The Sutpen and Bon gravestones seem particularly important to the narrative for a number of reasons. Judith’s enigmatic character is explored through the erection of some of the stones, particularly Charles Bon’s as she uses proceeds from the sale of the family store to pay for his grave. Remaining funds from this sale are used for Charles Etienne’s gravestone and Judith’s own, for which Clytie must have “scrimped and saved the money to finish paying out the stone” (Faulkner 170). Judith uses the inheritance Sutpen endeavored to keep from Bon to bury him on the very property he was denied, which must signify more than the defeat of Sutpen’s design.

The inscription on Judith’s tombstone is also telling: “Suffered the Indignities and Travails of this World for 42 Years, 4 Months, 9 Days, and went to Rest at Last February 12, 1884. Pause, Mortal; Remember Vanity and Folly and Beware” (Faulkner 171). It calls attention to the inevitability of death and warns against “vanity,” the unprofitable employment of time, and “folly,” or foolishness. This inscription could easily be read as an indictment of Sutpen’s behavior. Judith’s interactions with Charles Etienne signal a much different approach to the illegitimate Sutpen line than that of her father, to whom she had been so closely linked. In fact, the only family that surrounds Judith is the products of Sutpen’s relationships with black women.

It is difficult not to juxtapose Mr. Compson’s narration of Judith giving his mother Bon’s letter and the inscription on Judith’s tombstone:
“then all of a sudden it’s all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while they don’t even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn’t matter” (Faulkner 101).
This section calls attention to the untenable nature of storytelling and as a result, the unreliability of the narrators in the novel, none of whom were present for the any of the events they narrate. Mr. Compson’s use of the word “doubtless” when describing Judith’s actions after receiving Bon’s letter hints at how uncertain his narration actually is (Faulkner 100). All that is left of Judith is in fact a block of stone with scratches. Her tombstone is perhaps the most reliable remaining indicator of her character if we can believe Quentin’s “imagining” of the “careful printed directions Judith must have roused herself (from delirium possibly) to write down for Clytie when she knew that she was going to die” (Faulkner 170). Still, the narrators in the novel, and the reader, all struggle to identify just what the “scratches were trying to tell.”

The tombstone narrative also introduces Charles Etienne Saint-Valery Bon and miscegenation is further explored. Judith is once again willing to trade property ownership for the benefit of a member of her part-black family. Judith seems to not only be expressing the evolution of her character but also the changes the south faces after the war: “I believed that there were things which still mattered just because they had mattered once. But I was wrong. Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to be alive” (Faulkner 168). Sutpen’s efforts prove futile as his “illegitimate” children and descendants become entangled with his white children, which seems to foreshadow the inevitable mixing of races in the south. It is difficult to decipher what “mattered once” to Judith, or what the narrator believes mattered once to her. The narrator/Judith could be referring to class status, family, race, southern values in general or all of these things simultaneously. Perhaps because Judith has witnessed the loss of class status, family and the diminishment of southern values, Charles Etienne’s racial purity is no longer important.

Lastly, Mr. Compson comments on the beautiful lies women lead when referencing the tombstone’s Judith has arranged seems important to include:
“They lead beautiful lives—women. Lives not only divorced from, but irrevocably excommunicated from, all reality. That’s why although their deaths, the instant of dissolution, are of no importance to them since they have a courage and fortitude in the face of pain and annihilation… yet to them their funerals and graves, the little puny affirmations of spurious immortality set above their slumber, are of incalculable importance” ( Faulkner 156).

Mr. Compson describes women to be “divorced from” and “irrevocably excommunicated from all reality” while he narrates a story that, while based in reality, is for the most part imagined. Furthermore, while Judith and Clytie use much needed funds for gravestones, which certainly seems frivolous, Sutpen purchases gravestones for himself and his wife from Italy, which follow him and his troops until he is able to return home with them. Much like the use of the word “doubtless,” this passage seems to say exactly what it doesn’t mean. The “indignities and travails” Judith suffers throughout her life, as a result of the actions of her rather, enable her to overcome his “vanity and folly,” illustrating that it is perhaps the men, Sutpen and the novel’s narrators included, who are “excommunicated from all reality.”