Sartoris

The book narrates the trajectory of a decadent family, with a slave-owning past, living in the shadow of Colonel John Sartoris, who died in the Civil War. Aunt Jenny, the colonel's younger sister, the true guardian of the past and also of the narrative, is the woman who, with her reiterated and reinvented memory, weaves together the tragedies of the (past and future) generations of the family's men – Old Bayard, the colonel's son, and his two twin grandsons, also named John and Bayard. Aunt Jenny always curses the family, but tells its story so many times that she transforms it into myth. In the book, the great events in the lives of the solitary, troubled, and heroic protagonists are only suggested, and what unfolds are their consequences.