Bayard In Faulkner's The Odor Of Verbena

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In "The Odor of Verbena" Bayard has to figure out whether he is truly a man or not, "At least this will be my chance to find out if I am what I think I am or if I just hope; if I am going to do what I have taught myself is right or if I am just going to wish I were" (Faulkner 215). After John Sartoris died, Bayard questioned himself if he was going to do the right thing to become a man and the main Sartoris or if he will do what society tells him to do. This would Mahida 2 be determined through if he killed Redmond or not. Previously, Bayard had made many wrong decisions with his moral crisis. The first came to when he and Ringo shot and killed the horse. They tried to shoot the man riding the horse who was a Union soldier, but missed. The shooting was fairly easy for Bayard and Ringo because it was just an animal they killed. The second moral crisis was killing Grumby. This was considered an honorary action because it was an act of…show more content…
They ended up nailing Grumby's body to a door and his hand to Granny's grave which was viewed to be a form of human brutality by torturing Grumby's dead body. The third and final of his crisis was the most difficult because he would come face to face with his enemy and either shoot him and for the rest of his life remember he killed a man, or he could not knowing people may no longer respect him too much. In the end, Bayard chose to confront Redmond and not shoot, "We didn’t speak. It was as if we both knew what the passage of words would be and the futility of it... 'Draw then. I will allow you to draw'... I walked toward him, toward the pistol in the rocklike hand, I heard no bullet. (248) By confronting Redmond, Bayard made a crucial decision to his life. The Redmond dilemma was a self test for

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