Analysis of Faulkner Short Stories

Analysis of Faulkner Short Stories

Response to the Faulkner Short Stories

In each of these stories, Faulkner communicates to the reader through very strange characters. In “Was”, we hear of a story that basically stems around a runaway slave. The two Uncles are very stereotypical. The other owner was also very stereotypical. Basically, in this story, the white men are trying to apprehend a slave that has run off to see his girl. However, the story then progresses into a standoff between the white owners. They bet each other on very arbitrary matters until finally, though the previous bets did hold some weight, the men turn to a deck of cards to settle their disputes. The ironic aspect of all of this is that they end up betting on the lives of the slaves. So, in order to prove their superiority over each other, they use their slaves as leverage. This was one of the times I felt that Faulkner was trying to illustrate the fact that these people seemed hopelessly lost in the old Southern way. What was also very interesting though is that they seemed to treat the slaves fairly humanely. First of all, if a slave had run off in early times, they probably would have beaten him or killed him. Here though, it is a kind of game. It’s a race to see who can get him first. Faulkner also throws into the story the woman who seems to be in love with one of the uncles. This too, was very clever because the new “southern Belle” was also being communicated to the reader. The Uncles though, are bachelors, perhaps signifying the dying southern gentleman, who is unable to deal with his past, and who will lead his genre of people to extinction. All in all, I liked this story. I didn’t see Faulkner as a racist and I didn’t see any of his charact...

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...However, this doesn’t deter Faulkner from writing very complex stories that reflect his literary prowess. Most of his characters can hardly speak correct English, and yet, his pieces are filled with words that even I have trouble discerning meaning from. In particular, Rider’s character is very blue collar. Faulkner communicates this to us in many ways, but has no trouble throwing in phrases like “the junctureless backloop of times trepan”. This occurs throughout all of these stories. It is like the characters are very natural, they know the environment, the have the skills to hunt, they work hard, and they love each other. But these ideas are contrasted by his writing style and complexity and really blend nicely to create very good pieces of literature. It was just one thing that caught my eye in reading these pieces and I am very envious of this skill he possesses.