My Research Paper On William Faulkner

[BamaLefty]

The Use of Place, Family, and Time in the Works of William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner is more than a famous Mississippi writer. He is a legendary figure, not only for Southern writers, but for writers throughout the world. Faulkner drew the scenes and characters for his novels and short stories from observations made during his childhood and adult life in his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi. During what is generally considered his period of greatest artistic achievement, a span of forty years, from 1929 to 1942, Faulkner accomplished more than most writers accomplish in a lifetime of writing (Minter 2). Because of his dedication to his writing and the acceptance of his ideas by readers from around the world, Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. Additionally, Faulkner received two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction: one in January 1955 for his novel, The Fable, and another given posthumously, in June 1962, for his novel, The Reivers (Minter 321). He is truly a writer who utilizes unique writing techniques to explain the life of the Southern man to his readers. Many critics believe that his fictional world, vivid characters and time usage provide the reader with a personal experience that is unparalleled by any other writer. William Faulkner, an incomparable writer from the Deep South, deftly connects place, family and time as shown in Absalom, Absalom!, “Barn Burning,” and The Sound and The Fury.
Perhaps the most unique creation to evolve from Faulkner’s writings is the region of Yoknapatawpha County, an imaginary area in Mississippi with a colorful history and a richly varied population. Transforming his “postage stamp of native soil” into a fictional setting allowed Faulkner to explore, articulate and challenge “the old verities and truths of the heart” (Millgate, “William Faulkner” 1). Yoknapatawpha County is a microcosm of the South as a whole, and Faulkner’s novels examine the effects of the dissolution of traditional values and authority on all levels of Southern society. “It was invented, fabricated whole, in accordance with the perceived needs of its inventor. It is not a geographical or sociological or even a historical expression but a pure literary creation, not real estate, but a moral landscape” (Millgate, “Faulkner’s Portrayal” 34). Faulkner has said that his imaginary Mississippi County is “a kind of keystone of the universe.” If it were taken away, he went on to say “the universe would collapse” (Fargnoli and Golay 287).
Yoknapatawpha County is the primary setting in many of Faulkner’s works, including
Satoris; The Sound and The Fury; As I Lay Dying; Sanctuary; These 13; Light in August; Doctor Martino and Other Stories; Absalom, Absalom!; The Unvanquished; The Hamlet; Go Down, Moses and Other Stories; Intruder in the Dust; Knight’s Gambit; Collected Stories of William Faulkner; and Requiem for a Nun (Miner 14).
As a writer, Faulkner’s primary concern is to probe his own region, the Deep South. He deliberately draws much of his inspiration from his native Mississippi because that is what he knows best. In a letter to Malcolm Crowley, in 1944, Faulkner writes, “I’m inclined to think that my material, the South, is not very important to me...I just happen to know it and don’t have time in one life to learn another one and write at the same time” (Millgate, “Faulkner’s Portrayal” 32). Critic Malcolm Crowley believes, however, that Faulkner’s choice of setting is a labor of imagination that is unequaled in American literature. He comments that “first, invents a Mississippi County that was life a mythical kingdom, but one that was complete and living in all its details. Second, he made his story of Yoknapatawpha County read as a parable or legend of all the Deep South” (Fargnoli and Golay 256).
The Yoknapatawpha novels demonstrate that “a provincial focus on setting could sharpen an artist’s grasp of permanence” (“William Faulkner, past” 1). The name “Yoknapatawpha” is derived from “two Chickasaw words-“yocona” and “petopha” which means “split land.” The compound word, according to Faulkner, means “water flowing slow through the flatland” (Kerr 1144). The fictional county is presented as being an area of 2,400 square miles; with a population of 15,611 persons. Within the boundaries of the county, “there is the rich delta land of the hunt; there is the sand and brush country; there is Jefferson with its jail, the town square, and the old houses which display decay” (Fargnoli and Golay 256). It is a self-contained world of rich bottom lands, broad cotton fields, eroded hills, and pine barrens. Within the physical limits, the area includes Chickasaw Indians, African Americans, slaves, plantation masters, defeated Confederates, indomitable spinsters, and poor white hill farmers. There are also charlatans, thieves, and rascals who jostle with hard-working folk (Fargnoli and Golay 256).
Within the geography of his fictional county, William Faulkner repeatedly interconnects three major families within the works of Absalom, Absalom!, “Barn Burning,” and The Sound and The Fury. The families of the Sutpens in Absalom, Absalom!, the Snopes in “Barn Burning,” and the Compsons in The Sound and The Fury represent a unique part of the Southern population of Faulkner’s world. Each of the families carry their own burden of guilt, face the harshest of conflicts and struggles, and respond to it in their own way.
Absalom, Absalom! chronicles the rise and fall of the Yoknaptawpha County planter, Thomas Sutpen, “a West Virginian of obscure origins who comes into northern Mississippi in the 1830's to fulfill a grand aristocratic design” (Fargnoli and Golay 1). As a young boy, he is turned away from a prominent home in Jefferson, the county seat, because he was not considered worthy to enter the door. He is determined from this point forward to become “someone.” Faulkner presents Sutpen, a nouveau riche, as a “flawed, corrupt, doomed creator and master of Sutpens Hundred, the plantation he hacks out of the Yoknapatawpha County wilderness in the 1830's” (229). The plantation is located twelve miles from Jefferson (230). Sutpen’s mission is “to create a vast design of wealth, power, and progeny in the form of white, male heirs.” (MWP: William Faulkner 1). Sutpen takes a wife from Haiti, but soon discovers that she has black blood in her veins. He shuns her and their son, Charles Bon. He then takes a “white” wife from a respectable Jefferson family and begins to build his dynasty again. Sutpen’s great design is “not what he wanted to do but what he just had to do, had to do it whether he wanted to or not, because if he did not do it he knew that he could never live with himself for the rest of his life” (Fargnoli and Golay 229). “The irony of Sutpen’s failure lies in the fact that he can not achieve the design precisely because he is unable to exclude such human elements as Charles Bons’ need for his father’s love and recognition (Grant 17). Faulkner demonstrates through the Sutpen family that the urge to possess is the fundamental evil from which other evils spring (17). Sutpen’s need to establish a perfect order in the world, into which he will fit, is in the end, his demise.
Another major family history which Faulkner depicts in his works is the Snopes family. This family represents the epitome of poor white trash in Faulkner’s works. The Snopes family history is first introduced in “Barn Burning” (1939). This is the name Faulkner gives to a “rapacious group of kinsfolk who encroach upon the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, for personal gain. Often referred to as a group of “white misfits,” none of them seem to bear any specific kinship to one another; they were just Snopes, like colonies of rats or termites are just rats and termites” (Fargnoli and Golay 211).
The Snopes family is headed by Abner Snopes. This unscrupulous scavenger is considered to be a barn-burner and horse thief. He is a very vengeful person. He is accused, but not convicted of, burning a plantation owner’s barn while he is renting from him. Because of his lack of any work ethic, he constantly moves his family from town to town, all the while living off the generosity of the townspeople. He seems to take advantage of every gesture of good will that is made toward him and his family, and with each move creates a new enemy. In “Barn Burning,” he purposefully ruins an expensive rug belonging to Major de Spain, the plantation owner, by walking on it with horse manure on his shoes. He is ordered to pay for the rug, and takes revenge by burning de Spain’s barn.

[BamaLefty]

1. Second Half

In his novel, The Sound and The Fury, Faulkner presents the history of the once aristocratic and upstanding Compson family, of Jefferson, Mississippi. Told from four different points of view, the demise of the Compson family occurs over a period of three decades. In the past, the family owned a plot of land called the Compson Mile. Following the Civil War, the father of the Compson clan, Jason Richard Compson, sold most of his land to pay for his daughter Caddy’s wedding and his son Quentin’s Harvard tuition. Because the elder Compson has died, there is no dominant head of the family within the novel, and Faulkner allows the three male Compson children to become the spokespersons who explain the decline of the family.
The first major character is the novel is Benjy Compson, the fourth and youngest child of Jason Richard Compson and Caroline Bascomb Compson. Benjy was originally named “Maury” after Caroline Compson’s brother. When it was evident that he was severely retarded, his name was changed to Benjamin (Fargnoli and Golay 40). Benjy is a thirty-three year old individual who is unable to “differentiate between the present moment and the moments of the past” (40). Benjy’s world is virtually timeless, although he is able to represent the past through associations in the present (40). Benjy’s inability to separate the past and the present is akin to many Southerners’ inability to cope with the changes in their lives after the Civil War. He is eventually taken away from Jefferson and placed in an insane asylum in Jackson to rid his brother, Jason Compson, IV, of any embarrassment.
The second Compson spokesperson is Quentin, the eldest child of the Compson family. Quentin, unlike Benjy, is possessed with time. He is a romantic idealist with chivalrous notions of womanhood. He is obsessed with protection and defending his sister Caddy’s virginity and honor (Fargnoli and Golay 43). In the appendix to the novel, Faulkner writes that Quentin “loved not his sister’s body, but some concept of Compson honor.” Yet, at the same time, Quentin had incestuous longings for his sister, Caddy, longings that he could never act on” (43). On the last day of his life, Quentin breaks the crystal and the hands of a watch his father had given him because he believes that it will be better to self-destruct then succumb to change. At the end of his freshman year at Harvard, Quentin drowns himself in the St.Charles river because he cannot cope with reality.
The third major spokesperson within the novel is Jason Compson, IV, the third child born to the family. Jason is different from his two brothers because he is an insensitive and selfish person whose logic reflects a cold, calculating mind (Fargnoli and Golay 42). He is the head of the Compson family and is virtually accountable to no one for his actions. Jason is a compassionless man whose relations with the world are seen in terms of business and what he can get out of them for himself. He thinks of himself as being a rational, level-headed man who has been cheated out of the family holdings because of a brother and sister who were given money for schooling and marriage (43). He is a person who sees himself as a suffering victim of fate (Fargnoli and Golay 220).
Faulkner’s last portrayal of the Compson family is seen through the eyes of the black cook, Dilsey Gibson. She is one of Faulkner’s most significant and humane characters, and the one who holds the Compson family together (Fargnoli and Golay 95). In the closing pages of The Sound and The Fury, Dilsey says, “I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin” (95).
In analyzing the writing style of William Faulkner, special attention must be paid to his intricate use of time in the lives of his characters and in the stylistic devices of his narrative, especially the interior monologue and the stream of consciousness technique. “Time plays a significant role in the depiction of characters seen within a context larger than that of individual experience, a context that often includes the effects of the past and of historical reminiscence” (86). Faulkner’s notion of time is also a part of the dynamic of his storytelling. He integrates different time periods in his narrative, a stylistic device identifiably Faulknerian. “Time in Faulkner is not merely chronological; it is more akin to the Greek notion of kairos (time as memorable event) than chronos (time that can be measured) . History and the remembrance of the past both immediate and distant, can be a formidable force in the present” (Fargnoli and Golay 86). Many students of Faulkner’s works have concluded that to him, time does not exist apart from the consciousness of some human being. In other words, apart from the stream of living consciousness, time is merely an abstraction (87). It is in this writing style that Faulkner employs the “stream of consciousness” technique. “This literary technique expresses the manner in which a character’s thoughts are represented (directly or indirectly) to the reader or, less frequently, the manner an author uses to write a specific passage. Similar to, but not identical with the interior monologue, the stream of consciousness technique differs in that it normally adheres to syntactical and grammatical rules, whereas the interior monologue tends to disregard them” (Fargnoli and Golay 227).
On a few occasions, Faulkner comments on his understanding of time. In one interview, he stated, “ I agree pretty much with Bergson’s theory on the validity of time. There is only the present moment, in which I include both the past and the future, and that is eternity” (Fargnoli and Golay 86). In another interview, Faulkner states, “There is no such thing as was, only is” (86). Though clock time, seems to be in some sense, unreal to Faulkner, he concedes that clock and calendar time has its uses and that “no human life of the slightest complexity could get along without constant reference to it” (86).
Time is the key to understanding many of Faulkner’s characters and themes. In Absalom, Absalom!, chronological time for Henry Sutpen is very much a part of his consciousness as something to be endured in order to carry out his plan to ultimately prevent miscegenation within the family (Fargnoli and Golay 229).
In “Barn Burning,” Faulkner employs the stream of consciousness technique to measure time by events which portray underlying themes of loyalty, honor and decency. The critic Cleanth Brooks considers “Barn Burning” one of the finest examples of Faulkner’s great theme of “the human heart in conflict with itself” (Fargnoli and Golay 13).
Time appears to be the true subject of The Sound and The Fury. Quentin Compson, on the day he committed suicide, remembers his father saying that “ a man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think your misfortune would get tired, but then time is your
misfortune” (Fargnoli and Golay 87). The thoughts of Benjy, Quentin’s idiot brother, while free from the rational burden of time, are bound to sensations and perceptions of the present (87).
William Faulkner is remembered for his works, Absalom, Absalom!, “Barn Burning,” and The Sound and The Fury, that explore the intricate culture and tragic legacy of his fictional world in the Deep South. He is remembered for his belief in the importance and characteristics of Southern families as shown through his works depicting the struggling middle-class Sutpen family, the poor white trash Snopes family, and the once aristocratic Compson family. He is remembered for his usage of time which “makes you feel the Southern environment in which the story takes place. He refuses to take the conventional approach of simply telling a story; instead, he challenges the reader to take time to explore and figure out what he means” (Wright 5). Faulkner takes pride in his understanding of the Deep South and in doing so, challenges the reader to share that understanding.


Analyze... praise... criticize. Do whatever you wish. Anything is welcomed. This is a 9 page long paper that I worked my arse off on btw. I'm so glad its over!

[Hoping4Change]

2. Can't read it all right now but I will because I love Faulkner.

One phrase of his has always remained with me: "The shattered petals of the Wisteria."

[BamaLefty]

3. Thanks

Feel free to post your thoughts on it as well.

[tishaLA]

4. What class is this for?

High school college, and what topic?

[BamaLefty]

5. 11th Grade Honors English

The topic was "The Use of Place, Family, and Time in the Works of William Faulkner". It is a research paper on the writing style of an author given to you. Faulkner used these three things (primarily) in his works so that is what I wrote on. :)

[freesqueeze]

6. 11th grade?

That's a surprise. We just went over "Barn Burner" in my 4xxx level History of Am Lit class at my university. I thought MLA format was a nightmare saved for the college student. This MLA format stuff is an obsession for the Eng Prof...get ready.