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WILLIAM FAULKNER
● Born in New Albany, Mississippi. Colonel C. Falkner. Oxford (Mississippi). He
spent most of his life in Oxford, Mississippi. His main ascendent is Colonel Falkner, his
great-grandfather who was a civil war hero. He was a symbol for him because he represents
the aristocracy of the south.
Faulkner decided to change his own last name to differentiate himself from his past and also
to become more individual. He’s a very special writer. He wants to analyze the complexities
of individual people.
His father was the treasurer at Oxford University. He represents the decadence of the south;
he was economically assured, but then he lost his fortune.
Faulkner was not interested in intellectual activities, etc, he preferred to be alone. He was a
very eccentric man with eccentric habits and rather solitary. He combined aristocratic aspects
and shabbiness. His education was incomplete; he entered the University of Oxford but he
quit and didn’t complete his degree. He dedicated all his efforts to writing.
Experience in the war → very interested in participating in WWI, but he was rejected because
he was too short, creating frustration as he couldn’t show off his aristocratic nature and
power. He went to Canada to become a pilot but again, he was denied. His disappointment at
missing combat turned to a great frustration, seen in several of his stories. He had the desire
of exploring human condition, due to war experiences = dream’s frustrations as he could not
enter the military.
Once the war was over he became interested in writing; his main aim was poetry, yet he
became a fiction writer (because poetry was not economically founded). The marble faun →
his poetry book is well praised.

● Phil Stone
He encouraged him to become a writer and he financially assisted Faulkner to experience
other lifestyles (thanks to him he moved to NY for a short time, where he worked in a
bookshop, etc). He returned again to Oxford and became extremely productive, writing 5
novels in only a few years.
He was obsessed with becoming a writer, with the hope of gaining financial independence.
However, this strategy was a mistake and Stone advised him to write the best book he could =
The sound and the fury which immediately became a critical and economic success → it
made him famous. He became extremely popular. He is being continuously reedited. He won
the Nobel Prize for literature.

● Soldier’s Pay (1926), Mosquitoes (1927), Sartoris (1929), The Sound of the Fury
(1929), Sanctuary (1931).
Faulkner focused most of his work in North America’s South, Mississippi mostly. There is a
sense of loneliness and despair (appears in forms such as no green landscapes) in his
characters. Considered a realist, regionalist, modernist, naturalist writer, but most of his
sources are modernist influence (from NY in his case). He was a writer who combined
realism, naturalism, modernism but also went beyond these limits. He is a highly individual
writer → it is very hard to classify his fiction.
(Nature presence in American culture is important)

Very little political content in his novels → he uses his imagination to represent present
issues, so there is no political content → the reason for this is his aristocratic family roots (is
more related to the Sartoris).
In his later works he shows clearer evidence of this attitude because he offers more positive
solutions to the afro-american problems, racism, violence, etc, for example, he attacked the
activities of the white supremacists in the south.
He is not a social thinker; as a strict social realist, he presents many political controversies
and problems in his extremely aesthetic novels → aesthetic yes, but still, he is more interested
in psychology and personalities of the characters, than in the aesthetic of the whole.

● Novels
South = farming
North = industrialization
- Rural settings → where he explores the primitive side.
- Psychological issues (influence of Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis - unconsciousness)
→ issues that tormented people
- Moral problems (change of habits between North and South) → North represents
capitalistic values, while the South represents old values.

● Subject
Decline of the South → seen mostly through the economical infertility of the land, the moral
disintegration of old values and those who resisted the struggle associated to the North. The
main subject he developed in his works is the decline of the south, how most of the values
(moral, economic, social) are disappearing. This decline is seen mostly because:
1. of the present economic sterility is. In the past the south was a very rich part of the US,
and now, they're economically sterile.
2. morality; because of this mixing between the south and the north, the south has lost its
moral values.
3. southern resistance, the people who resist materialistic views (northern invasion of
materialistic values to the south). Many southerners try to resist this materialistic
invasion and become mentally unstable due to their psychological issues, depression.

● Main Family Clans

Snopes (materialistic and economically efficient northern merchants, who are continuously
trading goods, trying to impose their morality over the south; much more primitive, represent
a lower social class) and Sartoris (associated with his own great-grandfather = with the past
and with the old southern families; they represent prosperity yet they reject capitalism, and
live in decadence and moral decay, they believe to live in a higher standard than the Snopes;
they reject any kind of invasion). To preside over the spiritual death of the old south → he
becomes a witness of what happens in the south.

● Stream of Consciousness
Faulkner is a highly individual writer who is within many genres, following a radical and
original form of this term, like the cases of variation of chronology (flashbacks and
flash-forwards), fragmentation bound to long phrases, and multiple points of view. A clear
example, The Sound and the Fury (single day plot, yet determined by the past and the future
implications, dictated by the semiconsciousness of the characters related): Narrated by an
idiot who ignores the reality of things. His interest is not so much in the incidents itself, but
more in the complicated mental reactions of the characters to these events.
 ● Yoknapatawpha County
Because of his creation of this place, he also became very important. It’s the equivalent of the
south. This county turns into a universe in which everything is possible. Three main aspects:
1. highly original style based on continual experimentalism, that is, the forms that he uses
are very difficult to discern
2. the variation of chronology where time is continuously involved in transformation
based on flashbacks and flashforwards
3. the diverse point of view that he inserts in his fiction → he admits that many characters
express many points of view, and even different to that of the narrator This county has
become very influential to other writers → Gabriel García Márquez. He was able to document
the real personality of the south and to universalize the main characteristics of that region. It
has its own seat, the imaginary city Jefferson, described as 65 miles south of Memphis, where
Oxford is located; clear correlation between Yoknapatawpha and Oxford = between
Faulkner’s invention and personal experience. He is not interested in representing faithfully
the records of his family = his personal experience; he prefers his imagination.

● Characters
Most of his characters are concerned with erotic passion and cruelty → it’s not a call to
violence like in Hemingway but rather representing innocence → product of traditions, of the
American way of life. In this way his characters can be compared to Poe’s. Example: one of
the characters in The sound and the fury is in love with his sister → distortion and horrors, not
for shocking effect but symbol of the southern decline. Characters fall into a set of defined
groups, many are associated with aristocratic families, etc; the women are easily exploited and
the men are usually responsible for that. There is a sense of how life is so complex in these
characters, a tremendous range of varieties of characters in his novels. We find many other
clans, not only Snopes and Sartoris. He was a participant of the stream of consciousness,
therefore he was not interested in manipulating his characters, not in realistically documenting
his characters, instead he granted these characters their own autonomy, they were
independent. All men and women are capable of all things, according to him; he concentrates
on exploring the complexities of their personalities = they appear by themselves, without
being manipulated.
He gives way to many contradictions → lack of cause and effect (one character is like x in
one novel, and later in another is like y). → confusion for the reader.
- Personal Identity
Identity is an exercise for self defining themselves (“who are they?”) → which becomes
another facet of Faulkner’s concern. His intention is to provide and demonstrate that there is a
uniqueness and individuality; but at the end he is frustrated because it is impossible. They are
involved in a continual struggle → failures, etc, but at the end we have no human identity →
trying to achieve a single human identity. However in each case identity depends on the
relationship to the next concept of common humanity of mankind. Self-definition is a point
that fascinated Faulkner very much.
- Common humanity
In this debate we have mentioned, he tried to convince himself, or rather, to accept that there
are some kinds of eternal truths which are → 1. loyalty 2. courage 3. honour 4. pride 5.
compassion and pity.
Characters are free to choose or reject these truths → there is a sort of
destiny. Non-solution to the individual personality.
He’s a curious writer, investigating this variety of action → he thought that characters teach
the writers something → he’s an investigator.
Characters for him are his reality.
● Narrators
Faulkner’s novels have different types of narrators, which are:
1. Fallible narrator:
The one who recognizes his own limitations and he presents himself as a narrator of
knowledge.
2. Multiple narrators:
In a single novel (like As I lay dying) we can find each chapter being narrated by a different
narrator; multiple views about a single event → in this case it’s about death, reinforcing and
highlighting the human concerns of each event. → Gabriel García Márquez (Crónica…). 3.
Rhetorical narrator:
Through this type of narrator he helps the reader see the personalities and potential
contradictions in these characters. It’s the most visual manipulation in Faulkner’s fiction → to
see the diverse personalities of the characters.

The characters present themselves as omniscient narrators but at the end they are fallible?
Yes. Most of them are omniscient narrators → what they narrate corresponds to the truth.
Complete freedom for his characters and for himself as a writer → attached to the
complexities of human life, using his own freedom with these narrators; prefers giving his
characters freedom, rather than to destroy autonomy. Freedom from the self. Preserve the
mystery.

1. Many evocative symbols

2. Experimentalism
3. Fiction which is immediate to all kinds of readers