with a nifty grift. Who would believe this whisp of a woman could harbor such gile? But Granny attempts to do business with a small band of rebel deserters who are pilaging and terrorising show more the region, and she's murdered. Bayard and Ringo relentlessly track the gang until the murderer is released to them. They have their revenge.

When the war ends, the colonel returns home to rebuild. He thwarts northern schemers who endeavor to install former slaves in the local government. With a business partner, he develops a railroad. The partnership sours, and Bayard leaves college to avenge his father.

The theme, to my mind, is resistence to suppression. These southerners refuse to be vanquished, by the Union army, by thieves and marauders, by corrupt politicans, by death, even by tradition and convention. Being unvanquished isn't necessarily being triumphant, or even surviving. It is being resolute, strong, clever, persistent, courageous, proud, often perverse.

Faulkner is a challenging writer. Sure he tells the story in those endless sentences, the ones so low-key that you misjudge their power. The narrative is a torrent, an unstoppable rush. I luv it. show less

84. The Unvanquished by William Faulkner
OPD: 1938
format: 260-page paperback
acquired: March (from Faulkner House in New Orleans) read: Dec 17-23 time reading: 8:40, 2.0 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic short stories theme: Faulkner
locations: Yoknapatawpha, county, Mississippi
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

My 13th book by Faulkner, and by far the easiest to read. It’s kind of like a break. It’s more a boy’s story, and it has a touch of a Huck Finn quality, with a black and white bond boy bond. The race aspect has serious issues but also has a warmth and intimacy within a not very warm environment.

Within Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha books, show more this is the story of the first Bayard Sartoris, who came of age during the American Civil War. Too young to fight, he stays home with his grandmother and their house slaves, while his father goes off to fight. But when the book opens, the Union troops are into Mississippi. During the first story Bayard and his black childhood friend Ringo, a slave, work together to shoot down a Union scout. They kill only a horse, and the Union soldiers are gentle about it. But so begins this complicated view of the war from the losing home front.

The prose is simple, always in Bayard's own voice, but stories are nicely worked out, wandering and paced, and they address a lot of interesting aspects of the war - the Union burning of towns and fine houses, the freed slaves wandering en masse towards who knows where, the sense of loyalty in some slaves, like Ringo, and the sense of injustice in others. Also Women confederate soldiers, and a sense of the outlaw violence as the war ends. Biographers say it's hard to know Faulkner's sources or accuracy of this era that he happens to bring to life. It's not clear how much is imagined or might have come from local lore. But it's an interesting picture regardless.

These are also nicely plotted stories, with the penultimate story capitalizing on everything before and ramping up the tension and sustaining it. This book is, perhaps, a good introduction to Faulkner.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/365030#8705265 show less

One of the more accessible of Faulkner's novels I've read, but still requiring a good deal of retracing passages and allowing the narrative to teach you how to read it. Which is some of the most fun of reading Faulkner, I often think. My favorite part about The Unvanquished was the way Faulkner puts the setting and the time period on the page. I felt very immersed in the rural Civil War south while reading and in the end thought maybe I understood something a little that I wouldn't have before.

Read this book in order to understand the culture of the South during and shortly after the Civil War--Faulkner's view of it, anyway. It's a collection of related short stories in chronological order, and the last story, "An Odor of Verbena," is key. "An Odor of Verbena," which concerns dueling, the demand for violent revenge to satisfy family honor, and the human cost of such a culture, was required reading in the Southern American culture course I took.

Flags in the Dust, Faulkner's other book (a novel proper) about the Sartoris family, was written first but is set 40-50 years later; Bayard Sartoris, the young protagonist of The Unvanquished, is an old man in Flags in the Dust. So read The Unvanquished first for an introduction to the show more Sartoris family. (I mistakenly did the opposite.) show less

A glimpse of Civil War history through the eyes of a child living through it, along with his best friend, the slave boy who is probably his brother. As the Yankees start winning and burn the mansions and steal the meager treasures holed up by families, the slave boy is only confused and frightened by his "freedom". Grandma finds a way to provide for those around her by claiming the return of her fortuitous-named Yankee-appropriated mule "Old One Hundred".

Great collection of short stories that are exciting and fun to read. Bayard grows up as the stories proceed, and so the stories become slightly more critical of the South, but it is mostly the difference between what the characters do and how the reader reacts that reveals the critique. Also, this novel features Drusilla Hawk, one of my new favorite women of modernist lit.

Great collection of short stories that are exciting and fun to read. Bayard grows up as the stories proceed, and so the stories become slightly more critical of the South, but it is mostly the difference between what the characters do and how the reader reacts that reveals the critique. Also, this novel features Drusilla Hawk, one of my new favorite women of modernist lit.