Old Colonel Sartoris

The first "Colonel Sartoris" to be mentioned in this novel is John, a leading figure in Yoknapatawpha County, and one of the major figures in the Yoknapatawpha fictions (5) - although with one exception (148) everywhere else in the novel "Colonel Sartoris" refers to John's son, Bayard II on the larger Sartoris family tree - though in the novel the name Bayard refers exclusively to Bayard III. (It's not clear why Faulkner creates this potential source of confusion.) In any case, the next time John Sartoris is mentioned, he appears at "old Colonel Sartoris, the real colonel" (43), and for the sake of clarity that - Old Colonel Sartoris - is the name we give him here. Colonel Sartoris in this novel provides the occasion for the original connection between the Sartoris and Snopes families: according to this account, Flem's father Ab Snopes served "in Colonel Sartoris's cavalry command in 1864" (5). Decades later, after the Old Colonel's son founded the Sartoris bank, he hired a Snopes - Byron - as a sentimental tribute of sorts to his father and the other "heroes of our gallant lost irrevocable unreconstructible debacle" (44).