Without his brother, who is continually described as the better of the twins (one wonders if the idealization process has already begun for this newly dead Sartoris), Young Bayard flounders about Jefferson with a death wish. He feels that his life has no meaning and the loss of his brother makes living unbearable. He takes to tearing about the county in a racing car, trying to exorcise his demons. Because he feels no connection with the people around him, he shows no respect for them: he picks fights, runs Negroes off the road, gets arrested after an all night drinking binge, and finally gives his Grandfather a heart attack because of his reckless driving; then, unable to face the consequences of his recklessness, he runs away and eventually kills himself flying an experimental plane he knows to be unsafe. Unlike Colonel Sartoris' apparent suicidal tendencies, however, his self-destructive tendencies are not seen as noble, instead they are seen as selfish and pathetic by both the other characters in the novel and the reader; the result of a young man bored because of the loss of his brother. In truth, he is no different than the Colonel. They both have similar driven and violent personalities; it is the society around them that has changed. The Colonel becomes suicidal when he realizes that his South is dying. Bayard is born with the same tendencies as the Colonel, but his South is already dead. He did not manage to die during the war, and he doesn't fit in his society anymore; hence, he becomes lethally self-destructive.