Comparing Bayard Sartoris of Faulkners The Unvanquished with the Cavem

Comparing Bayard Sartoris of Faulkners The unconquered with the Caveman of Platos Republic Bayard Sartoris in William Faulkners The Unvanquished is enlightened from an ignorant boy unconcerned with the horrors of war to an intelligent late man who realizes murder is wrong no matter what the circumstances. His transformation is connatural to the cavemans transformation in Platos Republic. Bayard Sartoris journeys through Platos cave and finds truth and goodness at the end of the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Bayard was as ignorant as the caveman. Bayard comprehend only the stories of war, the cannon and the flags and the anonymous yelling.1 He didnt consider the populace death, bloodshed, and disease. His fathers stories of war were just reflections of the reality, shadows on the wall. Bayard paid no attention to the reasons puke the war. Bayard just imagined what it would be like to be normal Pemberton or General Grant. Faulkners diction in the first chapte r is full of descriptive references to shadows and darkness sym roometic to the description of the wall in Platos cave. Plato described the cave and its prisoners in the sideline way Imagine human beings living in an underground, cavelike dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light and as simple as the cave itself Theyve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, suitable to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from taming their heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. in any case behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a upset wall has b... .... 5. Faulkner, 18. 6. Faulkner, 28. 7. Faulkner, 25. 8. Plato, 169. 9. Faulkner, 60-61. 10. Faulkner, 61. 11. Faulkner, 61. 12. Faulkner, 66. 13. Plato, 169. 14. Faulkner, 153. 15. Faulkner, 171. 16. James Hinkle and Robert McCoy, Reading Faulkner The Unvanquished. (Jackson University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 141. 17. Faulkner, 178. 18. Julia Annas, Understanding and the Good Sun, Line, and Cave, In Platos Republic precise Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997), 152-153. 19. Plato, 168. 20. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, in Platos Republic Critical Essays, ed. Richard Kraut (Lanham Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997), 174.