Essay about William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

Loyalty should be considered a quality that is supposed to keep family ties together and use the shield of bravery to protect it. It is proven that devotion in families of today, are lost and bravery shows no character in a person. It is a personality that each individual has in them only to be used in the most courteous way and should not be used selfishly. Loyalty cannot be purchased and must be earned. If it used in the wrong way, it can climax to a disaster.

     William Faulkner is one of America's most talked about writers and his work should be included in any literary canon for several reasons. After reading a few of his short stories, it becomes clear that Faulkner's works have uniqueness to them. One of the qualities that make William Faulkner's writings different is his close connection with the South. Gwendolyn Charbnier states, 'Besides the sociological factors that influence Faulkner's work, biographical factors are of great importance…'; (20). Faulkner's magnificent imagination led him to create a fictional Mississippi county named Yoknapatawpha, which includes every detail from square mileage of the county to the break down of

An affront is a personally offensive act or word that displays disrespect, slight or insult towards a person. When someone suffers from something as disrespectful or insulting as an affront, their life is destined to change forever. In William Faulkner’s novel, Absalom, Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen suffered a mortal affront that not only altered his life forever, but also affected the lives of his children, Charles Bon and Judith Sutpen.

Every english class includes dreaded assigned reading, and students get used to the treacherous act of mandatory reading and analysis. However, there eventually comes a novel that pushes the limits of commitment and causes students to question why they took the advanced placement course, such as William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust. More often than not, a student’s motivation to read assigned reading is quite low, but Faulkner’s writing creates a whole new level of desperation to avoid the novel. The complicated sentences and common themes Faulkner uses create a difficult reading for anyone, especially unmotivated students.

The chronological timeline starts with Thomas Sutpen appearing in Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, which is located near Jackson, Mississippi. The readers are first introduced to the character of Thomas Sutpen through Miss Rosa Coldfield. However, the story starts with the birth of Thomas Sutpen. A turning point in Sutpen’s childhood was when he was went to a plantation but was turned away by a well-dressed slave. This experience invokes him to run away from his home in West Virginia because he is ashamed of his poor upbringing. Sutpen relocates to the West Indies with hopes of making a large fortune. Thomas then marries Eulalia Bon, the daughter of the plantation owner, which solidified his fortune. He then moves back to America with his new family, but then abandons them when he finds out that Eulalia is of African descent. After this scene in the novel, the readers can concur that Sutpen is a racist. After leaving his first family, Sutpen moves to Mississippi and buys 100 acres of land from the Native Americans, this land is referred throughout the book as Sutpen’s Hundred. Sutpen told General Compson, Quentin’s grandfather, that he “had a design in my mind” and he did not care “whether it was a good or bad design” because that was “beside the point (Faulkner, 212).” Thomas Sutpen had already decided that “he wanted to be the patriarch of a dependent empire” (Johnson, Kalmanson, 24). Details of this “grand design,” first mentioned in Mr. Compson’s narrative which was passed down from his grandfather, include becoming a wealthy plantation owner-- just like the one who turned him away. Part of Sutpen’s plan requires that he gains respectability through “the shield of a virtuous woman, to make his position impregnable”, and an intention not to borrow money, but to “marry it” (Faulkner, 7). He decides to carry this

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

The birth of the modernist movement in American literature was the result of the post-World War I social breakdown. Writers adopted a disjointed fragmented style of writing that rebelled against traditional literature. One such writer is William Faulkner, whose individual style is characterized by his use of “stream of consciousness” and writing from multiple points of view.

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

In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the image of honeysuckle is used repeatedly to reflect Quentin’s preoccupation with Caddy’s sexuality. Throughout the Quentin section of Faulkner’s work, the image of honeysuckle arises in conjunction with the loss of Caddy’s virginity and Quentin’s anxiety over this loss. The particular construction of this image is unique and important to the work in that Quentin himself understands that the honeysuckle is a symbol for Caddy’s sexuality. The stream of consciousness technique, with its attempt at rendering the complex flow of human consciousness, is used by Faulkner to realistically show how symbols are imposed upon the mind when experiences

William Faulkner, the eldest son to parents Murry and Maud Butler Falkner, was born in New Albany, Mississippi in 1897. Although Faulkner was not a keen student in high school, which eventually lead to his dropping out before graduation, he was very enthusiastic about undirected learning. After years of studying independently, Faulkner allowed a friend of his family, Phil Stone, to assist him with his academic vocation. This relationship inspired Faulkner and after a short period spent with the Royal Air Force in 1918 he decided to go to university where he began writing and publishing poetry. In 1924 Stone’s financial assistance helped Faulkner publish a

As any reader can see, " A Rose for Emily" is one of the most authentic short stories by Faulkner. His use of characterization, narration, foreshadowing, and symbolism are four key factors to why Faulkner's work is idealistic to all readers.

The writer and Nobel Prize winner, William Cuthbert Faulkner, was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. Faulkner was the first of four sons to Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. His family settled in Oxford when he was about five years old, and Faulkner spends most of his life there. Faulkner was successful early in his life, but during the fifth grade he lost interest in school and started missing classes. He did not graduate from high school, and later on he was able to go to the University of Mississippi in Oxford, but dropped out after three semesters. He is known as one of the most famous Southern literature writers, mostly for his novels and poetry. William Faulkner's literary career was influenced by

One of the main realities of human existence is the constant, unceasing passage of time. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner explores this reality of time in many new and unexpected ways as he tells the tragic tail of the Compson family. The Compsons are an old Southern aristocratic family to whom time has not been kind. Years of degeneration mainly stemming from slavery have brought them to the brink of destruction. Most of the story focuses on the Compson children who are undergoing the worst of the social and moral decay. Each of the four children perceives time in a much different way but by far the strangest and most bizarre attitude toward time that is given in the text is held by

realized that he had become a part of nature. In the story, Ike had brought a

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