Critiques of Faulkner’s Sound and Fury Essay

The cruel dominance of a father, can extinguish any flame of hope that builds in the people around him. In William Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning," Abner is that father. The story portrays a nomadic life of a family driven from one home to another. Abner had a craving hunger to belittle those around him that thought they were "better than him." Although the family accepts the nomadic life, Sarty (the son) dreams of having peace and stability. To have this peace, it only requires a lack of conflict. The Snope family was doomed to struggle due to Abner's constant instigation of conflict, the ongoing domination of his family and his complete lack of respect

William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War.

    The American author Joyce Carol Oats, in her Master Race, wrote that "our enemy is by tradition our savior" (Oats 28).  Oats recognized that we often learn more from our enemy than from ourselves.  Whether the enemy is another warring nation, a more prolific writer, or even the person next door, we often can ascertain a tremendous amount of knowledge by studying that opposite party.  In the same way, literature has always striven to provide an insight into human nature through a study of opposing forces.  Often, simply by looking at the binary operations found in any given text, the texts meanings, both hidden and apparent, can become surprising clear.  In William Faulkner's famous short

William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” symbolizes the destructiveness of the human ego through the character, Abner Snopes. Throughout the story, Snopes functions and communicates based on his own logic. He has no regard for his family, superiors, or the judicial system. His unrelenting effort to live according to what he deems as “right” creates an atmosphere of fear and oppression.

actions to show that no one will own or control him. He has no regard

Faulkner’s works consisted of many dark touchy topics such as war, racism, mental illness and suicide in all of books, short stories, William Faulkner wrote about almost every part of life, from something that could be absurd at his time, to something real like racism in the American South. Throughout his life, Faulkner was kind of a rebel, notorious for his confidence, drinking, and he would often make up stories about himself. Faulkner wrote from experience and as a person who lived in the south during times of racism, he wrote about a lot of things in the south. To be exact his specific genre or style in which he wrote in is what some call “southern gothic”. Southern gothic is a unique style of writing and only expressed by very few authors. These stories usually take place only in the south and have darkness to them. His stories would use irony to examine the values of the American south. Instead of solely trying to add suspense with the style it is also used to explore social issues and cultural character of the south. Which leads me to one of Faulkner’s first important novels “Sartoris”. In Sartoris Faulkner focuses on a family during the world war era in the south. In the book the Sartoris family is one of the more important families in Yoknapatawpha County where the book is set. The Old Colonel, John Sartoris, represents an old and dying out order dating back to the mid 1900’s. His world revolves around his plantation home, his slaves and his

There are several ways in which William Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" is indicative of literary modernism. It depicts a relevant historical period and is part of the frontiersman literary tradition (Gleeson-White, 2009, p. 389). The author utilizes a number of purely literary approaches that were innovative for the time period in which the tale was originally published (in 1932), such as employing a young child as a narrator complete with misspelled words and broken, puerile thoughts. However, the most eminent way in which this story embraces the tradition of literary modernism is in the author's rendition of dynamic social conventions that were in a state of flux at the time of the writing. Specifically, his treatment of race is the inverse of how race is generally portrayed in American literature prior to the early part of the 20th century. An analysis of this integral component of "Barn Burning" reveals that Faulkner's unconventional rendering of African American characters in a desirable social status particularly as compared to that of the Snopes clan is crucial to this tale's inclusion as part of the tradition of literary modernism.

This statement is not adequate in connection with William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying. Though many points of view are expressed through the use of interior monologue, even when compiled, they cannot serve as an “objective” view of what really happened.

The cleverness of the young men's fixation on witches, apparitions, and cemeteries papers over, to some degree, the genuine frightfulness of the circumstances to which the young men are uncovered for instance, grave burrowing, homicide, starvation, and endeavored mutilation. The relative straightforwardness with which they acclimatize these unpleasant occasions into their whimsical world is maybe one of the slightest sensible parts of the novel. Foreseeing that If the novel were composed today, we may hope to peruse about the psychic harm these great adolescence encounters have done to these young men.) The young men arrange this ghastliness in light of the fact that they exist in a world suspended some place in the middle of reality and pretend.

The story of "Barn Burning" was "first published in the June of 1939 in the Harper's Magazine and later awarded the O. Henry Memorial Award for the best short story of the year." The author, William Faulkner, "was one of America's most innovative novelists". The way he describes the smells, sites and sounds of the rural late 1800's make you feel as if you are there with the characters in this story. Through the use of symbolism, Faulkner tells the story about a relationship of a father and son. Fire was the most vital symbol used and describes the way, Abner, the main character in the story faces all of his challenges. He lived his life like a flaming inferno destroying

Faulkner’s “technical oddity” is the way he wrote “The Sound and the Fury” in chronological order. Sartre does not agree with how faulkner selects to write the chronological order in a confusing way. Sartre feels like Faulkner should of wrote the chronological order in sequence not shuffled around, so the readers will not be confused.

A disclaimer to start an essay isn’t too formal, neither is my writing. After several hours of listening and trying to decipher William Faulkner’s work “The Sound and the Fury”, one experiences an epiphany that he cannot read. The determined also known as the student has to continue on the quest to fulfill his high school education though. Caddy Compson, the most important character in The Sound and the Fury, is rather rare in that both in writing and in the book. It’s rather abnormal for a writer never to share the central character’s thoughts or views on… anything, and this is exactly what occurs in Faulkner’s work. Caddy only appears in flashbacks told by her brothers, perhaps the three most unreliable narrators one has ever seen. The

Bleikasten concludes that Faulkner, like many of his contemporaneous authors, recognized the inability of language to express beauty, truth, and perhaps womanhood, and so could only explain by not explaining, narrate by not narrating, and write by not writing. I think one could additionally argue that this is why Faulkner does not “write” Caddy, or give her a voice, because language would (apparently) spoil her beauty (which I cannot help reading as an excuse). When Bleikasten insists that Faulkner’s “insistence on his failure was no pose,” I get frustrated with him, because I simply want to ask, “How do you know?”. I already have trouble taking Faulkner’s introductions seriously when he describes the development of The Sound and the Fury for they seem to include much idealization and dreamy hindsight.

In William Faulkner’s novel “The Sound and the Fury”, a family is shown as having many different issues that aren’t seen as well to outsiders. The family consists of the three brothers: Benjy Compson who suffers from a mental illness, Quentin Compson who is faced by suicidal thoughts, and Jason who centers his world around the effects of money. Along these brothers, Caddy Compson is their sister who throughout the book seems to cause each brother a fair amount of trouble. Besides the sibling’s parents, Dilsey the family’s black servant is shown as having an outside view of each of the family members unique issues. The first three chapters of the book are each of the brothers consciousnesses while the fourth is Dilsey’s consciousness. Faulkner portrays Quentin’s consciousness as a puzzle where you have to unravel the mystery of why he commits suicide. Quentin is trapped in an ontological crisis which ultimately leads to his demise because he feels as if he has to be apart of Caddy’s life, but he keeps on getting pushed out of it by different factors.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), the symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) include: lack of motivation, oppositional to others, irritability, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, as well as suicidal thoughts and/or tendencies. (Beidel, 201). In fact, William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury (TSATF) portrays the internal struggle of a man with Major Depressive Disorder through the character of Quentin Compson.