final thoughts on Faulkner

Faulkner is a genius for making his characters human.

All of them – none of them were monsters, not even Jason. Faulkner showed how Jason has some remnant of allegiance to old ways in looking out for those under him, like his mother and Caddie, although he milked it for all it was worth. He was a coherent character.

But I’m fascinated by the final chapter. The gorgeous lush descriptions of Dilsey iron the image of an old weatherbeaten woman, somehow still strong and beautiful, standing against the beginning and the end that she saw, into the reader’s mind. “Two tears slid down her fallen cheeks, in and out of the myriad coruscations of immolation and abnegation and time,” Faulkner describes, highlighting her role as perhaps the one thing that withstands the test of time and the destruction of the Compson family.

I think the sparseness of Faulkner’s language is gorgeous and lyrical as the best of the Romantics; the sparseness fits the tone of the age – the Modern age – and boils down the essence of man into something actually realistic. Granted, Faulkner’s tales aren’t exactly hopeful—why didn’t he believe the truth of the sermon WHICH HE WROTE?!—but still somehow, when shorn of all the extraneous superfluity—the words which one cannot stand—then the bones are there—and the bones are sound.

What I mean is, boil a man down to his essence and you’ll see God; God is inescapable. God is inescapable in the love shown in Dilsey’s care for Benjy—inescapable in the love of Benjy for Caddie—even inescapable in the hopeless metaphysical meanderings of Quentin, poor, lost man. I have this theory that man defines himself either in agreement with or in opposition to God (and sometimes – a lot of times – both at once). Regardless, God is there. The Sound and the Fury exemplifies that.

Mary Sue Daoud, senior, Fall 2012

Eliot's Burnt Norton

Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” uses the imagery of gardens and childhood to show the loss of innocence. The road not taken was a possibility, and is now gone. Time remains fixed. You can hear the laughter, and see the beauty, but you are always reminded that temptation is there pulling you away. Time is reminding you of what was, what is, what might have been, and what may be. The children laugh because they are not yet affected by this. But the narrator sees time stretching on and on, and wishes for the innocence that cannot be regained. His is a lonely world, one of constant motion and stillness, one of paradoxes. The innocence and laughter are hidden to him. Perhaps one day he will find what he is looking for. But for now he sees only time, and the fallen state of man. He sees the pain Christ endured when being tempted, and Christ was the only one who did not sin. And he shows that this is the one who endures the most pain. He is the one who sees the most of the despair, pain, and brokenness of the world and its language. For Christ he sees all of time. This poem embodies the loss of innocence and the pain Christ endured while on earth. This poem probably has a lot more going on in it, and this entry may be completely wrong, but this is what I've been able to figure out about this poem. Eliot’s poetry always gives you something new each time you read it, but you never feel like you've fully understood it or delved through all of the layers of meaning.