William Faulkner

1897-1962

a literary genius who captured the struggles of the human heart

And who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950

Faulkner was born in Albany, Mississippi, and raised in nearby Oxford.

Oxford,Lafayette County,Mississippi

Jefferson,Yoknapatawpha County,Mississippi

a parable or legend of all the Deep South

The Deep South, or The Lower South, or The Cotton States

William Faulkner’s major works

Novels• The Sound and the Fury (1929) • As I Lay Dying (1930) • Light in August (1930) • Absalom, Absalom (1936)Short fiction (short stories)• “A Rose for Emily” (1930)• “Dry September” (1931)• “That Evening Sun” (1931)• “Barn Burning” (1938)

Which William Faulkner?

• Regionalist: ‘the postage stamp of my little native soil’ ( 我那片像邮票一样大小的故乡 ).

• Traditionalist: conventional themes - themes of morality, of the relationships between

individuals & community, ancient myths & modern decay, traditional value & historical change, of the conflict between South and North, and of the relationship between past and present, or most essentially as Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, of “the human heart in conflict with itself”

• Modernist: experimentalist in art: long and puzzling sentences, flashbacks, multiple points of view, and a stream-of-consciousness style

William Faulkner’s South

• The Southern aristocrat

- decline of the Compson, Sartoris, Benbow, McCaslin families

• The illiterate poor white

- rise of the unscrupulous （无耻） Snopes family

• The Negro• The Indians

Faulkner's Feeling Toward Aristocrats

Mixed

• sympathetic and mounful for their decline

• angry about their unreasonable arrogance

* The sin of pride dooms the ambitious families while lowly blacks and poor whites endure.

A Rose for Emily

1930

Structure

• Beginning – the Present 1930 (Emily dies at 74) (I)• Middle – the Past: 1893 Emily’s father dies. (Emily is ju

st past 30) （ II ） 1894 Taxes remitted （ I ） 1895-96 poison （ III ） 1895-96 H.B. disappears; the smell develops （ III ） 1896-1903 china-painting lessons (Emily at 40) (II, IV)

1925-26 the new generation / new board of Aldermen calls upon her about the taxes (30 years after the smell – 1925; 8-10 years after lessons – 1911-1913) (Emily at about 69-70) （ I, IV ）

• Ending – the Present 1930 (V)

Theme of the Story

• What is the major conflict of the story?

- The conflict between the past and the present

- The conflict within Emily

• What is the major theme of the story?

- Emily is caught in a dilemma. She is not prepared for the historical change and is left behind by the change.

The Dilemma of Emily

• Emily lives in the past although she faces the present.

• The present that Emily cannot face: - family decline - new generation's request for tax - need to earn her living and to pay bills - standing no chance of marriage, having

a love affair with a Northerner, Homer Barren, who is only seeking pleasure with Emily and not serious about their relation

The Dilemma of Emily

• The past Emily clings to:

- family's high position and honor

- father's paternal protection

- her social respectability

Weird, Gruesome and Terrifying Emily

• refuses to accept father’s death (pp.63, 61, 66)

• insists on repeating Colonel Sartoris when asked to pay taxes (p. 61)

• refuses to tell the druggist why she buys the poison (p. 64)

• murders Homer Barren and sleeps with his dead body (p.67)

• encloses herself to her gloomy, dusty and decaying house, like a living death

The Human Struggle

• William Faulkner once described “A Rose for Emily” as

• “ a manifestation of man’s injustice to man, of the poor tragic human being struggling with its own heart, with others, with its environment, for the simple things which all human beings want.”

Who is the narrator?

• The townspeople in general, young and old, man and woman

• One or some of the ancient suitors who feel(s) sympathetic to her, not one of the aldermen asking for taxes from her (“they” on p.60), nor one of the people who broke open the room upstairs (“they” on p.66)

The Town's Feeling toward Emily

• offended when rejected by his father as suitors of Emily

• worried about the disgrace Emily would bring to the town if she were deserted by H.B.

• tolerates, accepts even respects Emily in spite of her weird behavior

- "Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (para 3, p. 60).

- “lighthouse-keeper” “strained flag” (p.64)

Flashbacks

• The town's respect for the past and Emily• The past matters more to Emily than the present.• The past remains a permanent memory for the s

outh to cherish and preserve. - "all the past is not a diminishing road but, inste

ad, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years" (para 2, Part V, p. 66).

The Past

• “ 过去的岁月不是一条越来越窄的路，而是一片广袤的连冬天也对它无所影响的大草地，只是近十年来才像窄小的瓶口一样，把他们同过去隔断了。”

Meaning of the Title

• The rose is a symbol of love, sympathy and respect.

- The tribute paid by the town to Emily who deserves some kind of respect.

- The flower presented by the anonymous ancient suitors who live on and cling to their love for Emily, cherishing the memory of her both as a respectable individual and an honorable tradition.

Faulkner’s explanation of the title

• “[The title] was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was a woman who had had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her and this was a salute…to a woman you would hand a rose.”

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Assignments for Young Goodman Brown

1.Read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown” closely.

2.Think about the discussion questions after the text, esp.

- What is the significance of the setting?

- What dramatic change happens to Goodman Brown? Why the change?

- What is the theme of the story?

- What are some of the major symbols?