Michelle Ann Abate’s article, “Reading Red: The Man with the (Gay) Red Tie in Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury,” published in the Mississippi Quarterly, in 2001, offers a new interpretation on William Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and the Fury: the man with the red is actually homosexual. According to Abate, many readers are reading the ending of the novel wrong because they do not know that the red tie symbolizes homosexuality. The red tie symbol offers a new interpretation on the ending of the novel because it shows that Miss Quentin is free from her family and free to live a new life. One way Abate supports the argument that the man with the red tie is homosexual is that Faulkner knew about the gay culture and wrote about gender and sexuality in his other works of literature (301). Faulkner, according to Abate, is clearly aware of the homosexual community because he dressed as a homosexual and he had many homosexual friends (301). This made Faulkner aware of the culture and symbols in the gay community. Abate also argues that the man with the …show more content…
She supports this claim by saying how he refers to the man with the red tie as ‘dam’ (299). According to the article, Faulkner uses the word ‘dam’ and directs this word to women and to the man with the red tie. The word ‘dam’ means a female dog (299), therefore, the man with the red tie is considered a female. The other claim of stating that Jason knew about the symbol is how fixated he is on getting Miss Quentin back (300). Abate mentions that Jason cares what people think about him and his family’s name and states that Miss Quentin is bringing the family’s honor down because she is hanging around with a gay man (300). Jason does not want his name to be associated with a gay man because it would bring more shame to their family
Dan Greenburg explains in, “Sound and Fury”, how a simple kind words can avoid “a minor act of provocation” (464). In today’s society, people tend to overlook what they say and how they say it to avoid any dramatic event. People have a tendency to put their pride before thinking, which causes theatric event as explain when Dan Greenburg mention, “we carry around a lot of free-floating anger” (463). Holding in anger cause people to overreact an action that could have been handle in different kind of situation. A person should put their emotion a side and think about what kind of consequences their actions can bring. Today, people are always getting in fights in bars or school footballs game which shatters other people’s fun. It makes people
In the book, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, there is a lot of symbolism that correlates well with the situation Ethan is in from the start. Not only is death and silence a reoccuring symbol within the book, but the color red is often brought up as the story starts to develop. Several items are said to be red as the story goes on. Ethan’s scar, the pickle dish, and Mattie’s red ribbon and scarf are just a few items that are brought up in the story. This color could represent the desire he feels toward young Mattie since he is so drawn to her but refuses to tell her how he feels.
If one were to trace the color red through the book, it would be almost impossible to give it one decisive meaning- and that is the point entirely. The color red appears to symbolize not
William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War.
Faulkner represents a good versus evil theme through the plot. During the first conflict in the story, the justice of the peace is described as being “kindly [and one could not] discern that his voice was troubled when he spoke”(340). If Sarty could have seen the kindness of the justice of the peace, Sarty may ha...
War and Grief in Faulkner’s Shall Not Perish and The Unvanquished. It is inevitable when dealing regularly with a subject as brutal as war, that death will occur. Death brings grief for the victim’s loved ones, which William Faulkner depicts accurately and fairly in many of his works, including the short story “Shall Not Perish” and The Unvanquished.
Through the use of numerous symbols, Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter serves as an allegory for the story of Adam and Eve and its relation to sin, knowledge, and the human condition that is present in human society. Curious for the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, which resulted in the revelation of their “humanness” and expulsion from the “divine garden” as they then suffered the pain and joy of being humans. Just as Adam and Eve were expelled from their society and suffered in their own being, so were Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. Hester was out casted and shunned, while Dimmesdale suffered under his own guilt. After knowledge of her affair is made known, Hester is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest to symbolize her crime of adultery, and is separated from the Puritan society. Another “A” appears in the story, and is not embroidered, but instead scarred on Dimmesdale’s chest as a symbol of guilt and suffering. Hester’s symbol of guilt comes in the form of her daughter, Pearl, who is the manifestation of her adultery, and also the living version of her scarlet letter. Each of these symbols come together to represent that with sin comes personal growth and advancement of oneself in society as the sinner endures the good and bad consequences.
Faulkner’s father and great grandfather could be described as the embodiment of Southern masculinity. The video “A Life on Paper” made it clear that the Faulkner men were “manly men.” The “Old Colonel” was remembered as a valiant war hero and a wonderful storyteller. William’s father continued perfectly in his footsteps. He had an intense work ethic and he served in the military. He provided for his family and he never turned down a good fight. Together they set the mold for the perfect Southern man, a role that William could never hope to fulfill.
The way the characters are portrayed remarkably depicts Faulkner’s theme. The two conflicting characters are described in similar ways to show their differences. Abner is described by how people see and think about h...
If it had not been for the foreshadowing so well placed in the story we would have no clues as to who lie in the bed. No indication as to what might have led to his murder and for him to be left in the upstairs bedroom. Although Faulkner did not answer such questions for the reader, he gives enough information in the foreshadowing for conclusions to be drawn.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Compact 4th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 81 - 88.
The Unvanquished is composed of a series of stories during which Bayard Sartoris, the narrator, grows up from a twelve-year-old boy to a young man of twenty-four years. The narrative style makes it obvious that events are being related by an adult who is looking back at his past. There are several indications of this: in the very first story “Ambuscade”, the narrator, while describing his war games with his coloured friend, Ringo, states: “We were just twelve then”. (5) He tells the readers how they fantasized about the military exploits of John Sartoris, Bayard’s father, seeing them as heroic and exciting adventures. The narrator describes himself and Ringo at this stage of the novel as “the two supreme undefeated like two moths, two feathers riding above a hurricane” (7), drawing attention to the fact that while the two boys are positioned in the midst of war with all its attendant destruction and insanity, they have no understanding of its horror.
William Faulkner has been credited with having the imagination to see, before other serious writers saw, the tremendous potential for drama, pathos, and sophisticated humor in the history and people of the South. In using this material and, in the process, suggesting to others how it might be used, he has also been credited with sparking the Southern Renaissance of literary achievement that has produced much of the United States best literature in the twentieth century.
In the Unvanquished, a version of southern masculinity is developed through the narrator using dialect and the device, or should I say vice of memory. Fairly early in the novel, the reflective standpoint of the narrator becomes obvious, and a certain sense of “retelling” the story, not just telling it as it happened, prevails. This use of memory is not necessarily selective but it does show the processing of perceptions of the narrator’s childhood. As readers, we first get the sense that we are hearing the story from a much older Bayard when he drops comments like “I was just twelve then; I didn’t know triumph; I didn’t even know the word” (Unvanquished 5). If he was just twelve then, he could be just fifteen or sixteen when retelling this story, assuming the grandiosity that adolescence creates, leading to such thoughts as “I was just a kid then.” However, the second part of the statement reveals a much older and wiser voice, the voice of someone who has had time to think out such abstractions as triumph and failure. Furthermore, the almost obsessive description of the father in the first part of the novel seems like the narrator comes to terms, much later in life, with how he viewed his father as a man. “He was not big” (9) is repeated twice on the same page. He was short enough to have his sabre scrape the steps while ascending (10), yet he appeared large and in command, especially when on his horse (13). The shape and size of a man being an important part in defining masculinity, I think Baynard grappled with his father’s physical presence as well as his tenuous position as a leader in the Confederate Army. Other telling moments are on page 66 when Baynard postulates what a child can accept as true in such incredible situations and on page 95 with his declarations on the universality of war. (Possibly he is an old man now and has lived to see other wars.) Upon realizing the distance between the setting of the story and age of its narrator, the reader is forced to consider how memory and life itself have affected the storytelling.
William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" (1929) is one of the monuments of High Modernism. It was the dark side of the social scene, that caught Faulkner's imagination and makes him delves deeply into the social structure of the Americans. He shows the fall and the decay of the family as a unit of society, the failure of the family to hold together and its damaging. The Compson family is one of the samples of a disintegrated and ruined American family whose members are characterized by absence of either the parental or the maternal role, lack of respect and constant conflict, which has shaken the balance of their family leading to its disintegration. Compson family Children are living a life of prisoners of family manners and beliefs in