Term Paper on "William Faulkner: Barn Burning"

Term Paper 4 pages (1498 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

William Faulkner: Barn Burning

Although William Faulkner stood less than 5'6" tall, he is considered a giant among American writers. Although he never graduated from high school, did not earn a college degree, and grew up in the poorest state in the union, he accomplished a great deal. He became a Nobel Prize winner, a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter and made a small area of Mississippi (his "postage stamp") famous. Faulkner's view of human nature was pessimistic, often on the sinister side. He explored the dark side of life in his characters who perhaps were sometimes drawn from his own shadow self. However, there is little in his childhood and upbringing to explain his negative outlook or to predict his enormous talent.

Born in 1897 the oldest of four children, Faulkner grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, where his grandfather owned the bank. At age 13 he started writing poems. He dropped out of school and worked at his grandpa's bank for awhile (William Faulkner web site), arriving at manhood during the first World War. When he couldn't get in the U.S. Army because he wasn't tall enough, in 1918 he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in Canada. In an effort to pass himself off as British, he lied about several things on his application, including his age and birthplace. When he talked to British officers he affected an English accent (whether he did the accent well enough to fool them, we do not know), and he changed the spelling of his name from Falkner to Faulkner because he thought it looked more British (MWP: William Faulkner web site).

Faulkner began learning to fly in Toronto, but unfortunately (from his point-of-view), the war ended before he was done with training. But he made the best of things. Once discharged, he bought himself an officer's dress uniform and sewed wings on the breast pocket. He came home in the uniform of an RAF lieutenant and also let folks think he had been in combat. For awhile, he basked in the glory of a war hero. In an early show of inventive genius, he made up colorful stories about his adventures as an officer. Part of the story was that his plane was shot down, he was in constant pain from his war injuries, and had a metal plate in his head. Later, his brief service would appear in his first novel (MWP: William Faulkner web site).

Faulkner studied literature for three semesters at University of Mississippi. During that time his first published poem appeared in The New Republic. He published poems and short stories in The Mississippian, the campus newspaper. He helped to form a drama club on campus and wrote a one-act play. Even after he left school he continued sending poems and prose pieces to The Mississippian. In 1921 he got a job in New York City at a bookstore where Elizabeth Prall, who later married the writer Sherwood Anderson, was manager. He returned home and from 1922 to 1924 was postmaster at University of Mississippi, but he wasn't cut out for the job. He read too much and played cards with his friends, misplaced and lost the mail, and did not serve the customers. A postal inspector investigated complaints about him, and he agreed to resign (MWP: William Faulkner web site).

In 1924 a book of Faulkner's poetry was published, but it was not successful. The following year he moved to New Orleans where Sherwood Anderson convinced him to try fiction instead of poetry. Faulkner published several essays and sketches in The Double Dealer (a literary magazine) and wrote his first novel Soldier's Pay about a returning soldier who was physcially and psychologically wounded in the war. After the book was accepted for publication, he went to Europe and stayed several months near Paris. When he returned, he started writing from his memories of life in the South where he had grown up -- the people and culture, the look of it, the sounds and smells, all the sensory details of animal and plant life. It was truly a turning point: "Beginning with Sartoris," he wrote, "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it..." (Lion in the Garden 255). Indeed, Fennell (1999) states: "Faulkner's fictional world is easily recognized as a 'land haunted by memory' (Gray 231, cited in Fennell 35). Yoknapatawpha County, his fictional area in… READ MORE

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