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
just 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
south to cherish and preserve.
- "all the past is not a diminishing road but,
instead, 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.”
•
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?