Bayard Character Analysis

Bayard defines himself in two different ways at two different times in the book. Early on he defines himself by responding to the murder of Granny; seeking revenge, and killing Grumby. It wasn't satisfying and it left him with an emptiness of the soul. He wasn't sure what life was all about because he wasn't acting from love or for himself; he was acting from hatred. When Bayard is faced with a most similar situation to that of the murder of Granny, he made a decision, which was the polar opposite of what he did before. Redmond, a man antagonized perpetually by Bayard’s dad, John Sartoris, had grown so tired of the constant aggravation that he ends up shooting Sartoris. Everyone told Bayard to avenge his father’s death, as they did with Granny,
If you try to find out what is moving you to do things, and you can answer that question honestly then you will always be pointed in the direction of good, and you will always choose the good. He believed that reason of the mind is what actually drives you to action. Frankfurt takes a different approach and says that wholehearted love is what will move you to get it right, not just pure reason. He says that good can only be grown from yourself, and that you cannot be an extension of someone else’s soul. Even if someone else wants the exact same thing for you as you want for yourself, unless you are being driven to action by yourself, and your wholehearted love then you are not a fully self determining being. Hume also disagrees with Socrates. He believed that “reason ought only to be the slave of the passions”. His combat model is very similar to Frankfurt’s because he says that our nature, dispositions, and habits filter the desire that is presented to us. Frankfurt and Hume both presume you actualize yourself through acting on loving impulses because acting based on hate leads to the emptiness that Bayard experiences when he killed Grumby. Plato’s constitution model says that reason not only filters our choices but it has the last say in whether it drives us to action or not. If a person only moves
To make sense of what was going through Bayard’s mind during the time of his father’s death we need to start at the most basic level, which is Socrates’ character model. Bayard, by disobeying the people around him, and not killing Redmond, was placing his cares in the state of his soul rather than being concerned with upholding his reputation in his community. He knew that to maintain his status of man of the house, and to continue to be respected he would have had to kill Redmond, but he valued his soul, or the “good stuff”, over honors or reputation, the “bad stuff”. But you need to dig deeper than that to get a full understanding of the remarkability of his actions. That is where the philosophy of Frankfurt and Hume come in. Bayard was not just moved by reason telling him this or that, he was moved by Frankfurt’s wholehearted love and Hume’s passions. Humans are creatures of emotion not creatures of reason, so to believe that what Bayard did was strictly because of reason is erroneous. That does not mean that reason did not have any say whatsoever, but it did not have the last word in his decision