SartorissInBB

"Colonel Sartoris" in this short story are the given names of its protagonist, Colonel Sartoris (Sarty) Snopes. What that incongruous name suggests to the Justice trying Sarty's father as a barn burner is actually ennobling: "I reckon anybody named for Colonel Sartoris in this country can't help but tell the truth" (4). That is a good reminder of the status "Sartoris" has in the collective Yoknapatawpha mind. What Faulkner intended by linking the aristocratic Sartorises whom he celebrated with the poor white Snopeses whom, as a quasi-species, he execrated, is a good question to ponder. Sarty himself certainly stands out from the other Snopeses in this story as a thoroughly honest and decent human being.