William Faulkner William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, with Jefferson as its county seat, is both a mythical and actual place. Yoknapatawpha county is 2400 square miles in area and has a population of 15,611 persons. Jefferson has an actual jail, town square, old houses, and Old Frenchman's Place, even a railroad. Faulkner's "Yoknapatawpha County" is in reality Lafayette County, and "Jefferson" is actually Oxford. The Faulkner family lived there since before the Civil War. This is where most of his stories take place. He pondered the family history and his own personal history; and he used both in writing his stories. (American Writers; 54) Faulkner born in New Albany, Mississippi in 1897. In 1902 they moved to Oxford ("Jefferson"), the seat of the University of Mississippi. His father, Murray C. Falkner, (the u was added to the family name by the printer who set up William's first book, The Marble Faun) ran a livery stable and a hardware store. Later he became business manager of the University. Maud Butler was his mother and Murray, John, and Dean were his three brothers. (American Writers; 55a) Faulkner's great-grandfather was William C. Falkner. He was born in 1825. He was a legendary figure in Northern Mississippi. Many details of his life have shown up in Faulkner's writings. He was twice acquitted of murder charges. He was a believer in severe discipline and was a colonel of a group of raiders of the Civil War. He began as a poor youngster trying to take care of his widowed mother, but ending his career as the owner of a railroad and a member of the state legislature. He was killed by his former railroad partner shortly after he had defeated the other for a seat in the legislature. There is a statue of William C. Falkner facing his railroad today. (American Writers; 55b) J. W. T. Faulkner was a lawyer, a banker, and assistant United States attorney. He was an active member of "rise of the "rednecks"", the political movement that gave greater suffrage to tenant farmers. The people of Oxford say he had and explosive temper. (American Writers; 55c) The characters Colonel Sartoris and Bayard Sartoris portray Faulkner's great-grandfather and grandfather. These characters show up in many of his stories such as Sartoris and The Unvanquished. They are a part of the Old South legend and they play an important role in the saga of Yoknapatawpha. (American Writers; 55d) William was a poor student. He left highshool in the tenth grade to work in his grandfather's bank. He liked to read, and wrote some poetry of his own. He also tried painting.
In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Faulkner portrays the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest to honor her dying wish to bury her in the town of Jefferson. Faulkner utilizes humor in the novel to lighten the mood of death and as an act of transgression against the orthodox Christian views of death as it relates to good souls dying and becoming angels. Addie Bundren’s son, Vardaman, relates to the orthodox Christian views of death, and the synonymous use of humor with these views ultimately creates an idea about humanity’s perception of death and how they should live, which is enhanced through John Morreal’s “Humor in the Holocaust: Its Coping, Criticizing, and Superiority” and “‘The Abject’- A Brief Definition.”
“Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.” - William Faulkner. Born in September of 1897, William totally re-wrote classical literature in the 19th century, even beyond his death in July of 1962. Faulker’s work was crawling with sub-plots, details, hidden inspiration, and key elements from previously famous novelists. William Faulkner revolutionized modern literature by taking the ideas of other writers and adding personal inspiration, description, and emotion to his work.
Many tragedies have occurred during the last century. William Faulkner believes the greatest tragedy of the last century is that modern writers no longer write of the spirit. On the other hand, in his memoir, Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt asserts the Catholic Irish childhood is far worse. However, both tragedies are related as McCourt’s emotional account of his misfortunes exemplifies the profound influence of literature that Faulkner desires other writers to have. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner sets the standards of good literature that Frank McCourt adheres to through his writings of suffering and compassion.
1934: His mother died in the Salinas home. John had stayed in the home to take care of
The South is tradition, in every aspect of the word: family, profession, and lifestyle. The staple to each tradition in the south, and ultimately masculinity, is to be a southern gentleman. William Faulkner, a man with the most southern of blood running through his veins, was everything but a southern gentleman.
On September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, a son was born to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Faulkner. This baby, born into a proud, genteel Southern family, would become a mischievous boy, an indifferent student, and drop out of school; yet “his mother’s faith in him was absolutely unshakable. When so many others easily and confidently pronounced her son a failure, she insisted that he was a genius and that the world would come to recognize that fact” (Zane). And she was right. Her son would become one of the most exalted American writers of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two Pulitzers during his lifetime. Her son was William Faulkner.
William Faulkner was a prolific writer who became very famous during his lifetime but who shied away from the spotlight as much as possible. He is remembered as both a gentlemanly southern eccentric and an arrogant, snobbish alcoholic. But perhaps the best way to describe Faulkner is to describe his heritage, for, like so many of his literary characters, Faulkner was profoundly affected by his family.
The time period has largely influenced the works of Faulkner. Through out the 1900's the traditional form of writing began to expand and evolve. Experimentation and individualism became morals and were thought to affect all authors of the time period. This general time period experienced a spectrum of cultural shocks. The first of the drastic changes of society was World War 1, which was supposedly the “War to End All Wars.” However, this war was so gruesome that it affected society as a whole and sunk the nations into a period of unknown fate. Authors such as Faulkner lived for these moments to have the ability to build on the depression and write stories such as, “A Rose for Emily.” The time period experiences drastic advancements and changes that greatly influence the content of the story.
Samuel Langhorne Clemen, was a very famous writer throughout his years. His pen name, which he is known by today is Mark Twain. He was known for his briliant and clever i deas in writing his stories. He was born in almost an "invisable" village of Florida on novemer 30, 1835. In 1839 the Clemens family moved to Hannibal, Missouri. Soon after that his dad, John marcial Clemens died in the year 1847. Mark wrote book that are famous to this day. He started writing in his early years around 1864-1866. In 1865 he publishged his first story in the paper. This was the start of Twains big career. Mark twain himself was not only a publisher. through his years he was aldso a printer, pilot , soldier, miner, reporter, lecturer, editor, humorist, author, and business man. A majority of these careers helped lead him to be such a great publisher. A good career and life does not develope over night. It takes a lot of hard work and determination. Mark Twain did not only work hard and have determination, but he followed his dream. early in 1848 to 1858, 12 year old Twain became a printer apprentance for Joseph Ament, owner of the Hannibal Courier, which was the start of his life long career. During the years of 1853 to 1857 while he was still woking for Joseph Ament: Mark worked as a printer in St. Louis, New York, Philidelphia, Muscatine, Iowa, and Cinncinati. Working his way up from being a printer Twain became a prospector in Nevada during the years of 1861 to 1862. Then during the years of 1862 to 1864 Mark worked as a reporter and correspondent for Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.
Faulkner’s Family Life in William Faulkner: a Life on Paper The presence of the father – The Father? – haunts William Faulkner, a Life on Paper; daughters play a supporting role. Mothers, curiously enough, are noticeable in their absence. On both the spoken and unspoken levels, the film suggests that the power of genesis derives from the male alone. The creative power passes from father to son to grandson, or from father to daughter, and it is from this lineage that the artist is endowed to “create a cosmos of his own,” as Faulkner said of his novel, The Sound and the Fury.
He fathered three children while living in Cleveland, Ohio, and later Elyria, where he managed a mail-order business and paint manufacturing firms. In November 1912, he went missing, but reappeared four days later after having a mental breakdown. He described this as "escaping from his materialistic existence", which garnered praise from many other writers, who used his "courage" as an example. He moved back to Chicago, working again for the publishing and advertising company.
In William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury, Caddy Compson is the anchor character because Faulkner himself is so obsessed with her that he is unable bring her down off a platform enough to write words for her. Instead, he plays out his obsession by using her brothers as different parts of himself through which to play out his fantasies and interact with her. Faulkner writes himself into the novel by creating male characters all based on aspects of his own personality. In Freud's personality theory the human personality is composed of three parts; the id, the ego and the superego. (Freud 17) By writing about Caddy from her three brothers' perspectives, Faulkner is able to use each brother as a vessel for expressing his different personal feelings about the character Caddy.
board and sleeping in the loft of the railroad station. In his spare time, he
I found out that after he left New York he moved back to the Midwest. Because he saw how the love of money can ruin someone he decided not to work for his father but do something he really loved. He wanted to make a positive impact in the world as a way of making up for all the negativeness he had seen and been apart of in New York. For awhile he couldn’t figure out what that was so he he did odd jobs here and there until the Great Depression hit.
In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the image of honeysuckle is used repeatedly to reflect Quentin’s preoccupation with Caddy’s sexuality. Throughout the Quentin section of Faulkner’s work, the image of honeysuckle arises in conjunction with the loss of Caddy’s virginity and Quentin’s anxiety over this loss. The particular construction of this image is unique and important to the work in that Quentin himself understands that the honeysuckle is a symbol for Caddy’s sexuality. The stream of consciousness technique, with its attempt at rendering the complex flow of human consciousness, is used by Faulkner to realistically show how symbols are imposed upon the mind when experiences and sense perceptions coalesce. Working with this modernist technique, Faulkner is able to examine the creation function of symbols in human consciousness.