Bayard Sartoris, a young man whose childhood was plagued by the atrocities of the Civil War, shapes his morals as time progresses. In the earlier stories, such as “Ambuscade”, Bayard is on the verge of becoming a man yet still acts quite childish. Upon reaching the final story, An “Odor in Verbena”, he is a different person than before. In The Unvanquished, Bayard Sartoris’s defining moment is when he bravely chooses to confront Redmond unarmed, showing that he has learned much about honor and courage from his father and matured as a person.
When Bayard learns of his father’s passing, he is presented with a choice. He must either approach the Colonel’s killed, Ben Redmond, unarmed or he must carry a firearm with him. It was expected of him
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When Bayard learned that his grandmother had been murdered, he sought to kill Grumby. When Bayard met him, he killed him in a grisly manner to demonstrate his ability to avenge his family. He was only fifteen at the time, compared to when he confronted Redmond at the age of twenty four. Now that Bayard was approaching manhood, he would have to “take the law into his own hands.” The law was presumably asking of him to kill Redmond, yet he does not. After Granny’s passing, Bayard improves as a person and has newfound knowledge in law what’s expected of him. He takes what he knows and makes a very courageous choice that ultimately proves that Bayard is a man now.
Near the beginning of the story, Bayard is a cowardly young boy who is afraid of his grandmother’s punishment and acts in childish ways. After Bayard takes up law school, and gets a little older, his views and actions change for the better. He is also shaped by his father’s request for him to be “trained in the law [so he] can hold [his] own.” His father, who didn’t make the best of choices, was still a great factor in helping Bayard achieve greatness. Bayard took what he learned from law school and what he learned from his father and improved his manner of decision making and his bravery to a great