Bayard’s Search for Subjective Truth in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished
Unlike Sarty Snopes of “Barn Burning”, the narrator of The Unvanquished leads a somewhat existential life. Sarty takes an objectively moral stance when abandoning his abusive father. Conversely, Bayard Sartoris is faced with the “ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation” and is on a search for subjective truth (Kierkegaard). Though he acts on behalf of his family, he does things that he knows can be considered wrong. Additionally, he is asked to believe new information and take in experiences that are foreign to him. For him, it seems that “existence precedes essence” in his childhood. During this journey, Bayard describes instances in which his apprehension of information is primary, as is his need for empirical evidence.
As he is about to run headlong into the first Union regiment that he has ever seen, Bayard observes, “There is a limit to what a child can accept, assimilate; not to what it 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” (66). When he is given visible proof of the Union Army, it is overwhelming. The regiment that he encounters becomes tangible proof of the war.
Later in the book, he again reflects on the war. He catalogs the proofs that he has been given — injured and half-starved countrymen — but persists in his existential doubt. He notes, “So we knew a war existed; we had to believe that, just as we had to believe that the name for the sort of life we had led for the last three years was hardship and suffering. Yet we had no proof of it. In fact, we had even less than no proof; we had had thrust into our faces the very shabby and unavoidable obverse of proof…” (94). Because he has not seen the battles, he has difficulty acknowledging the reality of war.
Even as Bayard is faced with the idea of war, he recalls of himself and Ringo that, “What counted was, what one of us had done or seen that the other had not, and ever since that Christmas I had been ahead of Ringo because I had seen a railroad, a locomotive” (81). In the midst of an already chaotic situation, the childlike fascination with the locomotive is a bit illogical.
about the war and his lack of place in his old society. The war becomes
William Faulkner tells his novel The Unvanquished through the eyes and ears of Bayard, the son of Confederate Colonel John Sartoris. The author’s use of a young boy during such a turbulent time in American history allows him to relate events from a unique perspective. Bayard holds dual functions within the novel, as both a character and a narrator. The character of Bayard matures into a young adult within the work, while narrator Bayard relays the events of the story many years later.
In James McPherson’s novel, What They Fought For, a variety of Civil War soldier documents are examined to show the diverse personal beliefs and motives for being involved in the war. McPherson’s sample, “is biased toward genuine fighting soldiers” (McPherson, 17) meaning he discusses what the ordinary soldier fought for. The Confederacy was often viewed as the favorable side because their life style relied on the war; Confederates surrounded their lives with practices like slavery and agriculture, and these practices were at stake during the war. On the other hand, Northerners fought to keep the country together. Although the Civil War was brutal, McPherson presents his research to show the dedication and patriotism of the soldiers that fought and died for a cause.
“The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity. In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true.” (Pg.88)
Another unique aspect to this book is the constant change in point of view. This change in point of view emphasizes the disorder associated with war. At some points during the book, it is a first person point of view, and at other times it changes to an outside third person point of view. In the first chapter of the book, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity (2).
The truth to any war does not lie in the depths of storytelling but rather it’s embedded in every person involved. According to O’Brien, “A true war story does not depend on that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (pg. 80). Truths of any war story in my own opinion cannot be fully conveyed or explained through the use of words. Any and all war stories provide specific or certain facts about war but each of them do not and cannot allow the audience to fully grasp the tru...
An article called, “The Real War,” written by Roger J. Spiller, begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “The real war will never get in the books.” The author writes about an interview with Paul Fussell, who was a soldier in World War Two and has written many books about World War One and World War Two. Fussell is very opinionated and critical about other books written about these wars, asserting they are not realistic or portray the true essence of what really occurred by soldiers and other people participating in the wars. I claim that it is impossible to convey the actual personal feelings and emotions of those involved in a war in books or any other forms of media.
Ducket, Alfred. I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press. 1995
It has been stated that while doing what is right is not always easy, it is in fact doing what is right despite it being difficult that is quite the accomplishment. Justice one finds to be one of the major themes throughout “Barn Burning”. The notion of intuitive justice presents itself as a characteristic explored throughout William Faulkner’s literary masterpiece “Barn Burning” through the protagonist Colonel Sartoris Snopes, also referred to as Sarty throughout “Barn Burning”. Faulkner presents Sarty and demonstrates his sense of justice through literal actions and dramatic context.
The first chapter of his book titled “Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things” gives Keegan’s recognition to the fact that historians do not focus enough on actual soldiers. To explain this further, what Keegan is saying is that a historian puts things in a pack of sequential dates and times; but to the soldier, these things happen very rapidly and many times without planning. Keegan continues on to make note that when a historian puts together the pain-staking task of compilation of facts, the information is put down on paper as the writer’s view of how the facts unfolded and not from the soldier’s perspective.
William Faulkner elected to write “Barn Burning” from his young character Sarty’s perspective because his sense of morality and decency would present a more plausible conflict in this story. Abner Snopes inability to feel the level of remorse needed to generate a truly moral predicament in this story, sheds light on Sarty’s efforts to overcome the constant “pull of blood”(277) that forces him to remain loyal to his father. As a result, this reveals the hidden contempt and fear Sarty has developed over the years because of Abner’s behavior. Sarty’s struggle to maintain an understanding of morality while clinging to the fading idolization of a father he fears, sets the tone for a chain of events that results in his liberation from Abner’s destructive defiance-but at a costly price.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers. He attended UCLA where he became the first athlete to receive varsity letters in 4 sports; baseball, basketball, football, and track. Jackie did not have enough money to afford college and was forced to drop out. He then decided to enlist in the U.S. Army. With very swift progress, after only two years Jackie earned the rank of lieutenant. Jackie’s career in the army was cut short when he was court-martialed in relation of objections to racial discrimination. No scene was made and Jackie received an honorable discharge when he decided to resign from the army. He took a stand when he was in the army and made changes against racial discrimination that stood until racial discrimination completely ended. Jackie stood up for what was right and was not afraid to voice his opinion. Jackie said, “A life is not important, except in the impact it has on other lives.” Jackie never knew what was coming when he gets recognized by Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Simon, Scott. 2002. Jackie Robinson and the integration of Baseball. Turning points. Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley & Sons.
It is hardly reasonable to expect a man who will forgo employment that allows such benefits like the necessity of food to attend to the needs of a war. Yet some people criticized Henry Miller because he did not take action; he hardly discussed the war in Tropic of Cancer; and, in their opinion, it is his moral obligation as a citizen-writer to address it. However, Miller is defensible only because his “mind is on the peace treaty all the time” (Miller, 143). The silence about the war in the novel suggests a stance of “extreme pacifism,” which is defensible because of his autobiographical honesty about his radical individualism and the artistic intent to describe the beauty of keeping in touch with humanity in spite of eventual annihilation (Orwell, 1 ).
Throughout his professional career, Jackie Robinson, received criticism for being the first “black” player to play the game. Not only did Jackie Robinson manage to live up to the criticism, he also changed the face of America’s greatest past time forever. With his entrance into the MLB he opened the path for great black players like Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, and Ozzie Smith just to name a few. In crossing the color-barrier in baseball Robinson not only strived as a great player on the field, but also a inspiration to the black community of the field with his humility, and willingness to move forward in a time where blacks were not considered “equal”.