Johnny Sartoris

In other Faulkner works, Johnny Sartoris is identified as Bayard Sartoris' twin brother, and much is made of the repetition of names among generations of that family's men. In this story, however, what is important about Johnny Sartoris is his status as one of the physically dead pilots of the Great War, who preceded the psychically dead pilots of the title. He has a bitter history of losing his romantic interests to Spoomer, which stings him especially because he is the qualified pilot of the two. He is "humorless" (515), sardonic, and self-confident, all of which appear in his offer to teach Spoomer how to fly just to "run him out of the sky in four minutes. I will run him so far into the ground he will have to stand on his head to swallow" (521).