Concepts of Masculinity in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished Essay -- Faulkn

Concepts of Masculinity in Faulkners The UnvanquishedIn The Unvanquished, the reader assumes that the narrator is Bayard Sartoris, a boy born to John Sartoris and his now deceased wife. Bayards gender is not immediately apparent, though remote understanding of southern customs and common boyhood activities encourages one to call back that he is male. First, Ringo is more easily identified as a black boy, and by the age of twelve, black boys and white girls would likely not be permitted such intimate and unsupervised interaction. Second, the boys infatuation with playing war and the chores which are assigned to them suggest that Bayard is probably male. This conclusion is finally justified for the reader when John discovers that the one-year-old lads separated from Miss Rosa. He repeats in frustration, You damn boys (63).Although the opening sentence implies that the narrator is looking back to childhood, the persons exact age cannot be determined. The assigned department indicat es that Bayard and Ringo were approximately the same age, twelve years old at the beginning of the story ...