Likewise, Faulkner is very careful here in setting the racial qualities against the older concept of revenge. Section 1. and took Father and Drusilla to the minister herself and saw that they were married." Drusilla, eyes blazing, leads him into the parlor where Colonel Sartoris's body is laid out; he avoids looking at first but greets his Aunt Jenny. A few years later, the colonel partnered with a man named Ben Redmond to build a railroad through the county. Faulkner plays with language to a far greater extent: in the other sections the narration mimics the sound of Bayard's thoughts, whether as a child or an adult, but in this chapter it becomes stylized and poetic, closer to the standard Faulknerian narrative voice. 1 of 5. Thomas McHaney suggests that Faulkner's use of verbena in this story is an echo of the "odor like verbena" in Ernest Hemingway's story about courage, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," which appeared in Cosmopolitan while Faulkner was working on "An Odor of Verbena. Colonel Sartoris never concedes defeat; he merely concedes the need for a new strategy to preserve, among other things, racial inequality.Thus, with this view and with the fact that the colonel has decided to train Bayard in law, we are further prepared for the fact that Bayard will decide In section three, there are multiple reactions to Redmond's act of violence: (1) The most powerful, of course, is Drusilla's; she wants vengeance elevated to a sense of nobility. Finally, after a bloody Civil War and a horrifying Reconstruction, Bayard's actions suggest that the South will enter into an era of law and order. "During the forty-mile ride back, Bayard envisions what he will see upon arriving at the Sartoris mansion: Colonel Sartoris will be laid out in sartorial splendor, Drusilla will be there with a sprig of verbena in her hair, and she will be holding, proffering to him, two identical, loaded, dueling pistols. Aunt Jenny Du Pre (the colonel's sister) has come to live with them, and it is she who plants the flower garden from which Drusilla gathers her verbena to wear because, to her, "verbena was the only scent you could smell above the smell of horses and courage." Yet he stands there as Redmond fires twice and then walks out of the office, passes between George Wyatt and the throng of men gathered outside, and goes to the train station. Herded by Mrs. Habersham, Drusilla and Colonel Sartoris were indeed married just hours after the election was finished. Even his son Bayard rejects most of his father's values. “An Odor of Verbena” (1938) William Faulkner (1897-1962) I . (Remember that as a woman, she is denied this right.) One could also maintain that Bayard knows that Colonel Sartoris, in his obsession with power, pushed Redmond beyond all bounds of endurance and that, ultimately, any man as threatened as Redmond was with humiliation would eventually strike back. He bids a still- hysterical Drusilla goodbye; his aunt gently cautions him not to try to be a hero, telling him she would still respect him even if he hid in the stable. (Being friends with the colonel is not easy, we learn later.) That night, Bayard went to his father's office to tell him. He went to the man who had shot his father, unarmed, and instead of killing the man, by that gesture he drove the man out of town, and although that had violated Drusilla's traditions of an eye for an eye, she — the sprig of verbena meant that she realized that that took courage too and maybe more moral courage than to have drawn blood, or to have taken another step in a endless feud of an eye for an eye.When he was asked why Drusilla then left the Sartoris home, Faulkner responded that Drusilla thought that even though it "was a brave thing . The last thing Bayard recalls is his father telling him that he planned to confront Redmond but that, tired of killing men, he would do so unarmed.Back in the present, Bayard arrives home to find George Wyatt, a member of his father's old troop, and several other ex-soldiers standing watch at the house. "An Odor of Verbena" Where is Bayard when he receives the news of his father's death? Then in a moment of silent communication, something is sensed — unspoken — between Bayard and George Wyatt; Wyatt, like Drusilla, knows that Bayard is When Bayard enters Redmond's office, he notes a pistol lying in front of Redmond on the top of his desk. Tell him I be waiting in the kitchen."
Likewise, Faulkner is very careful here in setting the racial qualities against the older concept of revenge. Section 1. and took Father and Drusilla to the minister herself and saw that they were married." Drusilla, eyes blazing, leads him into the parlor where Colonel Sartoris's body is laid out; he avoids looking at first but greets his Aunt Jenny. A few years later, the colonel partnered with a man named Ben Redmond to build a railroad through the county. Faulkner plays with language to a far greater extent: in the other sections the narration mimics the sound of Bayard's thoughts, whether as a child or an adult, but in this chapter it becomes stylized and poetic, closer to the standard Faulknerian narrative voice. 1 of 5. Thomas McHaney suggests that Faulkner's use of verbena in this story is an echo of the "odor like verbena" in Ernest Hemingway's story about courage, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," which appeared in Cosmopolitan while Faulkner was working on "An Odor of Verbena. Colonel Sartoris never concedes defeat; he merely concedes the need for a new strategy to preserve, among other things, racial inequality.Thus, with this view and with the fact that the colonel has decided to train Bayard in law, we are further prepared for the fact that Bayard will decide In section three, there are multiple reactions to Redmond's act of violence: (1) The most powerful, of course, is Drusilla's; she wants vengeance elevated to a sense of nobility. Finally, after a bloody Civil War and a horrifying Reconstruction, Bayard's actions suggest that the South will enter into an era of law and order. "During the forty-mile ride back, Bayard envisions what he will see upon arriving at the Sartoris mansion: Colonel Sartoris will be laid out in sartorial splendor, Drusilla will be there with a sprig of verbena in her hair, and she will be holding, proffering to him, two identical, loaded, dueling pistols. Aunt Jenny Du Pre (the colonel's sister) has come to live with them, and it is she who plants the flower garden from which Drusilla gathers her verbena to wear because, to her, "verbena was the only scent you could smell above the smell of horses and courage." Yet he stands there as Redmond fires twice and then walks out of the office, passes between George Wyatt and the throng of men gathered outside, and goes to the train station. Herded by Mrs. Habersham, Drusilla and Colonel Sartoris were indeed married just hours after the election was finished. Even his son Bayard rejects most of his father's values. “An Odor of Verbena” (1938) William Faulkner (1897-1962) I . (Remember that as a woman, she is denied this right.) One could also maintain that Bayard knows that Colonel Sartoris, in his obsession with power, pushed Redmond beyond all bounds of endurance and that, ultimately, any man as threatened as Redmond was with humiliation would eventually strike back. He bids a still- hysterical Drusilla goodbye; his aunt gently cautions him not to try to be a hero, telling him she would still respect him even if he hid in the stable. (Being friends with the colonel is not easy, we learn later.) That night, Bayard went to his father's office to tell him. He went to the man who had shot his father, unarmed, and instead of killing the man, by that gesture he drove the man out of town, and although that had violated Drusilla's traditions of an eye for an eye, she — the sprig of verbena meant that she realized that that took courage too and maybe more moral courage than to have drawn blood, or to have taken another step in a endless feud of an eye for an eye.When he was asked why Drusilla then left the Sartoris home, Faulkner responded that Drusilla thought that even though it "was a brave thing . The last thing Bayard recalls is his father telling him that he planned to confront Redmond but that, tired of killing men, he would do so unarmed.Back in the present, Bayard arrives home to find George Wyatt, a member of his father's old troop, and several other ex-soldiers standing watch at the house. "An Odor of Verbena" Where is Bayard when he receives the news of his father's death? Then in a moment of silent communication, something is sensed — unspoken — between Bayard and George Wyatt; Wyatt, like Drusilla, knows that Bayard is When Bayard enters Redmond's office, he notes a pistol lying in front of Redmond on the top of his desk. Tell him I be waiting in the kitchen."