Civil War In William Faulkner's The Unvanquished

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Ty’Quish Keyes Unvanquished Essay Trailing by 10 points with a minute left in overtime during a basketball game, you are in a race against the clock. This situation occurs constantly throughout William Faulkner’s novel, The Unvanquished. In this novel Bayard, the son of a confederate colonel during the civil war, is constantly racing against his biggest enemy of time rather it be making a river in an imaginary war zone, racing to save his beloved grandmother, or attempting to learn a new way of life as the southern values begin to decline. In the very beginning of the novel when Bayard is young, He and his friend Ringo (Grandson of a slave belonging to Bayard’s family) are recreating a civil war battle. They use…show more content…
Granny and the kids were forced to leave their home and granny was forced to abolish her southern customs, lying and stealing to survive. As time went on she had gained an sufficient profit and decided to give back to the poor struggling slaves but while she was making a business deal to get rid of her final surplus of mules she was killed. The night she was killed, she made Ringo and Bayard stay inside the wagon and she traveled across the terrain into a barn to meet Gumby (the man she was making the deal with). As time progressed the weather became worse and Bayard and Ringo realized something was wrong and went racing towards the barn. When they arrived at the Barn they had been a minute too late, granny had already been shot. They “waited too long either to help her or to share in her defeat”(p 153). They both realized that they let too much time go by before they came to granny’s rescue, then they were racing time trying to save her from death but once again time becomes something they cannot…show more content…
They’re lives had completely changed with no slaves and their southern way of life extremely altered. Bayard was one of the only people who was not gravely effected by this and opted not to follow the “southern code” when he chose to let the man who shot his father live. He realized that his father had done a lot of things in his life and eventually it would come down to him being killed. Bayard didn’t feel it was right to kill him and avenge his father when his father lost a duel, and had killed so many people already. By ignoring the southern code he comes to defeat time because he changes his morals as time progresses unlike most southerners and Bayard

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