Life And Literary Heritage Of The Prominent 20th Century Writer, William Faulkner

William Faulkner was born September 25, 1897 in Oxford, Mississippi. He was a Nobel-prize-winning writer, and a prominent writer for Random House. He is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. In 1983, Faulkner broke the world record by writing a sentence of 1,288 characters. Faulkner wrote in a complicated style and created the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Faulkner’s writing was influenced by various themes such as gender, race, religion, experimentalism, nature, and social issues.

Faulkner's works dealt with many dark and touchy subjects such as violence, racism, mental illness and suicide. William Faulkner wrote about almost every part of life, from something ridiculous at the time to serious topics like racism in the South. Faulkner was kind of a rebel in his life, known for his drinking, arrogance and he would often make up stories about himself. Through first hand experience, Faulkner wrote about the corruption and social culture in the South. Although he wrote about the South his themes were universal and correlated with all of humanity. Faulkner did not write in the realistic style that most writers from his time, like Hemingway.

In an effort to portray thoughts and feelings as they occur, William Faulkner's literary fingerprint attempts to break free from previous literary conventions. He often used stream of consciousness in his writing and wrote highly emotional, complex and grotesque stories. This allowed the reader to glimpse the true perspective of the characters’ story, unfiltered by an omniscient narrator's point of view. (Barren)

Many of Faulkner’s works dealt with the idea of masculinity and what it means to be a strong man. Even though Faulkner stated he did not like to be in the public eye he was very concerned about portraying a strong masculine figure. (Donaldson 4) “Faulknerian is a radical critique of the fatherhood ideology. Sometimes the fictitious characters with reference to Faulkner seem to evaluate and measure their sense of masculinity against one another, almost as on the other hand they and their creator feel the urgent need to prove their different versions of manhood over and over again.' (Brown 388)

Faulkner himself was all too aware that he had an imposing male figure to live up to, his great-grandfather, Colonel William Clark Faulkner. His great-grandfather was a successful business man, novelist and a Civil War hero. (Millgate) Throughout his life, Faulkner made, vague remarks on the repercussions of pursuing an artistic vocation, which from the viewpoint of traditional white male heterosexuals, would make his sense of masculinity at best questionable and at worst suspicious.

Faulkner had a colorful life of his own to draw from for his stories. Faulkner wrote about his concerns about sex, marriage, divorce, and parenthood. In the hands of his writings Faulkner built himself as a lover and artist. (Donaldson 11) As some critics have already found, Faulkner represents women as either a femme fatale who lure men into dangerous or compromising circumstances or a woman who attracts men with an aura of beauty and mystery. (Tromly 457) Faulkner always had trouble understanding the intricacy of genders, which is why he wrote about it so much.

Faulkner explores race, sex, class and religion in the American south in his novel, Light in August, published in 1932. He believed these were the main themes that governed most human relationships. (Ollove 19: 5) Most of the book deals with the role of Joe Christmas as a human hybrid, a man of unclear racial ancestry who is also an orphan. Joe's psychological and cultural self-identifying journey to come to terms with his racial identity has shaped his whole life. This theme of racial identity and what it means to be biracial, especially in the South, is a main focal point of the novel. (9) At the end of the story, Joe got wrapped up in a messy affair with Joanna Burden, a white civil rights activist. When she is found dead Joe is accused of killing her based on his inappropriate relationship with a white woman and the fact that he may be partly black. (Burkow) Light in August shows how racism is still strong in the south even though its over 50 years after emancipation. Faulkner also shows how the social outcasts and misfits of our society are treated and alienated.

Faulkner's novels and short stories are reflective of the time they were written in. Faulkner’s most famous stories took place in Yoknapatawpha county, which he based on his hometown. (Jones) Though the county does not exist the social and cultural issues the characters face were real and present in society. The characters in his stories, are affected by their settings and all the problems and issues that come from being part of a particular social culture. 'It is inconceivable that Faulkner's character who lived and died in Yoknapatawpha County could have emerged untouched by the destructive events and emotions surrounding the Civil War.' (Wainwright 98) The most daring factor in William Faulkner's novels is about the southern landscape.

Throughout Faulkner's fiction, several scholars have discussed his geographical themes, including space, location, and area. Where Faulkner was born played a significant role in the geography, history and culture of what Faulkner came up with relating to his novels. (Mengyu 189) Faulkner's works reflected real Oxford and Lafayette County people, locations and incidents. It is unique and intriguing to interpret how the fictional world of Faulkner relates to the northern Mississippi and the American South.

Faulkner wrote in many different styles and genres. During the 1930’s and 1940’s he wrote many detective, crime and mystery stories. In such simple detective stories as Intruder in the Dust and “Knight's Gambit” Faulkner uses crime and murder to discuss racial problems facing the South. (Dussere 4) In Absalom! Absalom! Faulkner uses a detective tale to show the rise and fall of the southern plantation culture. He tells the story from many different characters! points of view. Faulkner shows us that there is no one truth. The truth of the story changes according to each character’s point of view. (Millgate) Sanctuary is different from all his mystery genre novels because he makes it a strict fiction. (Wainwright 98)

Sanctuary was Faulkner’s first critical breakthrough. The novel shocked readers because it dealt with the issue of rape. Like many of his other novels, the story is told in flashbacks and from the angles of different characters. The novel deals with the theme of crime and punishment. One of the main characters, Temple Drake, is from a wealthy southern family and like most people of her social class she naively believes that she can control any situation without any negative consequences. (Lester 45) Faulkner again shows how the southerners do not see the decline of there way of life.

Faulkner began writing screenplays in Hollywood for the money. Even though Sanctuary was a hit his publishers, Cape and Smith, went bankrupt and could not pay him his fees; Faulkner was broke. (Meroney) 'Faulkner did not enjoy working in Hollywood and the cooperative and cliched work required for him by the studio system, but that does not mean that his film work is not worthy of academic commitment.' (Gleeson-White 434) Through all his challenges while in Hollywood he was still seen as one of the few greats who wrote for the movies. (Meroney)

Faulkner showed his disregard for Hollywood in his 1935 short story “Golden Land.” The story was a rather distasteful portrayal of La-La Land and its decadent residents. Faulkner spent almost 20 years writing for Hollywood. (Gleeson-White 427) He had most of his success when he worked with director Howard Hawks. In 1934, at Universal Studios, Faulkner wrote 'Sutter's Gold' for Hawks, 'telling a story about real-life Colonel Johann Sutter, a Swiss immigrant who settled in California in the late 1830s. In Faulkner's version, Sutter travels across the continent from New York to California via St. Louis and the Hawaiian Islands and establishes in what would become Sacramento, a quasi empire, New Helvetia' (429).

Faulkner would eventually adapt his own novels to film as well as the novels of Hemingway and Chandler. (Meroney) Even though Faulkner spent so much time in Hollywood he never adapted to the rich and famous lifestyle. He would still go hunting, smoke a pipe and drink his bourbon. His stubbornness made him such a spectacle amongst the common Hollywood crowd. (Knapp 133)

Many of Faulkner’s stories were written in Southern Gothic style, a peculiar writing style that is not shared by many writers. Usually these stories occur only in the south and have a sense of darkness to them. His novels would also use humor to express America's southern stereotypes. Rather than just trying to add excitement to the plot, humor was used to discuss controversial social ideas and cultural traditions. This is seen in Faulkner’s novel Sartoris. (Cohen 30)

Sartoris was published in 1929. This is the first time that we see Faulkner’s famous Yoknapatawpha County. Also, many of the characters in this novel are seen in his later novels. The Sartoris family is one of Yoknapatawpha County's most prominent families. John Sartoris, the Old Colonel and patriarch of the family, portrayed the old and dying southern life and values. During the Civil War, his world revolved around his plantation, his slaves, and his military action. (Kuiper)

His child Bayard, a Young Colonel, symbolized the evolving South, which was a pre-industrial society sorting out the conflicts and circumstances when the war ended. Bayard came back to the plantation after the war but was unable to meet the standards of Southern manhood set by his grandfather. In an attempt to prove that he is worthy of being a Sartoris he finds himself continually doing risky things, like driving and flying recklessly. (Gelashvili) This reflects the so-called mandatory southern 'toughness.'

The Sound and the Fury is William Faulkner's fourth novel published on October 7, 1929. It is considered his masterpiece, a work that most critics recognize as one of the twentieth century's greatest tragic novels. Faulkner described his book as the best one he will ever write. (Churchwell) Again, Faulkner tackles the ideas of race and the change of southern society through the deterioration of an aristocratic southern family, the Compson’s. The novel explores the image of southern honor and how men were to be gentlemen and women were to be pure and full of grace. (Churchwell) In the novel Faulkner questions whether the problem of the South are these traditional values or is the real problem that families like the Compsons corrupt these values.

In the novel, Faulkner tells the story of the Compson family four different times from the views of four different characters. This complicated plot structure, along with his use of stream of consciousness makes The Sound and the Fury a difficult book to comprehend. Faulkner favored writing in the stream of consciousness literary style because he was trying to capture the complexity of human thought. (Barren) This required readers to navigate through complex sentences that would run on for pages.

In Faulkner’s Light in August he moved away from writing solely in stream of consciousness style, and gave each character their own side to the story. The writing style used in the backstory of Lena is relatively uncomplicated, reinforcing her star role and characterization. (Burkow) Faulkner gets involved in the story by streams of ramblings of consciousness or by other characters recounting events. Lena's introduction's plainness of style reflects her position as a ‘straight man' to the emotions of the other characters. (Weinstein) Just as her resilience as a character illustrates the insecurity of others, the frankness of the style of writing used in her parts provides a broader contrast with the intense stream of consciousness that was later used in the book.

Lena is articulated much more accurately, though, more in line with Faulkner's own tone, and introduced by a participle that suggests continuing action. It is implied that italicized sentences capture the spirit of Lena's thoughts while not transcribing them verbatim. (Kimmey 1) This is a primitive version of the narrative stream of consciousness that is used in later chapters in its full glory.

Faulkner allows the reader to get used to the concept of peeking into the nonverbal minds of characters by using font and punctuation instead of word choice to signify a stylistic change. In particular, the use of italics can be compared with the descriptions in later chapters of Joe Christmas’ feelings as a child, “If the child were older, he might have thought.” (Faulkner 58) Faulkner uses the plot behind Lena as a guide to his own writing style, adding long stretches of passages of consciousness into concise, plot-driven narrative intermittently. (Kimmey 6)

In Light in August, Lena is not the most complicated character, nor does Faulkner uses the most colorful language to describe her. Its significance for the plot lies within its clarity: it is the springboard through which the rest of the story will fly. Her 'fingerprint ' of style is a critical part to the novel, planning out the concept of the stream of consciousness so that more intricate passages can be deciphered. Her portrayal as a naive, optimistic outsider makes the madness of Faulkner’s characters even more insane. (2) Lena, however, works more than any other as an archetype seen throughout literature and in real life. Everyone has moments when they feel the world swirling around them insanely, where they are the only person who speaks with reason and honesty. The writing techniques of Faulkner for Lena reinforces her role as the story's emotional anchor, but also connects us to that aspect of our own character.

His decision to establish himself in the rural town of Oxford, near his birthplace and to dedicate himself fully to fiction was essential to Faulkner's early profitability. Oxford provided Faulkner with a direct connection with the south’s rich agricultural lifestyle that was conscious of its history and removed from the urban-industrial culture that Faulkner found quite disturbing. Also, Faulkner was a racially awkward person, but did not pretend to understand the black community's lives suffering and hardships. (Wainwright 98) He grew up witnessing their struggle he was able to portray them in an honest and sometimes brutal way. Whether or not Faulkner felt sympathy for these individuals is difficult to say, but it is obvious from Faulkner's prose that he thought they needed the opportunity to tell their story. (Martin 5)

It's easy to grasp the reason that Faulkner included Black characters in his novels, but the question remains as to the way he writes about them. Faulkner produced one of his greatest works, The Sound and the Fury, inspired by the inevitable racial intermingling that took place in the south at this time. (9) Dilsey, the black servant of the Compsons, plays the role of one of the central characters in the fourth chapter of this novel as she attempts to put together what remains of the only life she recognizes. Dilsey was one of Faulkner’s most contemplated characters he has written because he did not fully feel the need to express a ‘foreign’ culture. (10)

In 1942, another epic novel by Faulkner, Go Down, Moses, based around the concept of ethnic oppression, was published. The story revolves around the complex interactions and relationships between the McCaslin family’s plantation with white and black branches. (Caster 509) One of the segments in Go Down, Moses is a beautiful and caring portrayal of Black's spirit: 'There is no good word or good behavior by one white man or anything unpleasant (without much provocation) from the Blacks throughout the course of the story.' (Fowler and Abadie 58) Despite these evident compassionate and wealthy depictions of black characters, there have been strong debates about Faulkner’s perceived insensitivity to African Americans, especially in the late twentieth century.

Over the past century, many writers and literary critics had a lot to say about Faulkner, suggesting that his work had a profound impact on them, both negative and positive. He has been considered one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, and his work has been emulated by great minds for decades, but many men, both white and black, find his writing disrespectful and arbitrary owing to his detailed and nuanced presence of black figures in almost all of his novels. Because of the strong racist language found in his writings critics have questioned weather Faulkner was racist. Faulkner was not racist. Faulkner was accurately quoting how white southerners spoke and felt about blacks. (Hamblin)

A black writer named Ralph Ellison defended Faulkner and his use of black stereotypes. “Basically, Faulkner tried to represent those around him with as much truth and sincerity as possible. What made this difficult for him was that the lives of the black people around him were not always happy ones. He witnessed slavery, abuse and neglect and wanted to depict the world around him realistically.” (Brown 388) Controversy arose from reading Faulkner's books because too many people saw themselves reflected in Faulkner's protagonists’ behavior. Despite his critics, most readers supported Faulkner and understood his stories were an attempt to convey the ugliness and cruelty of racism.

Faulkner was a writer ahead of his time. He touched upon themes that made some people feel uncomfortable, and had a writing style unlike any author from his generation. Faulkner put himself in the shoes of some of his characters and showed his readers his insecurity through the ways he wrote about the genders and as mentioned through his Faulknerian attitudes in his writings. (Kuminova 41) He showed his vulnerability towards love through the love interests in his novels. Faulkner touched upon race in such a way that was far beyond what was socially acceptable or comfortable for his time.

The settings that Faulkner wrote about are typically based on places that he visited throughout his life, but reimagined to fit the scenarios he intended to cover. In the screenwritings that Faulkner rewrote he showed the social issues he loathed with reference to Hollywood. Finally his detective stories were and still are a huge experimental hits. One of William Faulkner’s quotes is, “The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.” (Requiem for a Nun) This is still true because his stories are not outdated because people still go through the same issues today that Faulkner touched upon 90 years ago.