Once Faulkner began writing Flags in the Dust, the early version of Sartoris, links to nearly all of the characters of what comprise Yoknapatawpha's fourteen novels and many short stories was in place. In Sartoris, the action is set shortly after World War I, although the Bayard Sartoris of The Unvanquished and the novel's Jenny Du Pre appear in the novel.

While The Unvanquished shows the beginning of the myths of the South, Sartoris shows the effect of those myths on the descendants of Colonel John Sartoris.

The courage with a purpose of the colonel is reduced to foolhardy daring in his descendants a few generations later, as characters are attracted to yet fear death, as the young Bayard does. The railroad which was a means of recouping family fortunes in The Unvanquished and seems heroic in itself in the stories of the Great Locomotive Chase...