Old Verities and Truths of the Heart in Writing

Old Verities and Truths of the Heart in Writing

In his Novel Prize Address, Faulkner states that an author must leave "no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart...love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." He accuses his younger contemporaries of ignoring these noble spiritual pillars while pondering the atomic doom of mankind with questions like, "When will I be blown up?" Such physical fears, far from conflicts of the heart, are what plague his bomb-obsessed contemporaries. Yet Faulkner stands, seemingly alone, in opposition to this weakness; he "decline[s] to accept the end of man" and in rebelling, fights for the old universal truths and the glories of the past. In classical style, he brushes away passing fears and fads, settling for nothing less than the "problems of the human heart in conflict with itself." Nothing else is worth writing about and Faulkner's work is living proof.

The characters in Light in August are full of the conflicts and virtues Faulkner describes in his speech. In Lena, Hightower, and Christmas, one can find endurance, sacrifice, and honor. In other characters, such as Byron Bunch, the main ingredient is hope. Yet regardless of who he is describing, Faulkner does not forget that only the ancient feelings innate in humanity, those in the soul, are worthwhile.

Hope and Love:

Hope is one of Faulkner's favorite spices for cooking his characters. It is perhaps the most human of all emotions in that it is fragile like the body, but at the same time all powerful like the spirit. Lena Grove and Byron Bunch both have an endless amount of hope for the same thing: love they have never received. Hope brought her from Alabama to Mississippi in search of her runaway Lucas. Likewise, hope will carry Byron wherever Lena goes until he can find her love.

Lena's hope is visible in her face, "[she] walked into the door behind him [Byron], her face already shaped with serene anticipatory smiling, her mouth already shaped upon a name" (p.50). She searches from town to town for her lost love, and in each new place renews her hope with a serene smile. Byron's hope, however, manifests itself quite differently. "There was something funny and kind of strained about him," is how the furniture repairer describes Byron (p.498). His hope is ashamed and choking; it gnaws at him trying to manifest itself with a feeble attempt in the back of a truck.