SartorissInLA

In this novel Faulkner re-tells the story about "Colonel Sartoris" killing two "carpetbaggers" who were organizing emancipated slaves to vote. He first told it in Flags in the Dust, where the men he killed were not given names. This version of the story acknowledges that Sartoris' act makes him "a town hero"; here, however, they are identified as Calvin Burden I and II, and the event is told from the point of view of Joanna Burden, granddaughter and half-sister of the murdered men. She describes them as "an old onearmed man and a boy who had never even cast his first vote" (249), which certainly diminishes the Colonel's "heroism."