Born on September 25th, 1897 in Albany, New York, William Faulkner eventually became known for his “vivid imagination and innovative use of language” in literature (Puchner 371). In his adult life, he moved to Mississippi. It is in early 1930’s that he first introduced a peculiar white family that lived in Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi; they are known as the Snopeses. This fictional town and family are seen multiple times throughout Faulkner’s work, and are said to represent the many flaws of life such as “murders, lynchings, and bestialities” (Puchner 373). One of his short stories in particular, “Spotted Horses”, started the era of the Snopes family. The tall tale is centered around the unbroken horses, but why? What is the relevancy of them? Faulkner focused on them for a reason. When comparing his story to his own life, one can see the parallel between them, and that alone will lead us to the answer. “Spotted Horses” begins with the narrator talking about the horses. He starts explaining the backstory of Flem Snopes and tells the readers that he has acquired “Texas ponies”. At one point he states: “That night we were setting on Mrs. Littlejohn’s porch. You-all mind the moon was nigh full that night, and we would watch them spotted varmints swirling along the fence and back and forth across the lot same as minnows in a pond” (Faulkner). This is when we first learn just how …show more content…
They precisely represent the chaos between these people. Flem is a con man, as is the Texas man. Henry and Mrs. Armstid have a dysfunctional marriage. The narrator, himself, understand all of this. He recognizes that some are being taken advantage of, and he knows that it is wrong because he points it out, yet he does nothing to interfere. Every single individual in the story is one of those unbroken horses. Not only are they the cause of the chaos, but they are the
The Mother is among a family of four who lives on a small farm and takes immense pride in what interests her, however her passion does not particularly lie in her two children; James and David; nor in her husband and their interests; but instead lies within her chickens. Though chickens bring the most joy to the Mother, they are not the sole animals that live on the farm. The animal that draws the most interest from the father, James and David is their horse, Scott. At a young age, Scott was used as a working mule for the family and grew up alongside the Father and two Sons. To the father, Scott was like one of his own sons, and to James and David, Scott was like their brother; but according to the Mother, “He’s been worthless these last few years”(Macleod, 267). Ever since Scott was young, he was a burden on the Mother’s lifestyle; she never took a liking to the horse even when he served as a source of profit for the family. The Mother had never appreciated the sentimental value that Scott possessed because he had never been a particular interest to her. Once Scott had aged and was no longer able...
William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War.
William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Feature bold experimentation with shifts in time and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including "A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner 's fictional Yoknapatawpha
In many of Faulkner’s stories, he tells about an imaginary county in Mississippi named Yoknapatawpha. He uses this county as the setting for his story “Barn Burning” and it is also thought that the town of Jefferson from “A Rose for Emily” is located in Yoknapatawpha County. The story of a boy’s struggle between being loyal to his family or to his community makes “Barn Burning” exciting and dramatic, but a sense of awkwardness and unpleasantness arrives from the story of how the fictional town of Jefferson discovers that its long time resident, Emily Grierson, has been sleeping with the corpse of her long-dead friend with whom she has had a relationship with.
Throughout the story “Barn Burning”, author William Faulkner conveys the moral growth and development of a young boy, as he must make a critical decision between either choosing his family and their teachings or his own morals and values. The reader should realize that the story “Barn Burning” was written in the 1930’s, a time of economic, social, and cultural turmoil. Faulkner carries these themes of despair into the story of the Snopes family.
William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” symbolizes the destructiveness of the human ego through the character, Abner Snopes. Throughout the story, Snopes functions and communicates based on his own logic. He has no regard for his family, superiors, or the judicial system. His unrelenting effort to live according to what he deems as “right” creates an atmosphere of fear and oppression.
Both "Spotted Horses" and "Mule in the Yard" are very entertaining stories by William Faulkner. Despite their common theme of animal chase, setting, and character, a more powerful story is found within "Spotted Horses". While "Mule in the Yard" is well written and full of comedy, it does not delve as deeply as "Spotted Horses" does. "Spotted Horses" proves broader in scope due to it's in depth narration style which provides particularly effective humor and development of characters.
By reading closely and paying attention to details, I was able to get so much more out of this story than I did from the first reading. In short, this assignment has greatly deepened my understanding and appreciation of the more complex and subtle techniques Faulkner used to communicated his ideas in the story.
But Pynchon's culture is not one haunted by the ghosts, except for the ghosts in Hamlet and Scooby-Doo. Faulkner's landscape is tortured by the tragedy of the South. In his view, the land is cursed because of two of the white man's presumptions: that he could own other men, and that he could own the land. Focusing on the microcosm of the fallen Compson family, Faulkner details the extent to which various family members are saddled by past loss and how they confront their searing memories. In what has canonized The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner recreat...
Faulkner tells the story in first form plural, where the narrators represent the folks in town, which gives a feeling of that this description is the general perception. One immediately gets involved in the story since they first retell what actually happened and then add their own interpretations and assumptions. The double perspective one gets invites to draw one's own conclusions from a more objective point of view, which mine hopefully is!
The story begins with Abner Snopes on trial for barn burning. Faulkner immediately establishes the character of the predecessor as a vile man, characterized by his "ravening and jealous rage." (2182) And predictably, his business with barn burning was not an uncommon offense. Faulkner says, "But he did not think this now and he has seen those same niggard blazes all his life." (2180) Ab Snopes tries ruthlessly to also make his son his equal, "You’re getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you." (2180-81...
Faulkner uses the view point of an unnamed town member while he uses a third person perspective to show the general corrosion of the southern town’s people.
Brooks, Cleanth. "William Faulkner: Visions of Good and Evil." Faulkner, New Perspectives. Ed. Richard H. Brodhead. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, 1983.
Growing up in Mississippi in the late Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth Century, young William Faulkner witnessed first hand the struggles his beloved South endured through their slow progression of rebuilding. These experiences helped to develop Faulkner’s writing style. “Faulkner deals almost exclusively with the Southern scene (with) the Civil War … always behind his work” (Warren 1310. His works however are not so much historical in nature but more like folk lore. This way Faulkner is not constrained to keep details accurate, instead he manipulate the story to share his on views leading the reader to conclude morals or lessons from his experience. Faulkner writes often and “sympathetically of the older order of the antebellum society. It was a society that valued honor, (and) was capable of heroic action” (Brooks 145) both traits Faulkner admired. These sympathetic views are revealed in the story “A Rose for Emily” with Miss Emily becoming a monument for the Antebellum South.