William Faulkner's story “Barn Burning” presents us with this story showing ideas that follow the same pattern as those in Marxism. The idea Karl Marx presented is that what social class you are born into is the one in which you are influenced to become...
Psychological criticism offers a unique lens through which we can interpret literary works, authors, and the minds of readers. In this essay, we will delve into a psychological criticism of Emily Grierson, the central character in “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. Made-to-order essay...
William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom identifies the fundamental problem of Southern history as a wretched combination of two predominant qualities: the shameful and abhorrent nature of the past, and the haunting and mythical presence of such a past in the hearts and minds of the descendents...
What is it to be ostracised? “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Fleur” by Louise Erdrich, are tales that encompass the idea of social exclusion. The characters in these stories sit upon a precipice of social isolation, destitute to be ostracised by their...
When love is apparent in a relationship, individuals are willing to make sacrifices for their loved ones. While no relationship is perfect, some are inherently grounded in an unwillingness to make sacrifices for each other; in this regard, American Literature is a potent resource from...
“He looked like a phantom, a spirit, strayed out of its own world, and lost,” (114) can easily be regarded as one of the most impactful lines in William Faulkner’s Light in August. A very prominent theme throughout the novel is identity, which the quote...
In William Faulkner’s short story, “Barn Burning,” a possible theme that could be interpreted is how strong loyalty to one’s family can be, no matter the details of the dynamics, but also the moral dilemma of how stressing that loyalty is to uphold. The short...
Introduction In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” first-person narration is used to focus on Emily Grierson, a recluse who has captured the attention of the townspeople and dictates the conversation, gossip, and action of the city. Faulkner employs a plethora of literary traits to...
Although most men and women recognize how traditional gender roles dictate their actions in hopes of being accepted into society, very few can claim that they have been completely exiled from their community because they appear too “masculine” or vice-versa. In Light in August, the...
Faulkner’s ‘Barn Burning’ is a character-driven story, as what moves it forward is Sarty’s internal growth as a character. We see him begin as a young child with strong trust in his beloved father and end as a young boy beginning to think for himself...
“Noah’s children had inherited the flood although they had not been there to see the deluge” (Go Down, Moses 276). This sense of doom follows through five of the major novels written by William Faulkner set in his mythic Yoknapatawpha County. Doom settles upon the...
William Faulkner came from an American South background and in his time, wrote a number of novels that featured themes of patriarchal power and struggles caused by race. Joe Christmas plays an unusual role in Light in August – in him, Faulkner creates a central...
Karl Zender explains there is an obvious realism in Faulkner’s story but the modernist twist throughout is the symbolism of the irony which causes the reader to depart from realism to some deeper meaning. Thus, leaving the reader to decide what deeper meaning to connect...
At the heart of Absalom, Absalom is the violence of class division, national division, and racial division; particularly the violence between white Southerners and black slaves as a substitute for the violence poor whites would like to commit against wealthy whites. Thomas Sutpen’s barn fights...
Introduction As one of the great stylists of the twentieth century, William Faulkner explores the South’s haunting past throughout several novels. His novel Light in August is one of many set in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional place in Mississippi, where he explores the fallout and...
According to William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” mimics this quote by providing a glimpse into the events of a blood line that is so seemingly doomed by its history that its present and future generations are...
“On or about December 1910 human nature changed. All human relations shifted…and when human relations change there is at the same time change in religion, politics, and literature”; thus, Modernism was born (Woolf qtd in Galens 175). Modernism was a movement that pursued a truthful...
In “The Book of the Grosteques,” the first story of his novel Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson introduces the concept of the “grotesque.” This concept sets up the following stories in the novel, and can also be seen in other modernist texts following the publication of...
Introduction William Faulkner stands out as one of the remarkable authors in contemporary society, with a focus on short stories as well as novels. Some of his pieces that almost every English student appreciates are “A Rose for Emily” as well as “Barn Burning.” The...
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner is a maze; it is a maze with innumerable detours and dead ends, pathways that lead to a finale and obstacles to be overcome on the way there. One such obstacle is the triangular relationship between Henry Sutpen, Judith Sutpen,...
William Faulkner uses his short stories to tell a tale of corruption, especially through the acceptance of white culture, and “A Justice” is no different. He writes his protagonist, Doom, as growing increasingly evil at the same time as his Eurocentric growth, irrevocably connecting the...
According to Thomas C. Foster, setting plays a significant role in the structure of a narrative. Its utility is evident through the ways authors use it to lay the foundation that establishes the environment that their characters occupy. In “A Rose for Emily” by William...
Who says what – and how and when – may be the most compelling way William Faulkner constructs his characters in Absalom, Absalom! Storytelling is not just an act in which the saga of the Sutpens is recounted, revised, and even recreated; it is a...
Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 explores the idea of a person living a tedious, restrictive life while trying to fool himself into believing in a sense of happiness. Similarly, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask,” proposes the idea that people are wearing masks...
In a certain Nobel Prize acceptance speech delivered in Stockholm in 1950, William Faulkner famously declines to accept the end of man. Elaborating, Faulkner goes on to promise that “man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” This faith, he insists, has its roots in...
“On December 10, 1950 , [William Faulkner] delivered his [Nobel Prize] acceptance speech to the academy in a voice so low and rapid that few could make out what he was saying, but when his words were published in the newspaper the following day, [the...
In William Faulkner’s novel Light in August, Joe Christmas is often depicted to be an almost Christ-like figure. There are many thematic similarities between the struggles Christmas goes through during his lifetime, and the struggles braved by Jesus as described by the Bible. One noticeable...
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner describes the peculiar life of Miss Emily, an unmarried and allegedly wealthy woman who is the talk of the town of Jefferson. Faulkner’s use of particular literary devices can be observed throughout the entire story. He carefully uses...
William Cuthbert Falkner started his life on September 25, 1897, in Mississippi. He was born into a prominent family, who owned banks and a railroad. Mammy Callie, his childhood nurse, was a major contributor to his works. The stories she would tell him stayed with...
Introduction The entire novel “As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner is filled with great heroic efforts but at the same time seems absurd at times. Anse, the father of the family and the laziest person, should have been the provider, but unfortunately, he was...
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”
Date
September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962
Activity
William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. One of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, his reputation is based mostly on his novels, novellas, and short stories.
Works
William Faulkner wrote numerous novels, screenplays, poems, and short stories. Today he is best remembered for his novels The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936).
Themes
Faulkner's writings often deal with the search for meaning, racism, the connection between past and present, and with social and moral burdens. Much of his writing was drawn from the history of the South and of his family.
Style
William Faulkner is associated with the Modernist and Southern gothic literary movements. The majority of his novels are set in the postbellum American South. His most technically sophisticated works — including The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930) — make use of Modernist writing techniques such as unreliable narrators and stream-of-consciousness narration.
Legacy
By the time of his death Faulkner had clearly emerged not just as the major American novelist of his generation but as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, unmatched for his extraordinary structural and stylistic resourcefulness, for the range and depth of his characterization and social notation, and for his persistence and success in exploring fundamental human issues in intensely localized terms.
Quotes
“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.”
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
