Flags in the Dust Characters
The main characters in Flags in the Dust are young Bayard Sartoris, old Bayard Sartoris, Virginia Sartoris Du Pre, and Narcissa Benbow.
- Young Bayard Sartoris is the novel’s protagonist. Haunted by the loss of his twin and his wartime service, he is given to reckless, self-destructive impulses.
- Old Bayard Sartoris is young Bayard’s grandfather. He represents a connection to the family’s plantation-era past.
- Virginia Sartoris Du Pre is old Bayard’s aunt. She is liberal in sharing her outmoded views.
- Narcissa Benbow is a family friend of the Sartorises who marries young Bayard, despite her opposing personality.
Characters
Colonel John Sartoris
John Sartoris I was the patriarch of the Sartoris clan who came to Jefferson, Mississippi, and built a plantation there in the years before the Civil War. He was made a colonel after raising a local Confederate regiment to fight the Union but was turned on by his troops and soon stripped of his rank for what Faulkner suggests was his tyrannic command. Returning home to Jefferson, he pursued a successful business career, building the town railroad and holding public office as a die-hard opponent of Reconstruction-era reforms. Colonel John was killed by a “carpetbagger” named Redlaw from Missouri, who had come to town to run for office on the Republican ticket to advance federal policy.
The Colonel’s bloody legacy is a specter in the novel, both literally and figuratively. He sets the mold for the other Sartoris characters central to the story, including his sister Aunt Jenny and his son “old Bayard,” who all embody the same bygone aristocratic, white-supremacist values and the mythology of the faded glory of the lost cause of the Confederacy. In a literal sense, Colonel John’s ghost regularly appears to his former slave Simon, who shares the family’s keen nostalgia for the old days and for whom the Colonel represents a gentleman of the highest order. Colonel John is not to be confused with old Bayard, whom Simon addresses as “Cunnel” in John I’s honor as the head of the household.
Old Bayard (Bayard Sartoris II)
Otherwise known as “old” Bayard, Bayard Sartoris II was the last patriarch of the Sartoris clan, the founder of the town bank, and one of the town’s most distinguished citizens. He is in his sixties and deaf, raised on the family plantation by enslaved servants and a mother about whom little is mentioned. After Bayard I, old Bayard’s father, was killed in the Civil War in an act of daredevil foolishness, recently war-widowed Aunt Jenny came down to Mississippi from the Sartoris ancestral home in the Carolinas to live with the family.
Bayard II is introduced at the beginning of the novel when he receives Colonel John’s old tobacco pipe, an heirloom entrusted to Old Man Falls to pass on. This symbolic act formally establishes old Bayard as the keeper of the Sartoris family traditions, which are embodied by his locked chest of mementos and the family death ledger he scrupulously maintains.
For as much vainglory and violence as the family represents, it is not surprising that old Bayard is connected to so much premature death, having lost his father and then his only son, John II, who died of yellow fever after being wounded in the Spanish–American War. He detests change, and his character serves to contrast with the unavoidable advance of modernity, symbolized by the ubiquitous, newfangled automobiles he associates with impoverishment and degradation—the same qualities a contemporary reader might associate with the brutal system he himself embodies. His rigorous commitment to tradition is best illustrated by the cocktail hour he observes with Aunt Jenny, described as an almost sacred ritual. In a twist of fate, he dies an unnatural death without valor when he has a heart attack in the passenger seat during his one and only car ride with young Bayard.
Young Bayard (Bayard Sartoris III)
Known as “young” Bayard, Bayard Sartoris III is introduced in the novel as he returns home from service as a fighter pilot in World War I, where his twin brother John died the previous year during a dogfight with a German pilot. Young Bayard is restless, self-destructive, and violent, continually described by Faulkner in bestial...
(This entire section contains 1368 words.)
Unlock this Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
terms. While his brave military service is in alignment with the Sartoris family tradition, it also clashes with it, since fighting on the American side means submitting to federal authority, an indignity that would be anathema to the older generations.
In this way, young Bayard is the last in the line of Sartoris knights errant and is a classic example of a lost generation figure, who were common in American fiction in the 1920s. Blaming himself for his brother’s death and embittered by the recent loss of his young wife and baby, young Bayard does little at home except drink excessively, hunt listlessly, and torment his family and their servants with his new racing car. His behavior and attitude foreshadow his death as one befitting his namesake great-grandfather, a cavalry Confederate cavalry officer killed during a petty raid to steal coffee from a Union general.
Young Bayard’s own father, John II, old Bayard’s son, died when young Bayard was very young, so his grandfather and Aunt Jenny are his parental surrogates. As the last of the Bayards, he represents the modern generation so detested by his grandfather and cares little for tradition and honor. Faulkner suggests that while his twin brother, John, was a model human, universally admired and respected for his kindness, young Bayard is a selfish rebel and troublemaker indifferent to the status of his family name.
Virginia Sartoris Du Pre
Virginia Sartoris Du Pre, known in the Sartoris family as “Aunt Jenny,” is Colonel John’s sister, old Bayard’s aunt, and young Bayard’s great-aunt. She came to live at her brother’s Mississippi plantation to help raise her brother's children after her husband and brother were killed in the Civil War. She is depicted as a Southern matriarch of a type common in Faulkner’s work, as well as that of later generations of Southern writers, such as Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, and Harper Lee. She is, much like her brother and nephew, an ardent segregationist clinging to a precarious place in a crumbing social order.
Narcissa Benbow
Narcissa is a family friend of the Sartorises. She is in her twenties and comes from an affluent background. Her personality, which is defined by “constancy” and “serenity,” is shown to be in contrast with that of the reckless young Bayard. Despite the immense differences in character, Narcissa and young Bayard are drawn together, eventually falling into a romantic relationship and a marriage. Narcissa appears to overlook the concerning aspects of her experience, such as young Bayard’s often violent handling of her. And in the novel’s concluding passages, she overlooks Aunt Jenny’s warnings about her son, Benbow Sartoris, feeling instead that Benbow represents a fresh start for the troubled family.
Horace Benbow
Horace Benbow and his sister, Narcissa, are family friends of the Sartorises. Horace is a feckless lawyer given to poetic and philosophical digressions. He returns home from World War I around the same time as young Bayard after non-combat service with the YMCA. Horace and young Bayard are both members of the lost generation, but they are presented as foils. Unlike violent, swashbuckling younger Sartoris, Benbow is an effete and fatuous romantic and home-wrecker. In this way, he is no less restless and self-destructive than his counterpart. He ends up marrying Belle after her divorce and moves into an expensive new house in a fashionable new suburb. When the book ends, he is miserable and broke from supporting his social-climbing wife’s lavish lifestyle.
Simon Strother
Simon was born enslaved on the Sartoris plantation just before the Civil War and stayed on after emancipation to serve as a groomsman, driver, and butler. He is several years younger than old Bayard, for whom he performs his duties dotingly and with unyielding loyalty. Faulkner suggests that the Sartorises are the closest family Simon has, and in his devotion to them, he is equally steadfast in upholding their value system and social order, even though it is based on a racist disregard for the dignity and humanity of Black Americans.
Simon reveres Colonel John and has regular conversations with the Colonel’s ghost that are tinged with nostalgia and longing. Simon mishandles funds entrusted to him by his church and is murdered under sordid and mysterious circumstances soon after the deaths of old Bayard and young Bayard. Before Simon dies, he has the joy of seeing baby Benbow born, in whom he is hopeful that the Sartoris name will live on with new glory.
