The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Elsewhere in Faulkner's texts, Aunt Jenny is the maternal head of the present-day Sartoris family, and even in this story she emerges as a no-nonsense, rather imperious presence whom Johnny might seek to manipulate in his letters but obviously cannot ignore. In one letter, she orders him home from the "Yankee" war (531), indicating that for her the only war that matters was the Civil War - which is not over yet.

In other Faulkner texts, this character is either the head of the prominent Sartoris family or in line to take up that position. In this story, he is only mentioned in passing as Johnny Sartoris' grandfather, who is "getting old" in 1918 (531).

The narrator imagines boys selling newspapers announcing England's entry into World War I as Spoomer's uncle predicts that the war "will be the making of the army" (513).

Spoomer's uncle is the "corps commander, the K.G." (513). "K.G." stands for Knight of the Order of the Garter, the most prestigious of Britain's chivalric honors. He is thus clearly a member of the upper class, and our narrator thinks him a snob who predicts that the outbreak of war "will be the making of the army" (513). The narrator seems to attribute Spoomer's rank to nepotism.

In other Faulkner works, Johnny Sartoris is identified as Bayard Sartoris' twin brother, and much is made of the repetition of names among generations of that family's men. In this story, however, what is important about Johnny Sartoris is his status as one of the physically dead pilots of the Great War, who preceded the psychically dead pilots of the title. He has a bitter history of losing his romantic interests to Spoomer, which stings him especially because he is the qualified pilot of the two.

According to the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots," Spoomer is a snob from a family of snobs. He has some factual basis for this: Spoomer doesn't want his dog to eat the trash behind the enlisted men's mess hall: "You mustn't eat that stuff," he tells the dog, "That's for soldiers" (519). Spoomer also uses his rank to impress women; he has taken one from Sartoris before the story begins. He also pulls rank on Sartoris to keep him from seeing 'Toinette in Amiens by giving him "some duty not in his province at all and which would keep him on the aerodrome for the afternoon" (519).

Ffollansbye, a British officer who also appears in Faulkner's non-Yoknapatawpha short story "Thrift," is the source of much of what the narrator knows and tells us about Sartoris and Spoomer. He doesn't seem to be a malicious gossip so much as a sardonic one. For example, commenting on Spoomer's Mons Star, an honor awarded for service in France or Belgium, he says, "it was one decoration you had to be on hand to get" (513), implying that Spoomer's uncle is responsible for his other honors.

At the end of the War, the assignment of the narrator is to read letters going from the front back home to make sure they don't reveal any military information. He seems to have real sympathy for both the soldiers, who write "transparent and honorable lies . . . in the script and spelling of schoolboys," and the "mothers and sweethearts" they are writing to (512).

These are the women who married the aviators who survived the First World War and the children who were born to them in "suburban homes almost paid out" (512).

This former World War I R.A.F. pilot is described by the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" as "ack emma, warrant officer pilot, captain and M.C. in turn" (512). This list seems to summarize his rise through the ranks during the War, though not every term is clear. "Ack emma" was a common abbreviation during the War among British troops for "a.m." - morning - though what it means in reference to a young pilot is obscure.