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დაუმარცხებლები

William Faulkner,

ზაზა ჭილაძე

3.77 · Rating details · 5,420 ratings · 381 reviews

უილიამ ფოლკნერის შემოქმედებაში ეს ერთ-ერთი შედარებით იოლად საკითხავი რომანი ამერიკის სამოქალაქო ომის დროინდელ სამხრეთში მომხდარ უცნაურ ამბებს მოგვითხრობს იმ გაუტეხავ ადამიანთა შესახებ, ვისაც შეიძლება დანებება კი აიძულო, მაგრამ დამარცხებით მაინც ვერასოდეს დაამარცხებ.

საერთო პერსონაჟებითა და სიუჟეტური ხაზით გამთლიანებული შვიდი მოთხრობის გმირთა უმეტესობის პროტოტიპებად მწერ უილიამ ფოლკნერის შემოქმედებაში ეს ერთ-ერთი შედარებით იოლად საკითხავი რომანი ამერიკის სამოქალაქო ომის დროინდელ სამხრეთში მომხდარ უცნაურ ამბებს მოგვითხრობს იმ გაუტეხავ ადამიანთა შესახებ, ვისაც შეიძლება დანებება კი აიძულო, მაგრამ დამარცხებით მაინც ვერასოდეს დაამარცხებ.

საერთო პერსონაჟებითა და სიუჟეტური ხაზით გამთლიანებული შვიდი მოთხრობის გმირთა უმეტესობის პროტოტიპებად მწერლისავე ოჯახის წევრები იქცნენ: კერძოდ, პოლკოვნიკ ჯონ სარტორისის პორტრეტი თავად ფოლკნერის ცოტა არ იყოს ახირებული, თუმცა პიროვნულად ნამდვილად გამორჩეული დიდი ბაბუის თითქმის შეულამაზებელი ასლია – ძველი ყაიდის სამხრეთელი მემამულის, ვინც თავის დროზე მექსიკაშიც იომა, მერე კონფედერატთა მოხალისე ლაშქარიც შეკრიბა, მკვლელობისთვისაც მოუწია სასამართლოს წინაშე წარდგომა, საკუთარ შტატში რკინიგზაც გაიყვანა, კოლეჯიც დააარსა და, სხვათა შორის, წიგნიც დაწერა, რომელიც მალევე ბესტსელერად იქცა. ...more

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Published 2019 by არტანუჯი (first published 1938)

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Sep 08, 2017 William2 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, us, 20-ce

Ringo is black and Bayard is white in this novel set during the American Civil War (1861-65). We meet the friends when they are both 12. They are busy recreating the Battle of Vicksburg with a heap of wood chips behind the smokehouse of the Sartoris manse. This is near Jefferson, Mississippi, part of Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

The boys view each other as friends. Though they know they were born into a system of master and slave, they have absolutely nothing between themselves oth Ringo is black and Bayard is white in this novel set during the American Civil War (1861-65). We meet the friends when they are both 12. They are busy recreating the Battle of Vicksburg with a heap of wood chips behind the smokehouse of the Sartoris manse. This is near Jefferson, Mississippi, part of Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

The boys view each other as friends. Though they know they were born into a system of master and slave, they have absolutely nothing between themselves other than the knowledge that they are equals, if only to each other. Their friendship becomes the lens through which we observe a horrendous war of brothers against brothers, which is fought in the wings.

The boys were nursed at the same breast, have been together all their lives, share the same bedroom, and are one another’s best wartime consiglieres. Colonel Sartoris, Bayard’s father, the ostensible Master, treats them both like sons and considers Ringo the smarter of the two. Ringo is always the talker while Bayard narrates at some unspecified temporal remove. It’s only when they grow older, though they’re still dedicated to each other, that the grow apart emotionally. By this time they’re 24.

Faulkner’s touch—all but one chapter here was published by Saturday Evening Post in the 1930s—is as light as air. It is all but completely without the mannered highflown vocabulary and rambling, dissociative digressions that marked his bourbon-soaked late writing.

General William Tecumseh Sherman has swept through Jefferson on his March to the Sea, and the Satoris manse is burned. Granny, the widower Colonel’s mother-in-law, then begins a scam of requisitioning mules from the Union Army, using forged army letterhead, which she sells back to other Union army regiments for $50 a head. This as a means of keeping locals, both black and white, with food on the table.

Diverting scenes include Drusilla’s forced marriage to Colonel Satoris, since she had spent a year dressed as a man fighting with his regiment and, naturally, must in that period have surrendered many times to his amorous advances—must in fact be pregnant; any deviation from this presumed narrative being for the many prattling ladies of post-Civil War Jefferson not just hard to believe, but inconceivable.

I had always grouped The Unvanquished in my mind with Faulkner’s later novels, which are not my favorites. But this is really a mid-career work. It was written before The Wild Palms and The Hamlet, which in my view is a masterwork. The prose wobbles once or twice in the last chapter—a foreshadowing of future turgidities—but then the ship rights itself, comes smoothly to its conclusion. It’s a light novel, relatively speaking. A rare item in the Faulkner bibliography.

Be advised: Some may be offended by the racist language here. Faulkner is writing of a time when, with Lincoln just elected, the U.S. was all but torn apart by the slavery issue. Most of the time the n-word is used solely as a descriptor, but sometimes in the pejorative sense. (For the facts see David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies.) Highly recommended. ...more

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May 10, 2015 Diane Barnes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"Ringo said, "And don't yawl worry about Granny. She cide what she want and then she kneel down about ten seconds and tell God what she aim to do and then she git up and do hit. And them that don't like it can git outer the way or git trompled."

There you have two of my favorite characters in Faulkner: Granny, brave, indomitable, pious, stubborn, a strong southern woman to the core. And Ringo, smarter than his master, conniving, loyal, always thinking, always there with what was needed. This tale ...more

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May 11, 2015 Connie G rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, adventure, classic, mississippi, war, war-american-civil

The Unvanquished is a coming-of-age novel set during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Six of the seven stories were individually published in the Saturday Evening Post and Scribners before Faulkner finished it as a novel. The book is narrated by Bayard Sartoris as he looks back on his life on a Mississippi plantation from age 12 to 24.

The young Bayard thinks of war as a great adventure, and he has a "hero worshiping" attitude toward his father, Colonel John Sartoris, who leads a Confed ...more

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May 11, 2015 Mmars rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Even if I struggled with streams of thought or with following the action or with unfamiliarity of Faulkner’s style, there was the ending. Oh, the ending. How important it is to a book and how seldom it can redeem the faults one has had with the book up to that point. But here we follow a boy of twelve from childhood to manhood, true manhood. Until the end we do not know what truly lies in his heart.

This book begs to be read again to gather those clues of Bayard’s coming into his own. To see him ...more

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Dec 09, 2009 Lawyer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015

The Unvanquished: Faulkner's Civil War

The Unvanquished was chosen as a group read by . Special thanks to Co-Moderator Co-Moderator Diane Barnes, "Miss Scarlette," for nominating this novel. "The Trail" continues to explore the works of William Faulkner. It is my hope that we will one day complete all of them.

He was besotted with history, his own and those of people around him. He lived within this history, and the history became him.--Robert Penn Warren, speaking of William Faulknerto Ja

...more

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Apr 14, 2009 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reread, 20th-century-lit, american-literature, american-south, faulkner

I first read The Unvanquished half a century ago, because I had been told that it was the best Faulkner novel to start with. (Actually, it's not a novel at all, but a linked series of short stories with the same characters.) Seeing the Civil War through the eyes of Bayard Sartoris, son of a Southern war hero, and Ringo (short for Marengo), a former family slave who is Bayard's age, was nothing short of brilliant. I loved the book even more the second time around, and I definitely understood it m I first read The Unvanquished half a century ago, because I had been told that it was the best Faulkner novel to start with. (Actually, it's not a novel at all, but a linked series of short stories with the same characters.) Seeing the Civil War through the eyes of Bayard Sartoris, son of a Southern war hero, and Ringo (short for Marengo), a former family slave who is Bayard's age, was nothing short of brilliant. I loved the book even more the second time around, and I definitely understood it more.

In the six stories (and the seventh, "An Odor of Verbena," which serves as a coda), Faulkner memorializes the culture of the Deep South through the horrors of the war and the Reconstruction that followed. That culture included some amazing characters, such as Uncle Buck McCaslin:

There was more to Uncle Buck and [his brother] Buddy than just that. Father said they were ahead of their time; he said they not only possessed, but put into practice, ideas about social relationship that maybe fifty years after they were both dead people would have a name for. These ideas were about land. They believed that land did not belong to people but that people belonged to land and that the earth would permit them to live on and out of it and use it only so long as they behaved and that if they did not behave right, it would shake them off just like a dog getting rid of fleas. [Italics mine]

This would be a major theme in Faulkner's stories and novels in the years to come. (I think particularly of the Snopes family that was to move in on Yoknapatawpha County.) In this book, the example of Grumby's Independents exemplified the McCaslin code. Grumby is a guerrilla who is more into theft, rapine, and murder than he is for the Confederate cause. In the interstices between the withdrawal of the Southern forces and the return of the Yankees after Appomattox, he fattens like a tick until Bayard and Ringo catch up with him.

What draws the boys' revenge is the murder of Bayard's grandmother, Miss Rosa Millard, who is one of Faulkner's most memorable characters. After the Sartoris house has been burned down by the Yankees, she goes after the Yanks for stealing her mules. As a result of a misunderstanding, the Union soldiers give her over a hundred mules. She then sets herself up in business re-selling these mules to the North, and then -- using a clever forgery -- getting the mules back, eliminating the U.S. brand on their haunches, and selling them back yet again. In the process, she partners with the wildly unreliable Ab Snopes; and this is what draws Grumby to her.

After Bayard's father has been gunned down by a former business partner, the father's friends solemnly gather around Bayard

with the unctuous formality which the Southern man shows in the presence of death -- that Roman holiday engendered by mist-born Protestantism grafted onto this land of violent sun, of violent alteration from snow to heat-stroke which has produced a race impervious to both.

How that man can write! I am no Southerner myself, though my heart skips a beat when I see in this and his other books a clarity and a love for the land of his birth. ...more

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Dec 28, 2020 Lorna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: civil-war, american-south, classics, william-faulkner, american-literature

The Unvanquished is a book consisting of seven episodes with the first six episodes published as essays and short stories in The Saturday Evening Post from 1934 through 1936 while he was working on Absalom, Absalom! After its publication, William Faulkner then proposed to Random House that these stories be made into a book about the Civil War. Faulkner subsequently wrote the final chapter "An Odor of Verbena" to complete the series that covered the final years of the Civil War and into the Recon The Unvanquished is a book consisting of seven episodes with the first six episodes published as essays and short stories in The Saturday Evening Post from 1934 through 1936 while he was working on Absalom, Absalom! After its publication, William Faulkner then proposed to Random House that these stories be made into a book about the Civil War. Faulkner subsequently wrote the final chapter "An Odor of Verbena" to complete the series that covered the final years of the Civil War and into the Reconstruction period from 1862 through 1873. This was my favorite episode in the book with its beautiful prose.

It is in these stories that we are introduced to the Sartoris family and several other families of Yoknapatawpha. We begin to see how these characters are shaped by the legacy and mythology of the Civil War. As the book opens Bayard Sartoris and his slave friend Ringo are playing in the dirt on the Sartoris plantation, both about twelve years of age, and inseparable since their birth. It is at this time that Colonel John Sartoris comes home briefly after the defeat in the battle of Vicksburg. This is a coming-of-age story of Bayard's growth from childhood to maturity with all of the moral dilemmas that must be dealt with in the backdrop of the Civil War raging all around them.

One of my favorite quotes is the prayer in the church by Granny Millard, with Bayard and Ringo kneeling beside her at the altar:

"But I did not sin for gain or for greed," Granny said. "I did not sin for revenge; I defy You or anyone to say I did. I sinned first for justice. And after that first time, I sinned for more than justice: I sinned for the sake of food and clothes for Your own creatures who could not help themselves; for children who had given their fathers, for wives who had given their husbands, for old people who had given their sons, to a holy cause, even though You have seen fit to make it a lost cause. What I gained, I shared with them. It is true that I kept some of it back, but I am the best judge of that because I, too, have dependents who may be orphans, too, at this moment for all I know. And if this be sin in Your sight, I take this on my conscience too. Amen." ...more

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May 01, 2015 Hana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-reads, historical-fiction, north-america, 2015-reads, classics

A boy, twelve years old, is growing up the middle of the Civil War--the American one, though in many ways it could be any civil war. Bayard and his best friend Ringo make maps of the battle fields in the rich soil and play soldier on the family plantation. War is an adventure, a Romantic dream of valor and anything other than glorious victory seems impossible.

Bayard’s awakening is at first a thing happening at the animal level, a consciousness that is ancient—the way a dog detects something new A boy, twelve years old, is growing up the middle of the Civil War--the American one, though in many ways it could be any civil war. Bayard and his best friend Ringo make maps of the battle fields in the rich soil and play soldier on the family plantation. War is an adventure, a Romantic dream of valor and anything other than glorious victory seems impossible.

Bayard’s awakening is at first a thing happening at the animal level, a consciousness that is ancient—the way a dog detects something new, alien, and ultimately threatening. When his father comes home from the battlefields Bayard smells something, something that at first he mis-names….

“Then I began to smell it again, like each time he returned, like the day back in the spring when I rode up on the drive standing in one of his stirrups - that odor in his clothes and beard and flesh too which I believed was the smell of powder and glory, the elected victorious but know better now: know now to have been only the will to endure, a sardonic and even humorous declining of self-delusion which is not even kin to that optimism which believes that that which is about to happen to us can possibly be the worst which we can suffer.”

The sentence structure is often as tortured as the war-ravaged land; the dialect is thick, at times impenetrable. I was totally lost more than once. Everything happens in impressionistic flashes--sharp, quick, intensely felt, not fully understood—it is quite wonderful though difficult to follow.

"…all of a sudden he was just kind of hanging there against the lighted doorway like he had been cut out of tin in the act of running and was inside the cabin and the door shut black again almost before we knew what we had seen."

Still, it is worth persevering for moments like this one—where Ringo and Bayard encounter the vast, onward-rushing masses of slaves, taking to the roads, heading for the Union lines and the hope of freedom:

"It was as if Ringo felt it too and that the railroad, the rushing locomotive which he hoped to see symbolised it — the motion, the impulse to move which had already seethed to a head among his people, darker than themselves, reasonless, following and seeking a delusion, a dream, a bright shape which they could not know since there was nothing in their heritage, nothing in the memory even of the old men to tell the others, 'This is what we will find'; he nor they could not have known what it was yet it was there - one of those impulses inexplicable yet invincible which appear among races of people at intervals and drive them to pick up and leave all security and familiarity of earth and home and start out, they dont know where, empty handed, blind to everything but a hope and a doom."

In the book’s final chapters Bayard faces his father, the man he once hero-worshiped, and sees the "spurious forensic air of lawyers and the intolerant eyes which in the last two years had acquired that transparent film ...which the eyes of carnivorous animals have…which I have seen before on the eyes of men who have killed too much, who have killed so much that never again as long as they live will they ever be alone."

At the close, Bayard must choose between old codes of honor and manliness and a very different kind of courage.

Content rating PG: The scenes of war were not particularly graphic, but the incessant use of the word ‘nigger’ grated on my nerves and others might have a similar reaction. It’s part of the background of the times, though, and probably gives an accurate sense of the way people spoke and thought.
...more

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Apr 15, 2015 Sue rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: my-own-books-2015, fiction, read-2015, american-southern, faulkner

Having read Flags in the Dust last year made this a special read along with the OTSLT group now. To see the very early years of Bayard Sartoris with his father and Grandmother, the skirmishes with Yankee troops, as well as Granny's clever hoodwinking of same to support those dependent on her during those very hard times has been exciting. Faulkner's vision of these people and their land is so consistent as to be amazing. To see the forebears of the Snopes and others adds to enjoyment of other bo ...more

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Sep 14, 2013 Lee Thompson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A fun and strangely dark novel from Faulkner. I like when he allowed himself do some deadpan comedy.

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May 17, 2015 Camie rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is a group of stories told by Bayard Sartoris a 14-15 year old boy in Mississippi about his family's plight during the Civil war. An interesting cast of characters; his Father Colonel John Sartoris, Granny Rosa , who steals and resells mules to the Calvary , his cousin Drusilla, who rides in disguise with the soldiers, and his best friend , the recently freed slave Ringo ( who has the books best lines ) That these chapters were submitted by Faulkner to the Saturday Evening Post as serial re ...more

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Jul 08, 2014 Kirk Smith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: southern-literature, classics, strong-women

Easily my favorite Faulkner! There are many more to be read, so I have much learn. This may have been his novel for novices and easy to follow. The violent death of Grumby was "(he didn't scream, he never made a sound) and the pistol both at the same time was level and steady as a rock." I don't know if that sounds like revenge and the death of a scoundrel to you, but I had to go back and search for the violence just to be sure a death transpired. Subtle violence with little or no blood! Compar ...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: miniature, historical-fiction, america-fuck-yeah

All the stories are good, mostly previously published in The Saturday Evening Post in the late thirties when he was "stirring the pot" making some quick cash while he worked on Absalom.

Each of the intertwined tales concerns two boys, one white and one black, growing up after the trauma of the Civil War. Colonel Sartoris, the fading patriarch, presides over the desiccated landscape and the ruins of Southern gentility. They work well together, complementing each other and keeping the narrative ...more

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Jul 21, 2014 twrctdrv rated it liked it · review of another edition

A Faulkner sentence stretches on and on indefinitely, connected by seemingly purposelessly by numerous ands and semicolons, as if it were attempting to contain everything it possibly could from the scene it describes, both past and future, to the point where almost no action occurs, even when two major characters face each other in an office of law, two pistols drawn; the guns are not shot within the sentence, but rather described as not shot then later remembered to have been shot.

In addition, ...more

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Mar 18, 2017 J.M. Hushour rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If ever there was a novel that could tidily serve as the alien's guide to America right now, this would serve nicely. It's also one of those books that corners you and forces you into liking and loathing most of its characters all at once.
Originally a collection of mildly interlocking short stories about the teenage son of a rogue Confederate officer, Faulkner threw these together into one of his best, most accessible stories. There is so much ambiguity here, moral, political and otherwise that, ...more

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Apr 25, 2015 Jeanette rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

So intrinsic to a time, place, core feeling that my words can't do it justice. Thinking of Granny for awhile before my meager descriptive reaction.

Later.

This work is perfection. The mix of dialect and formal word beauty phenomenal. There is not a nuance unvisited, nor a gut clench obscured.

These, IMHO, are the best bloomed characters in all his masterful and effusive publishing. The boys, John, Granny, Drusila and every character in every full flower of their identity and force. There are at lea ...more

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Jul 21, 2018 Steve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Everyone, Faulkner fans

Shelves: fiction, favorites

This is a great one. I thought I had read this book years back, but I must have only read a few stories in the collection. The Unvanquished is a collection of closely connected short stories that focus on the Sartoris family during and immediately following the Civil War. But calling this "a collection" is a bit misleading. You should not approach this book without first reading it from beginning to end. I don't know what Faulkner was thinking when he wrote these stories without later providing ...more

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Dec 27, 2016 Alan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-lit

The sequel to Sartoris, published a decade later. Great account of Southern women in the rebel army and at home stealing horses from the Yankees. Or maybe it's mules: Faulkner also has a fine short story or novella about horse-traders, Spotted Horses.
Read this half a century ago, so I shall avoid spoilers by having forgotten most of it. Doesn't seem to be on my shelf anymore, either. Time seems to eat books, which are his* enemy and contradiction.

*Father T ...more

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Aug 09, 2018 Samir Rawas Sarayji rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nobel-laureat, american-lit, fiction

Faulkner at his most accessible. A collection of 7 inter-related stories about the Satoris family in The South during the Civil War. Slavery, racism, Yankees and all. The stories started out strong and exciting but gradually dwindled as the book progressed and finally picked up towards the end. I enjoyed the adventure and seeing how Bayard Satoris and slave friend Ringo grew up to be very different men. Yet the commonness and reality of the south are never lost on them. That aspect I consider wo ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Morgan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed, fiction, novels, war, southern-gothic

Kind of a good book if you want a chill afternoon in the summer. I found this a quick read, but I didn't have much to do today. This book is set in the Civil War and is about the Sartoris in his famous Yoknapatawpha County. Although, this isn't my favorite Faulkner book, I liked the characters like Granny. I liked having read a few Faulkner books now I can see he reuses names from other books. I like how most of his books connect with other books he wrote. ...more

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Sep 25, 2008 Chuck rated it liked it · review of another edition

Still making my mind up about this one; in many ways, I like this novel as much if not more than I liked much of the Faulkner that I've read. It's unified in that there was only one point of view character, Bayard Sartoris, as opposed to the multiple narrators (sometimes as many as fifteen) that are common in Faulkner's works. It also has a compact period of time, about ten years in Bayard's life, from the early 1860s to the 1870s, from when he was a young boy in the Civil War until he is a law Still making my mind up about this one; in many ways, I like this novel as much if not more than I liked much of the Faulkner that I've read. It's unified in that there was only one point of view character, Bayard Sartoris, as opposed to the multiple narrators (sometimes as many as fifteen) that are common in Faulkner's works. It also has a compact period of time, about ten years in Bayard's life, from the early 1860s to the 1870s, from when he was a young boy in the Civil War until he is a law student at the University of Mississippi.

The novel also captures much of what was despicable and admirable about the South. Slavery is not sugar coated--Faulkner flat-out believed slavery was wrong--and yet you see the complex relationships that developed between slave and the families who were over them. Particularly interested is the relationship between Bayard and Ringo, a slave who is exactly Bayard's age. Bayard and Ringo have been raised together, nursed at the same breast and sharing the same bed when they were younger. During the Civil War period, it is Ringo who is most responsible for keeping the family safe and together; Bayard declares flatly that Ringo was more intelligent and more capable than he. But by the end of the book, you see the different paths that post-bellum Southern society will push them on; Bayard is clearly the master of the house, Ringo, clearly the servant although still probably the better man.

The Unvanquished also explores the plight of the freed slaves, who were not really wanted or welcome in the North after emancipation, and the starvation and other dangers they faced on the road in a South whose white society feared and did not welcome them. Also, one sees the kindness in the form of the Granny, who does her best to make sure all who are displaced by the war, white or black, are fed and sheltered.

It's a novel that has no clear cut bad guys or good guys, of people trying to find their way in a world that changes so much it is virtually unrecognizable. It also has some of the strongest and most interesting women characters I've read in Faulkner, particularly Granny and pistol-packing, street fighting Aunt Dru, who gives lie to those who say that all of Faulkner's women are whores or mothers. Dru is neither, and it is she, more than any other character in the book , who chafes against the strictures society places on her.

Okay, now that I've thought it through, I really like the book a lot. The fewer stars than I might otherwise give are becuase it's a Faulkner--most other authors, this wouold be a four or five star tome. But since it's Faulkner and I know he wrote at least five books better than this one, I give it three stars and a strong recommendation. ...more

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Jun 27, 2015 Billy O'Callaghan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world, nobel-prize

It's been a few years since I read Faulkner, but I picked this one up last week and it was just a complete joy. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it.
This, basically, is the story of the coming-of-age of Bayard Sartoris, over a period of about a decade, from the age of eleven or twelve through into manhood. Told in seven chapters, each written originally as a short story and all but the final part published in magazines prior to being reworked into a novel form, it stands as a depict It's been a few years since I read Faulkner, but I picked this one up last week and it was just a complete joy. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it.
This, basically, is the story of the coming-of-age of Bayard Sartoris, over a period of about a decade, from the age of eleven or twelve through into manhood. Told in seven chapters, each written originally as a short story and all but the final part published in magazines prior to being reworked into a novel form, it stands as a depiction of life lived through and in the aftermath of Civil War. The Sartoris family run a plantation in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, but Bayard's father, John, is off fighting on the Confederate side, and the household is run by the elegant and ferocious Granny Millard. Bayard gets to run wild, accompanied by a slave boy, Ringo, and their adventures include shooting at a Yankee cavalryman, helping to run a long and very lucrative con on the entire northern army, and hunting down a monstrous killer.
All that's glorious about Faulkner is here: the rich descriptions (you feel the heat and the dust; you smell the grass, the fires and the stench of the horses); the sweeping, magnificently balanced sentences; the understanding of human nature in all its joys and horrors; the sense of place, and history; the musicality and authenticity of the dialogue; and the characters – everyone from Ringo and Granny, through to the likes of Ab Snopes, cousin Drusilla and Uncle Buck McCaslin – so subtly drawn that it's impossible to believe that they might not actually have existed.
But this is a short novel, too, with a relatively clean and cohesive plot, and having been stitched together from seven short stories (and in no way the worse for that) it is eminently readable, and accessible. What's more, the ending is sublime.
This is the book that's often cited as the ideal entry point into his work for the uninitiated, and I can only second that. While it probably ranks as a lesser work, in that it doesn't display quite the daring or the virtuosity of novels like 'The Sound and the Fury', 'As I Lay Dying' or 'Light in August', it still stands as a beautiful temptation, because it makes thoughts of his other books shine, and puts you firmly on the hook for what is still to come.
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Mar 23, 2014 Cateline rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The Unvanquished by William Faulkner

This novel ties in with the rest of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County stories. This one follows the Sartoris family through the American Civil War, and part of Reconstruction. The action is seen through the youngest son, Bayard, who is about 15 years old in the beginning and through a good segment of the action.

Faulkner created both larger than life characters and the everyday, mundane details that make a story great. His lyrical and musical style flows with di ...more

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Feb 20, 2009 Mrs. Ward rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Just shoot me! I get it, I get it. William Faulkner is "one of the greats" a "lead in the canon of American History." However, I cannot bring myself to appreciate his work. The only reason I made it all the way through the book was because I was forced to read it for a literature course several years ago. I didn't see the "art" in it. I just felt tortured. ...more

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Sep 04, 2020 P rated it really liked it · review of another edition

... the immitigable chasm between all life and all print - that those who can, do, those who cannot and suffer enough because they can't, write about it.

A comparatively minor Faulkner for its short story format, but I'm a sucker for bildungsromane and Southern psychology. ...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Al Gellene rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have to admit that I feel terribly ambiguous about Faulkner. I am in thrall with the writing. It flows and eddies in a mesmerizing way. His characters are like forces of nature, impelled by who and what they are to unavoidable conflict and, for many of them, doom. That the narrative sometimes borders on impenetrable, not so much in The Unvanquished, as much as in Absalom, Absalom and his many of his other novels, forces the reader to fixate on the prose, delve deeply into the dark and unfathom I have to admit that I feel terribly ambiguous about Faulkner. I am in thrall with the writing. It flows and eddies in a mesmerizing way. His characters are like forces of nature, impelled by who and what they are to unavoidable conflict and, for many of them, doom. That the narrative sometimes borders on impenetrable, not so much in The Unvanquished, as much as in Absalom, Absalom and his many of his other novels, forces the reader to fixate on the prose, delve deeply into the dark and unfathomable aspects of human nature and mirrors the sometimes inscrutability of life.

On the other hand, as one reviewer as said, his is a perpetuator of the Southern Myth: that if the South had just been left alone, life would have continued in its wondrous, harmonious pace until the end of time. His treatment of the issues of race make my skin prickle. With notable exceptions, slaves and former slaves are depicted as a dark force of the natural world. In The Unvanquished, they trudge dreamlike to the ‘Jordon’ River, seeking freedom without knowing its nature and oblivious to the practicalities of existence. Historically, the freed slaves did converge, in masses, upon the Union lines. And probably had as little knowledge about the realities of the world outside their plantations as we do of outer space. But one cannot forget that that ‘mass’ consisted of an assembly of unique individuals with the hopes and needs of people anywhere.

The saving grace seems to me is the understanding that Faulkner’s concerns are of an artistic nature. And everyone in Faulkner’s novels seems to be representative of an idea or concept useful as a device to create a world where the forces of the characters’ inner natures collide and conflict with the mores and ethics of their times.

The Vanquished is a compelling story of the voyage of one white youth in Civil War Mississippi from innocence to knowledge. At the beginning of the novel, at 14 years of age, Bayard is blithely unaware of the outside world. Bayard’s father, Colonel Sartoris, is off fighting Yankees. Ringo, one of his father’s slaves, the same age as he, is more like a brother, or even a shadow or echo of himself, than a slave. Neither Bayard nor Ringo seem to have any consciousness of his nature as an owned chattel. When word comes that the Yankees are freeing all the slaves, Ringo and Bayard have a hard time understanding just what this means.

Events propel the youths, along with Bayard’s grandmother, Rosie Millard, Colonel Sartoris’ mother in law, who has charge of them and the plantation in his absence, into direct involvement in the chaos of a land conquered and yet not conquered. The theft of some mules and a trunk full of the family’s silver and other valuables, offends the grandmother’s sense of justice and propriety. This triggers a series of events which, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, thrusts Ringo and Bayard into premature manhood.

Love, hate, honor, justice and illicit passion are the dominating themes of the novel. Villains receive their just reward. The good are left to struggle on, bound by iron clad codes. At the end of the novel, which takes place some ten years after the end of the war, Bayard faces a moment of truth in which he comes fully into himself and which finally defines his character.

In the novel, the Civil War is treated as a war to preserve a way of life rather than a war about slavery, an issue hotly debated by historians to this day. Its battles occur off stage as do the deaths of its brave heroes. Everyone’s life is turned topsy turvey, even to the blurring of roles of gender. It is a compelling adventure story which I finished in a few days, having been captivated by the drama and the strong and interesting characters. The stage is at times sketchy. Whatever happened to all the other slaves on the Sartoris plantation before the coming of the Yankees is never fully explained. Neither is the tactical and strategic flow of Yankee and Confederate forces across the landscape, although the depredations of the Union forces, intent on economic punishment of the rebels, burning and looting everything of value, is made clear. Although the Yankees are depicted mostly as bumbling and gullible, to Faulkner’s credit, there is honor found even there.

The book is a great introduction to Faulkner and a rewarding read. It is not the best of his novels, but probably the most accessible. Despite my misgivings, I am a great fan of Faulkner. They just don’t make writers like this anymore.
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Sep 22, 2010 Paul Clayton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I finally finished The Unvanquished a week or so ago. Been so busy with my own writing and publishing, actually, mostly publishing, cause that’s what I am now, for all intents and purposes, ‘self-published.’ So, even a little one hundred and ninety page novel took me weeks. (Oh, did I say I have a job and a commute?) Anyway, The Unvanquished — I really enjoyed it! I’m lovin’ my current regimen of interspersing my readings of modern novels, literary and genre, with works from the literary canon.
I finally finished The Unvanquished a week or so ago. Been so busy with my own writing and publishing, actually, mostly publishing, cause that’s what I am now, for all intents and purposes, ‘self-published.’ So, even a little one hundred and ninety page novel took me weeks. (Oh, did I say I have a job and a commute?) Anyway, The Unvanquished — I really enjoyed it! I’m lovin’ my current regimen of interspersing my readings of modern novels, literary and genre, with works from the literary canon. The Unvanquished wasn’t one of Faulkner’s most lauded works, but I think it may be his most approachable for new (to him) readers. It follows the story of young Bayard Sartoris and his friend and shadow, Ringo, as the army of the North burns its way through 1860’s Mississippi.

One of the amazing things about Faulkner’s writing is his ability to infuse readers with so much drama and information without them being aware of it, much like we are unaware of the air we breathe, or fish the water they swim in. What intrigues me still is what Faulkner left out of that book. Bayard tells us that he and Ringo were born the same month, fed at the same breast, (likely a black, slave wet-nurse), that they both called Bayard’s grandmother ‘Granny,’ but, more intriguingly, that both boys, white and black (half brothers, perhaps?), lived in the Sartoris home, slept in the same bed, and were loved by the elder Sartoris and Granny. In fact, Bayard acknowledges that Ringo was probably smarter than himself, and seems to feel badly that, that being fact, Ringo, because of his dark skin color, had to step aside on certain occasions and let Bayard take the lead.

The name that rode in and out of the campfire of my mind as I read this novel was Mark Twain. I don’t know much about Faulkner, but he must have studied Twain and his books. And like all good students, he goes beyond the teacher. And just as it is in Twain’s greatest work, slavery and the South are brought vividly to life in this tale, with real down-home Southern vernacular and, I have to mention, lots of use of the n-word. The book is set in the Civil War South, so the n-word is as ubiquitous there as it is, sadly, in many contemporary rap songs. It did bother me a little initially, but that’s the way that world was, and you cannot accurately recreate that world by sugar-coating its prejudices.

Probably not too many other writers could pull a reader along through three-quarter, and even full-page, blocks of narrative prose, without them throwing the book down and rushing back to their laptops to click through link after link like ten year olds popping Skittles into their mouths. Faulkner manages that, at least with this, albeit older, but tech-savvy reader. I don’t know how well today’s young adults would do with a book of this level. Probably only those blessed with a private school education could handle it, and that’s with a good teacher as a guide (this insight courtesy of seeing the movie, Waiting for Superman, a sad documentary about the state of our public schools).

Don’t want to give too much away, but after peeking at the little bio of Faulkner in the front of the book, Faulkner is probably recounting stories he heard as a child from folks who lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction (parents, grandparents), at least as young, attentive children. It has that ‘being there’ quality. Anyway, don’t want to keep you any longer either. So I say, send Big Publishing a message and forgo that new, over-priced vampire bodice-rip(off) mashup! Instead, get a cheap copy of The Unvanquished, find a comfortable quiet corner somewhere, turn off the cell, and be transported.
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May 23, 2012 Printable Tire added it · review of another edition

Like a lot of people, the only Faulkner I've read was the Sound and the Fury in college, and though I have to grudgingly admit it was pretty good, like a lot of people I thought it was stupidly hard to read. So with a little trepidation I read The Unvanquished, which is a lot easier to read, though still I think it's no sign of literary merit when a reader can't figure out easily how characters are related to one another or what certain pronouns are referring to for long stretches of time.

The Un ...more

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Apr 16, 2008 Charlaralotte rated it liked it · review of another edition

Apparently I had to read this book for a college course on Southern Women Writers. I had no recollection of it, or of why we had to read Faulkner's version of Southern womanhood. Probably because I read it in 2 hours at Lamont Library during a forced reading frenzy & retained zippo.

Anyhow, WOW! I wish I could give this book to everyone who thinks "Gone with the Wind" is the best thing besides Botox.
As an examination of what life was really like in the South during and after the Civil War, you c ...more

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Jun 03, 2009 Christy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

After giving up on "Absalom! Absalom!", I turned to this in the set of four Faulkner novels that I had checked out from the library. I've been a fan of Faulkner's since high school when I did a thesis on "The Sound and the Fury"...I respect his technical superiority immensely, but at this point in my life slogging through A!A! was simply not working out.

"The Unvanquished" is really a whole other kettle of fish. It's a classic example of Southern Gothic writing and I think it should be read in co ...more

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About William Faulkner

William Faulkner

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William Cuthbert Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. One of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, his reputation is based mostly on his novels, novellas, and short stories. He was also a published poet and an occasional screenwriter.

The majority of his works are set in his native state of Mississippi. Though his work was published as early ...more