Faulty Truths In William Faulkner's 'Interview'

As it seems, this literary piece might be very complex to get a conclusion from. Personally, I think Faulkner wants his readers to debate about this. While I was reading “Barn Burning”, I noticed that the author does not give specific resolutions to the problems he

The style in which Faulkner writes this story allows the reader’s mind to wonder and put the story together their own

One example of when the author causes us to be unsure of the truth is when he talks about the vietnamese man he killed. Then we find out that it wasn’t O’Briens fault from Kiowa to leave us in an even more confused state. He wrote this because he wanted to describe to us that even if he didn’t kill the man, it felt like he was responsible, because in a way he felt like the mysterious man was him. This particular event increases our understanding of the story because this is what it felt like to be in the war. You would blame yourself for the death of a fellow soldier or imagine your own self dead.

One of the notable coping methods that Faulkner analyzes in his novel is that of denial and negotiation. Various characters utilize denial to escape the pain of the death of their mother, and this technique is best exemplified

    Analyzing character in a Faulkner novel is like trying to reach the bottom of a bottomless pit because Faulkner's characters often lack ration, speak in telegraphed stream-of-consciousness, and rarely if ever lend themselves to ready analysis.  This is particularly true in As I Lay Dying, a novel of a fragmented and dysfunctional family told through fragmented chapters.  Each character reveals their perspective in different chapters, but the perspectives are true to life in that though they all reveal information

Faulkner uses every detail in an abstract manner to paint a vivid image to the reader of the plight she endures. The summer following her fathers' death, the community began the

By examining Miss Emily’s behavior and her social relationships, it is possible to diagnose Miss Emily with mental illnesses: PTSD and schizophrenia. Miss Emily Grierson, the main character in “A Rose for Emily,” written by William Faulkner, is a strange character. Miss Emily’s unpredictable and idiosyncratic behavior is bizarre, and the reader, like the townspeople in the story, was left wondering how to explain the fact that Miss Emily has spent years living and sleeping with the corpse of Homer Barron. On page 772, the whole town went to Miss Emily’s funeral when she died. “The men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant--a

This renders the tone more one of reminiscence and, if Faulkner's narrator is not as grandiloquent as Poe's, he nonetheless paints vivid pictures, as in his description of Emily later in life: “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in water, and of that pallid hue” (Faulkner 3). What may be most interesting in the differences of narrator tone, however, is how each underscores the thrust of the story. Poe's extreme voice works to build up to a disturbing conclusion of murder; the exaggeration of Montresor's tone conforms to the trajectory of the story. With Faulkner, understatement is the key. His story ends as dramatically, if not more so, than Poe's, and the effect of the revealed necrophilia is amplified by how moderately the narrator conveys the tale.

Faulkner proves us that it is impossible to sruggle with one's own heart . The moment when Sarty decided to choose morality over the blood pool and warned the de Spain's revealed his true character. Though this meant the death of his

Loyalty is a powerful force. Oftentimes it blindsides us and causes us to support things we would not normally. Even do things that we despise. William Faulkner’s Barn Burning illustrates just such a case. Presenting a young boy’s progression from a loyal child, to an independent man as a conflict of loyalty and morals. This boy, Sarty, battles his own forming morals versus his father’s decisions, which leads to his development from child to adult. Faulkner writes his characters progression in five stages: blind loyalty, repressed disagreements, open questioning, and attempted reasoning with his father, before finally taking action to contradict his father.

Faulkner uses syntactical strategies throughout his speech to assist him in communicating his message to his audience. In the third paragraph he emphasizes a syntax device known as anaphora, when stating, “He must learn them again… He much teach himself… He writes not of love…He writes not of the heart…”.The anaphora helps Faulkner be effective in his argument by the repetition of words to help him get his view of things across to the audience. To also succor his effectiveness he uses polysyndeton, which is used to draw the audience’s attention therefore adding the effect of persistence and intensity to help keep his audiences attention, making his speech effective. An example of polysyndeton is when he declares “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” This quote helps signify that authors need to write from their soul and

The narrators alternate, showcasing the fluctuating levels of coherence, understanding and emotional strength. The dialect differs from character to character and the language each character uses, varies on level of intensity and subjectivity. Each character’s speech varies from being confessional to teetering on the line of awareness and consciousness. The characters each have their own view on life and on the way Addie Bundren lived her life: through these alternate character’s eyes, we can piece together the bits and pieces of Addie’s life, death and the haulage of her decaying body to Jefferson. The narrative seems to be fragmented however, it also exhibits a type of unity. The story takes place over the course of a few days yet the differing “sub-plots are logically and skillfully interwoven” (Ross 309). Faulkner forces the reader to see the narrative from multiple perspectives.

In Faulkner's story, an onlooker tells of the peculiar events that occurred during Miss Emily's life. The author never lets the reader understand Emily's side to the story. Instead, the reader is forced to guess why Emily is as strange as she is. In the story, Emily had harbored her father's dead body in her house for three days (par. 27). The reader is told of how the town looked upon what Emily had done, but the reader is never able to fully understand Emily's actions until the end of the story.

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 this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.” This quote by Benjamin Franklin is a mirror to Emily’s story as it begins with her death and then the reader is abruptly brought into the tax remission she received after the death of her father. This interesting yet confusing vignette is about a girl named Emily Grierson and her inconsiderate relation with the town, a man she loved, Homer Baron, and her Father. For Readers of Faulkner, it is truly apparent that his stories do not follow the pattern of the conventional beginning to the end of the story. This method of disorderly sequence of events along with the descriptive style tends to lead this story as if we are