RABINDRA BHARATI UNIVERSITY

UG 3rd SEMESTER

INTERNAL ASSESMENT

Topic: Faulkner’s review of the socio-political milieu of the American South

Roll: RAB/NAS No: 190165
Registration No: 190157
Course: CC 3.1
Acknowledgement

Without the community I experienced throughout this project, it would not have been possible. I would
especially like to thank a number of people. I would like to thank Dr. Debashis Bandhopadhay and our
honourable Head of the Department Prof. Soma Banerjee. Their utmost support, tireless vigilance and clear
instructions served as major contributors towards the completion of the assignment.
Faulkner’s review of the socio-political milieu of the American South

William Faulkner is name that resonates with the grim societal construction of post-bellum American
literature. His works are known for substantially contributing, an aspect of a dwindling sociological scenario,
to the American literary canon. His works reflect his profound philosophical interpretation of the socio-
political milieu of the American South.

William Faulkner was born in Mississippi, of a distinguished family which had included governors and
generals. After two years at the University of Mississippi, Faulkner joined the Canadian Flying Corps, gained
the rank of lieutenant, and saw service in France. His disillusionment seems to have been contributed to by
two wars – not only the First World War but the American Civil War. The first half of the nineteenth century
saw the rise of a number of prominent Southern families such as the Compsons. These aristocratic families
espoused traditional Southern values. Men were expected to act like gentlemen, display courage, moral
strength, perseverance, and chivalry in defense of the honour of their family name. Women were expected to
be models of feminine purity, grace, and virginity until it came time for them to provide children to inherit
the family legacy. Faith in God and profound concern for preserving the family reputation provided the
grounding for these beliefs. The Civil War devastated many of these once-great Southern families
economically, socially, and psychologically. Faulkner contends that in the process, the Compsons, and other
similar Southern families, lost touch with the reality of the world around them and became lost in a haze of
self-absorption. This self-absorption corrupted core values once held dear and left the newer generations
completely unequipped to deal with the modern world. Faulkner’s concern with the collapse of patriarchy in
the South is reflected in the wide array of ineffective and callous characters that plague his earlier novels.
Quite like the incapable Mr. Jason Compson (The Sound and the Fury) destined to jeopardize everything;
Colonel Thomas Sutpen (Absalom, Absalom!) whose ventures would ultimately cost him not only his family
but also his own life as well; Simon McEachern (Light in August) whose tyranny would eventually drive away
his adopted son. Faulkner shows the failure of the Old South through the failure of the patriarchs. The utter
incapability of his characters, stem from the hypocritical and destructive social system. This results in the
failure and death of Faulknerian characters, reflecting the fate of the Old South itself.

This view of the south sets off Faulkner from the rest of the contemporary authors. A man who has known
war horrors from his youth seems to have brought an enlarged perspective. Thus, his confrontation with
societal debilitation and racial tension sheds a reflective tone of provincialism in his work. His melancholy can
be compared with that of Hamlet’s, where there is force to chide one’s own mother, on the grounds of a
realistic discernment about an unrealistic idealism. As EL Volpe remarks, “Despair and nihilism is the
dominant mood of Faulkner’s novels”. In ‘The Sound and the Fury’, the tragic consequences of the poison of
racism in society presents several moving scenes of racial exploitation as well as the sad plight of the Negros
in the White American society. The fact that the whites have no faith whatsoever in the honesty and integrity
of Negros is highlighted by the incident where the poor Negro servant boy Luster loses his quarter which he
had painfully saved to buy the ticket for a show. On seeing, some White men moving around the place where
he had lost him a quarter, Luster asks them whether they have seen it and instead of helping the poor Negro
boy, the two White men cast aspersions on Luster’s honestly. “Where you get a quarter, boy? Find it in White
folk’s pocket while they aren’t looking”, they say in a pejorative tone. Faulkner is awfully aware of this sadism
and the condescending outlook of his people. He painfully portrays his revulsion to it in the almost
unbearable short story, ‘Dry September’. In ‘Dry September’, we find staggering instances of irrational hatred
and unnecessary violence. In the Southern atmosphere, every white person who wasn’t in support of racial
discrimination was called a ‘niggerlover’. To a white Southerner, the horror of being called this epithet far
outweighed a need for any justice. Throughout the story, we see that John McLendon acts as symbol of
Sothern insecurity and prejudice. Hawkshaw's sense of justice is no weapon against McLendon's fierce
bigotry. When a in the story man says "Do you claim that anything excuses a nigger attacking a white
woman? . . . The South don’t want your kind here”. He demonstrates a unique Southern justice system based
on pervasive prejudices and strict racial inequality rather than on the American ideal of equal justice before
the law. We also find the oppressive weather to be a driving agent of violence in the South. Near the end of
‘Dry September’, we encounter a relationship between the sterility of the weather and the mob's violence
that deserves special attention. As the men's craving for violence intensifies, so too does the weather. The
"pall of dust" that characterizes the onset of night foreshadows Will's death; the day ends in a "pall," which is
a cover draped over a coffin, and Will's life probably ends in the darkness of an abandoned pit. In observing
that “dust hung . . .above the land”, Faulkner makes Will's murder a universal event, not something confined
only to Jefferson, Mississippi. The "hemorrhage" of the moon intensifies the mob's rushing to capture Will;
when they force him into the car, their breathing is described as "a dry hissing," an image linked to the sound
a snake makes. The men have become poisonous creatures, influenced by the malevolent weather of the
South.

Conclusion

William Faulkner attempts something that had never been tried before in the art of fiction. In so pure a form,
he deftly dramatized historical consciousness itself, not just Southern lives but the forest of time in which the
whole notion of Southern life must find its only meaning. Not to have failed completely at such a task is
indistinguishable from triumph. The South escaped itself in his books and became universal.
Bibliography

1. ‘The Sound and the Fury’ by William Faulkner

2. ‘Absalom, Absalom!’ by William Faulkner
3. ‘Dry September’ by William Faulkner
4. ‘Seeing Through the South’ by John T. Matthews