Beginning with the last full paragraph on page 60 and concluding at the page break on page 62--"Out in the swamp they made great ceremony over the mule.... The yaller mule was gone from the town except for the porch talk, and for the children visiting his bleaching bones now and then in the spirit of adventure"--the narrator does something peculiar by personifying the buzzards. They engage in a kind of antiphonal response, the leader questioning those gathered, they in turn making reply.
What do you think is the purpose of this personification? What's being suggested here about the connection between people and buzzards? What might the mule represent first to the people gathered, secondly to the buzzards? Is this scene merely comical, or do you see something profound here about the novel's commentary on the collective character of the townspeople?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Faulkner
Consider various views of God articulated and enacted by characters in Faulkner's Light in August. To be sure, Hightower, Byron Bunch, Mr. McEachern, Doc Hines, and Lena Grove seem to have competing and sometimes contradictory views of God.
Your assignment is to discuss in one or two paragraphs one of the more disturbing views of God found in the novel. What might the novel suggest about the way in which people use their understanding of God to justify violence, racism, cruelty, and a host of other evils? And does the novel give us an alternative presentation of God, or of a character’s understanding of God?
As you ponder this matter, you may consider also the following excerpt from Alfred Kazin’s God and the American Writer:
“When his daughter ran away with a ‘Mexican’ circus hand, Doc Hines killed the man, and after his daughter died in childbirth on Christmas Eve, he left the baby on the steps of an orphanage. He even became janitor in the place to make sure that the ‘nigger’ would never be allowed to contaminate anyone.
“This race madness goes hand in hand with a Calvinist belief in the elect and the hopeless sinfulness of others. It is found both in Joe Christmas’s rigidly doctrinaire foster father, Calvin McEachern, and in his future mistress Joanna Burden, a descendant of New Hampshire Puritans who came to the South in order to change its ways. These torments about purity and guilt are to Faulkner the white Southerner the remains of an inhuman creed that added bigotry and arrogance to the curse of slavery. These are the fruits of a church that has lost its spiritual function and that has been deserted by the Reverend Gail Hightower, who spends his days in reveries of the Confederacy’s irretrievable glory….
“There are no gods in Faulkner’s world—only ‘the Opponent’ checkmating Lena’s seducer and ‘the Player’ who will idly move Joe Christmas’s murderer toward the victim.”
Remember, you are not responding to Kazin’s statements, but to the novel (or rather, a small section of the novel). Kazin’s remarks may simply help you to think about the matter.
Your assignment is to discuss in one or two paragraphs one of the more disturbing views of God found in the novel. What might the novel suggest about the way in which people use their understanding of God to justify violence, racism, cruelty, and a host of other evils? And does the novel give us an alternative presentation of God, or of a character’s understanding of God?
As you ponder this matter, you may consider also the following excerpt from Alfred Kazin’s God and the American Writer:
“When his daughter ran away with a ‘Mexican’ circus hand, Doc Hines killed the man, and after his daughter died in childbirth on Christmas Eve, he left the baby on the steps of an orphanage. He even became janitor in the place to make sure that the ‘nigger’ would never be allowed to contaminate anyone.
“This race madness goes hand in hand with a Calvinist belief in the elect and the hopeless sinfulness of others. It is found both in Joe Christmas’s rigidly doctrinaire foster father, Calvin McEachern, and in his future mistress Joanna Burden, a descendant of New Hampshire Puritans who came to the South in order to change its ways. These torments about purity and guilt are to Faulkner the white Southerner the remains of an inhuman creed that added bigotry and arrogance to the curse of slavery. These are the fruits of a church that has lost its spiritual function and that has been deserted by the Reverend Gail Hightower, who spends his days in reveries of the Confederacy’s irretrievable glory….
“There are no gods in Faulkner’s world—only ‘the Opponent’ checkmating Lena’s seducer and ‘the Player’ who will idly move Joe Christmas’s murderer toward the victim.”
Remember, you are not responding to Kazin’s statements, but to the novel (or rather, a small section of the novel). Kazin’s remarks may simply help you to think about the matter.
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