William Cuthbert Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner

“A preeminent figure in twentieth-century American literature, Faulkner created a profound and complex body of work in which he often explored exploitation and corruption in the American South.” William Faulkner’s writing most commonly set in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional area based on his homeland of Mississippi. Explore the history of the South while making thorough observations of Human Character. The purpose of Faulkner’s writing style is to demonstrate a heart in conflict with itself. He did this using a plethora of narrative viewpoints to enrich the struggle. (Galenet, Introduction)

William Faulkner’s writings are all written with an extremely unique style. “The exuberant and tropical luxuriance of sound which Jim Europe's jazz band used to exhale, like a jungle of rank creepers and ferocious blooms taking shape before one's eyes--magnificently and endlessly intervolved, glisteningly and ophidianly in motion, coil sliding over coil, and leaf and flower forever magically interchanging--was scarcely more bewildering, in its sheer inexhaustible fecundity, than Mr. Faulkner's style.” One of the unusual points of Faulkner’s writings is his obsession and repetition of certain uncommon words. Words like sonorous, latin, vaguely eloquent, myriad, sourceless, impalpable, outrageous, risible, and profound. Faulkner was able to compensate for the over use of these words by using an over elaborate sentence structure. His sentences often included clause after clause or parenthesis after parenthesis as if he had just decided to tell us every thing he possibly could. “They remind one of those brightly colored Chinese eggs of one's childhood, which when opened disclosed egg after egg, each smaller and subtler than the last.” It is often that by the end of the sentence one doesn’t know what the subject of the verb is and after going back and rereading everything you find that the subject has very little bearing at all. However despite these few annoying writing habits in the end it keeps the reader involved and looking to the next sentence for meaning, until he drops in the final sentence, which brings everything together and unites them. (Conrad Aiken, 200)

You would be very much forsaken if you said that Faulkner’s style lies in his grammar alone. He is instead much more known for writing from several points of ...

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In closing, Faulkner writing style is in essence his writing. The events that take place in Faulkner novels are often, no matter how big they might seem, unimportant. The crucial part of his writing is that you are thrust in to whole new ways of looking at things. You are forced to give in and look at things through not so rose-colored glasses. In essence he manipulates your whole way of thinking and makes you think like any given character he wants you to. This brings about several revelations and shows you events in new lights until at last you are left with an all-encompassing view.

Works Cited

Aiken, Conrad. “William Faulkner.” Collected Criticism London, England: Oxford University Press, 1968. p.200-207

“Faulkner, William.” Online. Galenet. Discovering Authors. Introduction.

Hoffman, Frederick J. “Introduction: Time and Space.” William Faulkner Ed. Sylvia E. Bowman. Riverside, California: Twayne Publishers, 1961. p. 17-39

Kazin, Alfred. "Old Boys, Mostly American: William Faulkner, The Short Stories.” Contemporaries. Little, Brown and Company, 1962. p.154-158

Kerr, Elizabeth M. William Faulkner's Gothic Domain Kennikat, 1979. p.264