Sartoris

Sartoris by William Faulkner, published in 1929, is a Southern Gothic novel set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, depicting the decline of the aristocratic Sartoris family in the post-World War I era. The story centers on young Bayard Sartoris, a haunted war veteran grieving his twin brother’s death, whose reckless behavior—marked by dangerous driving and self-destructive impulses—mirrors the family’s entrapment in the shadow of their Civil War hero patriarch, Colonel John Sartoris. Through vivid evocations of the decaying Southern landscape and interwoven narratives of past and present, the novel explores themes of legacy, loss, honor, and the inescapable pull of tradition on a fading aristocracy.