The Unvanquished is a series of linked short stories that compose a novel; it is in the tradition of such works as Joyce's Dubliners (1914) and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919; see separate entry), both of which give portraits of places and people that effectively examine societies and cultures. Where Joyce can use his stories to analyze the effects of religion and colonialism on his Dubliners, Faulkner uses his stories to create a sense of what the South was like when it began to lose the Civil War, when it was defeated, and what it was like in the decade after the war's end. Panoramic scenes of the South, usually gleaned from the travel of the Sartorises, give a good idea of the privation of the war with houses burned and white people living in the slave quarters, but sometimes the details gathered from story to story do powerful work...