Southern Renaissance William Faulkner (1897-1962)

• Students will likely find As I Lay Dying confusing, difficult to relate to, and depressing. They are more likely to appreciate the novel if you preface their reading with a short introduction to Faulkner and to the modernist techniques he uses to tell his story. After students have read a few of the monologues, spend some class time letting them discuss the fragmentation and dislocation they feel; then use their comments to explore the epistemological and ontological questions the novel raises. How do Faulkner’s characters know what they know? How do we know what we know? How do the Bundrens come to be who they are? How do we become who we are? Can we consider any of the novel’s fifteen different narrators “reliable”? Working in groups, ask your students to write a character sketch of each of the novel’s fifteen narrators. The sketch should describe the character and his or her context. After students have completed their sketches, ask each group to share their description and to tell the class whether their narrator is reliable and why.
• Because Faulkner looms as such an imposing figure over the American literary canon, you may need to push your students to be critical of his authority. One way to do this is to ask your students to think about Faulkner’s social position and compare it to that of the Bundren family in As I Lay Dying. To help your students understand the Bundrens a bit better, ask them to create a family/relationship tree that indicates with arrows how the characters are connected to one another and which gives the page number and chapter title in which we learn of the characters’ personalities. Using their relationship trees as points of reference, ask your students to consider some of the following questions: What would someone of Faulkner’s social standing typically think of people like the Bundrens? Is Faulkner making fun of the Bundrens, and if so, why? At what points do we want to laugh at the Bundrens? Why? At what points do we want to weep? Does the novel suggest any reasons for the Bundren’s poverty? Why, for example, is Anse Bundren depicted as someone who never breaks a sweat?

1. Comprehension: Who are the Bundrens? What is their position in their community? What do their neighbors seem to think of them? How does their community’s impression of the Bundrens affect our impression of them?
2. Comprehension: What drives Anse Bundren and his children to put themselves through all the trials required to bury Addie in Jefferson? Why don’t the Bundrens just bury Addie at home? Do Anse and his children seem motivated by love and respect for their dead wife and mother, or are they driven by other forces?
3. Comprehension: In the opening scene of “Barn Burning,” in which Mr. Harris has accused Abner Snopes of burning his barn, Harris suggests the judge question Sarty about the incident, but the judge hesitates and Harris eventually changes his mind. Why don’t these men want to ask Sarty to testify against his father? What does their reluctance to do so tell us about how they view the Snopes family?
4. Context: Compare Faulkner’s depiction of a poor white southern family in “Barn Burning” to the Southern Agrarians’ praise of the rural, soil-centered life. How does the Snopes family match up with the Agrarians’ ideals?
5. Exploration: Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County can sometimes seem like the land that time forgot. This is especially true in As I Lay Dying, in which much of the plot unfolds in rural areas which, while geographically not far from the somewhat modern community of Jefferson, seem separated from the modern world by a much wider gulf. While historians of the 1920s and 1930s emphasize the increasing pace of industrialization and technological change that was reshaping the world between the wars, the citizens of Yoknapatawpha County seem oblivious. Yet, in a more indirect sense, the effects of these global changes are inescapably woven into Faulkner’s texts. Discuss the ways in which the larger changes in the “outside world” contribute to Faulkner’s imaginary world.
6. Exploration: Because of the dark settings and disturbing themes of much of his writing, Faulkner is often regarded as a master of the southern gothic. How does Faulkner compare to other “gothic” writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe or Nathaniel Hawthorne? (See Unit 6.) In what ways are Hawthorne and Faulkner concerned with “the sins of the fathers”? How similar or different are their views of these “sins”?

[3309] Letter, Philip Avery Stone to John Sharp Williams requesting support for William Faulkner’s appointment as postmaster at the University of Mississippi (1922), 
courtesy of the Library of Congress [A86].
This position of postmaster was a way for Faulkner to earn an income and continue writing, as it paid a full salary, but did not require full-time work.

[5122] Anonymous, Rowan Oak, Old Taylor Rd., Oxford, Lafayette County, MS, 
courtesy of the Library of Congress [HABS, Miss, 36-OXFO, 9-].
William Faulkner’s home in Mississippi. Highly formalized in their layout, large plantations usually centered on the “big house,” an imposing, often neoclassical structure designed as an expression of the good taste and prosperity of the owner.

[6948] Jack E. Boucher, South front and west side, Rowan Oak, Old Taylor Rd., Oxford, Lafayette County, MS [William Faulkner’s old house] (1975), 
courtesy of the Library of Congress [HABS, MISS, 36-OXFO, 9-4].
The myth of the “Old South” generally referred to the “plantation legend” of antebellum (and much postbellum) popular fiction that portrayed white southerners as genteel aristocrats and slavery as a benevolent, paternal institution from which blacks and whites benefited equally. Although Faulkner grew up in a neoclassical “big house,” he challenged this myth in his fiction.

[7488] Anonymous, William Faulkner Handed 1949 Nobel Prize of $30,000 for Literature (1949), 
courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos.
Some audiences eagerly anticipated Faulkner’s acceptance of the Nobel Prize, as he rarely spoke publicly or dressed formally.