Faulkner uses his character in order to recreate the mentality which existed in the south right before the Civil war. Thomas gets a heir from his first wife, but the fact that she is half black makes him reject her and abandon both her and the baby. Sutpen is a symbol of the south, in which the color of man's skin was determinant of his value. Therefore, being half black, his son is unworthy of his attention and his fortune.
Henry, his other son almost convinces himself that his half brother Charles Bon is appropriate to marry their sister Judith until he finds out that he is half black- which leads to his killing. All these details come to the readers from different voices in the novel making the reading experience thrilling and constructing the characters in a complex manner. Through the voice of the characters who tell the story the readers travel back and forth on the temporal axis. Rosa Coldfield becomes the link between the past and the present, belonging to both dimensions. The intervention of the author is made under the form of comments coming from an omniscient third person author. We understand that the writer has a complete knowledge of both the story and the character and that
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these will be revealed through a puzzle like technique, allowing us to understand the actions which led to the denouement, but also the motivations supporting them.
It must be underlined that the various characters which tell the story have various attitudes towards Thomas. This, together with their different disposition on the time scale (which corresponds...
During this expose into Stupen's relationship with Miss Coldfield's past, is where the heavy introduction of the "stream of consciousness" tactic comes forth. This model permeates the entire Faulkner work, however it is extremely prevalent within the first several chapters. Indeed, Faulkner sets up the integration of this model by the use of Quentin's "consciousness" throughout the description of Miss Coldfield's past. Quentin, incorporates Miss Coldfield's "historic narrative" with his
narration in four novels, "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, "Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway, "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren, and "Absalom, Absalom!" By William Faulkner. Specifically, it compares are contrast the four different methods of narration in each of these novels. Each of these classic novels uses a different form of narration to set the stage for the characters and move the
Moreover, according to William T. Going "The treatment of the surface chronology of a Rose for Emily is not mere perversity or purposeful blurring; it points up the elusive, illusive quality of time that lies at the heart of the story; it is at once the simplest and subtlest of Faulkner's achievements in one of his best stories" (53). Other critics have observed that several times in the narrative, time
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