The Unvanquished is narrated from a point way past all the events it describes. We're digging into the narrator, Bayard's, memory and his version of history. The novel is filled with moments where he compares what he felt at the time with his new, revised, feelings about what happened.
That contrast between past and present, between memory and life-as-it-happens, gives us a little insight as to why the unvanquished are, well, unvanquished. The Southerners in the story have their own version of the war and don't admit defeat, even after the war is long over.
Questions About Memory and the Past
- How old do you think that Bayard is when he narrates the novel? What clues lead you to that conclusion?
- What is the effect of the contrast between past and present in the way that Bayard narrates?
- Do you think that there's something special about the South that makes people hang on so tightly to the pre-war past? What does the novel have to say about that?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.
Bayard's distance from the events of the novel allow him to judge them as well as remember them.
We can't trust Bayard as a narrator because so much time has passed since the war.