William Faulkner 3 Essay, Research Paper

Faulkner was known for his realistic novels and true-to-life short stores. From 1926 to 1962, Faulkner published nineteen novels and more than seventy- five short stories. Most of the novels and a good many of the short stories are about the people living in a fictional county in the northern regions of Mississippi called Yoknapatawpha County. The main town in the county is a small town called Jefferson (Volpe 13). “Yoknapatawpha County covers an area of 2,400 square acres and contains, according to Faulkner’s count, 6,298 whites and 9,313 Negroes”(Volpe 15). In all of Faulkner’s works about the people of this county, he actually identifies around six hundred of them by name. Faulkner uses character and character personalities multiple times in several novels and short stories. For example, “the Negro companion of the aristocratic white boy is named Ringo in The Unvanquished and Alex Sanders in Intruder in the Dust, but their characters are almost identical”(Volpe 16-17).

“Faulkner is too complex a writer to explain in terms of a single idea, much of his work can be understood by recognizing that at the center of the fiction is one crucial experience: the transition of a boy to manhood”(Volpe 17). Faulkner often unified his stories by writing about the same families (Volpe 30). His novels and short stories are supposed to not only tell a story, but also convey messages about the society of that time period (Volpe 31-32). Faulkner’s greatness as an artist is due to a great extent to what might be called his stereoscopic vision, his ability to deal with the specific and the universal simultaneously, to make the real symbolic without sacrificing reality. He is unquestionably the greatest of the American regional writers. His fiction is as Southern as bourbon whiskey (Volpe 28). Faulkner used the people of Yoknapatawpha County to play roles in several of his writings. His southern upbringing also played a major role in his work. Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” is a sad story because it very clearly shows the classical struggle between the privileged and the underprivileged classes in the southern culture. Time after time emotions of despair resurface from the characters in the story. The main characters have a poor economic status, and very little hope of improving their condition. Being a sharecropper, Ab Snopes and his family have to share half or two-thirds of the harvest with the landowner, and also out of their share they have to pay for the necessities of life. As a result of this status, Ab and his family know from the start what the future will hold. They will continue to work hard for the landlord, while barely surviving themselves. There is no hope for advancement throughout the story. Sarty, his brother and the twin sisters have no access to education, and they must spend their time working in the fields or at home performing family duties. The Snopes family manages to survive and find work. However, the work offers little benefit other than the chance for survival. They are always moving from place to place due to seasons and crop rotation. In order to secure work, they have to reserve land with different landowners. Ab’s emotional instability is a predominant factor that contributes to his weird behavior throughout the story (Mack 1798-1812) The family has moved a dozen times from farm to farm, and at times they are forced to leave their agreement with the landlord due to Ab’s unacceptable behavior. His irrational behavior is transformed into a rebellion. Ab smears the landowner’s carpet with horse manure and then sues the landowner for charging him too much for the damage. These acts symbolize frustration with the system and a radical approach to rebel against it. Knowing that punishment could not be avoided when committing such acts, Ab’s actions take on a more dramatic meaning. It is as if he is trying to convey a message. He is aware of the economic injustice and he feels must respond. He chooses to respond even at the risk of him and his family being prosecuted. Ab’s constant rebellion is displayed by a rough, sour character and is brought out when he burns down his landlord’s barn. He feels despair and loss, and inflicts damage to whomever he happens to be working for at the time. Although the story centers on the feelings and thoughts of Ab’s youngest son Sarty, the economic situation of Sarty’s entire family plays a vital role in justifying his father’s behavior (Mack 1798-1812) Sarty’s main problem is his loyalty to his family. This directly collides with his disappointment and suppressed dislike of his own father. He tends to hide his feelings by denying the facts. The story’s emotional turns are clearly defined by Sarty’s thoughts and Ab’s actions. Sarty’s dilemma and Ab’s frustrations continually grab the reader, serving up a series of emotions. Given the circumstances of the story, is Ab’s barn burning justified? Should Sarty tell the landlord that Ab was responsible for burning down the barn? Burning a barn or any other act of vandalism is definitely not condoned (Mack 1798-1812). Faulkner’s use of the townspeople in Yoknapatawpha County is also emphasized in A Rose for Emily. This is another short story of Faulkner’s in which the death of Miss Emily brings together the entire population of Jefferson. Jefferson is the main town in Faulkner’s fictional county. Faulkner uses a great deal of symbolism in this story. Miss Emily was raised in the period before the Civil War in the south. An unnamed narrator, who seems to be the voice of the whole town, calls attention to key moments in her life, including the death of her father and her brief relationship with a man from the north named Homer Barron. The story basically addresses the symbolic changes in the south after the Civil War. Miss Emily’s house symbolizes neglect in the new times in the town of Jefferson. Beginning with Miss Emily Grierson’s funeral, throughout the story Faulkner foreshadows the ending and suspenseful events in Miss Emily’s life. The continuing symbolism and Faulkner’s descriptions of the decaying house coincide with Miss Emily’s physical and emotional decay. As an example, the house is in an area of town that was once a prominent neighborhood that has now deteriorated. Originally the house was a big white house with large balconies, and the yard was decorated with beautiful flowers. But now the people of the town think that the house has become an embarrassment to the town. This happened through a lack of attention. The house has deteriorated from a beautiful estate to an ugly shack. Similarly, Miss Emily has also become an eyesore in various ways. She is described as a “fallen monument” to suggest her former beauty and her later ugliness (Faulkner 119-130). Her lover for a brief time, Homer, described himself as a man who cannot be tied down and is always on the move. This leaves Miss Emily in a terrible position. As the story comes to a close, Emily seems to prove Homer wrong. Miss Emily poisons poor old Homer. After killing him she puts him in one of the upstairs bedrooms. When Miss Emily dies the townspeople, who were anxious to see what was in miss Emily’s house found a real nice surprise when they went snooping around in her house. They found the dead body of poor Homer lying on the bed in one of the bedrooms. The town ladies continue to show sympathy towards Emily, although she never hears of it verbally. She is well aware of the distant whispers that begin when her presence is near. Some of the major contributing factors to Emily’s behavior are gossip and whisper. These may have been the causes for her behavior. The theme of Faulkner’s story is simple. Miss Emily cannot accept the fact that times are changing and society is growing and changing with the times. As times change, she isolates herself from the rest of the town, using her butler to run her errands so she does not have to talk much. The setting of the story is very important because it defines Miss Emily’s tight grasp on the old southern ways and unchanging behavior. Just as the house seems to reject progress and updating, so does Miss Emily, until both of them become decaying symbols of their dying generation. Through descriptions of the house and the resemblance of the descriptions of Miss Emily, “A Rose for Emily” emphasizes that beauty and elegance can become distorted through negligence and a lack of love and affection. As the house deteriorates for forty years until it becomes ugly and unappealing, Miss Emily’s physical appearance and emotional well-being decays in the same way (Faulkner 119-130). The southern culture in all of Faulkner’s works bring out a comedic aspect in the stories, and the continuous usage of the same characters in various stories allows for Faulkner to enter twine his stories to where they are all dealing with the people of Yoknapatawpha County in the northern regions of Mississippi. “In Faulkner’s world men and women are measured by the breadth of their compassion or the quality of their endurance. Although there are villains, few wholly negative characters appear, and the Heroes tend to be larger than life