Faulkner’s Old South

The nuts don’t fall

far from the tree.

Biography 1897-1962

Born in Albany, Miss.; moved to Oxford, Miss at 5

Aristocratic Southern Family Rowan Oak (right above) Great-Grandfather (right

below) twice acquitted of murder, severe disciplinarian, dashing soldier, owner of RR, member of state legislature (model for Col.Bayard Sartoris)

Bio cont.

Grandfather = lawyer, banker, U.S. attorney; explosive temper

Faulkner’s immediate family = Compson family

Faulkner’s father top right

Faulkner and his brother bottom right

Faulkner’s beginnings

Poor student Rejected by U.S.

Army for WWI Served in Canadian

RAF (in uniform at right)

War ended before he could serve

A Dubious Educational Career

Flunks out of Ole Miss Fails English Begins writing Encouragement from

Sherwood Anderson in New Orleans

He drew the picture lower right at Ole Miss for the Red and Blue Club

Code of Honor of the Old South

Old families try to maintain pre-civil war way of life in spite of outcome of civil war

Deserve to fail, die because of the sins of the South

Whites must bear the burden of guilt of slavery

On His Writing From William Faulkner on the Web “ . . . What is more intriguing, and at times

frustrating, about this body of work is that he rewrote so much of it”

“One reason for such interrelatedness in Faulkner’s work is his conception of Yoknapatawpha County”

“You have to have somewhere to start from: then you begin to learn . . . . It don’t matter where it was, just so you remember it and ain’t ashamed of it” Sherwood Anderson

Faulkner on his writing

“Beginning with Sartoris I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it . . . . It opened up a gold mine of other peoples, so I created a cosmos of my own. I can move these people around like God, not only in space but in time too.”

Yoknapatawpha County: Yes, you have to spell it correctly!

Mythical/actual, self-contained Fictional world with all social,

cultural levels 24,000 sq. miles 15,611 population of Indians,

slaves, plantation owners, Civil War, WWI, WWII soldiers and vets, genteel old ladies, aristocracy, white trash, northern carpetbaggers

Works 1926 Soldier’s Pay: 1st novel

about Lost Generation

1929 Sartoris: Begins saga of Old South; uncritical account of Faulkner’s own family legend up to his own generation; source book for later novels; great grandfather

The Sound and The Fury: manipulates points of view (5); uses stream of consciousness of a 33-year old “idiot” named Benjy; decline of Old South; failure of love; absence of self-respect; generational conflict

Works cont. 1930 As I Lay Dying:

stream-of-conscious; 15 speakers; Bundren family takes their dead mother on a burial journey; grieving, community, family issues threatened by flood and fire

1932 Light in August; orphan Joe Christmas searches for his racial origins; Lena Grove searches for the father of her child; many circular journeys take place here

Works cont.

1936 Absalom, Absalom!: Race, gender, and past burdens; tells the story of the Suptens coming to Yoknapatawpha County and the “grand design” of their ancestor, Thomas

1942: Go Down, Moses: the story of both black and white descendents of Lucius McCaslin; miscengenation; vanishing wilderness

1954 A Fable: Wins the Pulitzer and National Book Award; allegory of WWI in France; Faulkner wrote it over 10 years; considered it his masterpiece

Themes

Elementary Christian virtues of self-respect, mutual respect, forgiveness of self and others, courage and fortitude, proper balance between humility, pride and charity

Themes cont. Accepts Christian moral code but not admiring of

practicing Christians Despise literal-minded, righteousness; virtues and

vices presented in black and white context of Old South

Evokes past and relates it to present through language and fictional world

Involved in long history of torment, suffering and anguish with endurance, dedication and love

“The problem with the human heart in conflict with itself.”

Style Stream of Consciousness Scrambled chronology Multiple pov Began to be studied in

1946 Won Nobel in 1950 (right) Died 1962