English Literature & Composition - PopulationMe.com

Chapter 5: Introduction to Short Fiction
reminders or dramatizations of aspects of that era. Interested students might wish to
consult The Jungle or Ragtime, which dramatize the immigrant experience.
8. The fascination with death in "A Rose for Emily" can, as suggested, lay the foundation
for dealing with Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. It is an enormously challenging work, and
we are not sure we'd recommend it for every AP Literature class out there. But it might
be fruitful to excerpt ten or fifteen "narratives" from the novel, and show them to
students along with an overview of the novel's basic story and premise. Such a
presentation would at the very least achieve several important goals. Itwould get
students thinking seriously about the question of reliable narrators, which in turn might
lead them to a discussion of genres like dramatic monologues in poetry (Browning's
"My Last Duchess" or Tennyson's "Ulysses" are good examples) and drama itself! When
they see that Faulkner has achieved something very much approaching a play, where
there is no single omniscient narrator, merely a collection of first-person observers, they
can begin to raise questions about narrative technique and narrative reliability across an
array of genres.
9. You can also raise the question of whether comedy is an appropriate tone in a story
centered on death. The attitude Faulkner takes to Anse's selfishness, or to the smell of
the rotting corpse, or the attitude and commentary voiced by Doctor Peabody all suggest
an attitude about life that may ultimately be humane and tolerant, even in a context that
would normally cry out for strict moral judgments. You might ask them to consider our
final view of Darl, who is taken off to a Jackson asylum, laughing as he goes. Since Darl
is the artistic member of the generic Bundren family, one might infer that pitying
laughter is the recommended response (Faulkner's as well as Darl's) to human
imperfection. It is worth noting that the child Vardaman is the family's new philosopher,
the engineer Cash its new conscience.
10. A further suggested approach to the novel, if you choose to teach it in its entirety, is to
treat it as a "quest" venture. As so often with Faulkner, the mere story is the surface,
shadowing a deeper, almost mythic level of meaning. (See "Bam Burning" below.) As
suggested in Section 8, the family is an extensive collection of human types: Darl the
artist; Cash the carpenter or builder; Jewel the alienated outsider; plus an innocent boy
and a pregnant girl. And each member of the family has a mission to carry out in the
trip: Addie demands burial in town; Jewel is determined to fulfill that wish; Anse needs
ilthem teeth," Vardaman bananas, and Dewey Dell an abortion.
American Myths
Faulkner's "Bam Burning" (p. 515) with Twain's The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn
As suggested in the discussion of As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner's works often carry deep
symbolic or mythic weight. Here the primary myth to which he is alluding is the Greek story
of the Titan Saturn's overthrow by Jupiter-the displacement of the tyrannical father by his son,
bringing in a more humane age. In the story of Abner and Sarty Snopes, the son is barely coming
of age, buthe knows that thebeauty and peace and tranquility of the De Spain Mansion represent
an order to which his deepest needs draw him. His mind instinctively equates the place
with "a court house," an almost generic "locale" where he has seen his father's cruelty addressed
and condemned. It is he who runs to De Spain to warn him of his father's plans to burn
the bam, an act of "treachery" by his father's lights, and one that results in Abner's murder. He
effectively overthrows his father. He opts for a moral order.
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