StrothersInAMB

This is the first of eight stories Faulkner wrote about the Sartoris family during and just after the Civil War; seven of these were revised and republished in The Unvanquished. All are narrated by Bayard Sartoris, who spends the war at home with his Granny and the family of slaves that his father brought with him from Carolina some years earlier. That family is represented across three generations: Joby and Louvinia, who remain intensely loyal to their white masters throughout the stories; their son Loosh, who is married to Philadelphy, and who from the first page of this first story is impatient for his emancipation; Ringo, whose relationship to the others is never made clear in the magazine versions of the stories, and who is Bayard's personal slave and constant companion. Over the course of the stories Ringo's character becomes increasingly complex. In this first story he and Bayard are equally loyal to the cause of the Confederacy. Both are equally protected behind the skirts of the white plantation mistress, the woman they both call "Granny" (7).