StrothersInVEN

Ringo is removed almost entirely from the context of his family as his character continues to outgrow the conventional boundaries for slaves and other blacks in both Faulkner's fiction and cultural stereotypes. During his and Bayard's pursuit of the men responsible for killing Granny at the end of "The Unvanquished," Ringo helps Uncle Buck tie Ab Snopes - a Snopes but still a white man - to a tree, and it is Ringo who whips him (109). Ringo then helps Bayard overpower another white man, Grumby, by stabbing him; together the two young men, in a scene that the narrative spares the reader, complete their revenge by mutilating Grumby's corpse. Of course, the dynamics here are subtle - Ringo is a slave taking violent revenge on two white men, but in a way that still shows him serving the interests of the white family that owns him. And interestingly, while Bayard and Ringo act in concert throughout the tale, in the story's final lines Uncle Buck proclaims how their actions prove that Bayard "is John Sartoris' boy" (117) - an ending that erases Ringo's role.