The Unvanquished Analysis

The Faulkner We Know and LoveWilliam Faulkner is famous for setting much of his writing in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha (try saying that ten times fast), Mississippi. There's no mention of...

Bayard is the protagonist, because he's the one doing all the telling from his own point of view. The story is about his own, personal coming-of-age, and the different factors—like war, death, an...

You want excitement? You get it with The Unvanquished. Its main characters, Bayard and Ringo, are always getting themselves into trouble. Much like an episode of I Love Lucy, but with less chocolat...

Bayard's telling the story with the benefit of years between him and the events, in the grand ole tradition of the Rooster from Robin Hood. That means that he's got some perspective. He's not tryin...

On the one hand, Faulkner's style is pretty straightforward. You get your good old subject-predicate stuff without too many pesky clauses to trip you up. Check out these examples: "Then Louvinia ca...

"Unvanquished" means not conquered or defeated; the whole novel is about the defeated Southerners during and after the Civil War. So what's Faulkner up to, calling it The Unvanquished?Well, even th...

The novel ends with a weird mix of climactic showdown and hint of romance, with Bayard returning home after facing down Benjamin Redmond, finding that Dru is gone, and smelling the verbena flower s...

Faulkner is not famous for being an easy read, but The Unvanquished is not the hardest of his novels to slog through. That doesn't make it simple, though: the Southern dialect, both from white and...

Toy SoldiersThe novel starts out innocently enough, with Bayard and Ringo building maps of the battles that are raging around them. They don't think of war as all that scary or dangerous—they're...

After the Civil War has ruined all the main characters' lives and the Yankee soldiers have burned down their home and stolen their possessions (including some slaves), Granny, Bayard, and Ringo h...

From the opening of the novel, when Bayard and Ringo make their map of Vicksburg, to Granny's death at the hands of Grumby, we get to our point of no return. Bayard, Ringo, and Uncle Buck have no...

The Union County Heritage Museum's Faulkner Garden in New Albany, Mississippi, grows the pokeberries Granny uses in the novel to make ink to write letters. (Source) The Unvanquished first saw the...

So there isn't really any graphic getting-it-on in the novel, but there are some innuendos and smooches that we could talk about. Everybody and their mother is worried about what Dru is up to when...

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