William Faulkner’s Characters and Narrative Style
William Faulkner had different approaches in his fiction. He was interested in moral judgment, in the values of the Southern people, as well as in human psychology. Through every individual character, he reflects all this.
His characters represented the complexity of human life. He explored his characters. For instance, Sartoris, Burden, Snopes, McCaslin.
Numerous characters populate his work. There are minor characters, but each one attracts the reader’s attention because all the characters are fundamentally about human beings.
Most of his narrators are omniscient. He wanted his characters to speak for themselves. That is why readers were sometimes disconcerted, because he did not repeat a narrative pattern for each character.
He is interested in each individual experience (personal identity). The technique he uses is that each character appears in juxtaposed scenes, and he combines these scenes in a simultaneous way. Characters are presented as if they were alive.
Identity is not a fixed pattern. Life is continually changing. Instead of a single, fixed identity, we see identifications, influenced by factors like paternal or maternal authority.
Characters are in continuous self-definition. He explores human possibilities inherent in the individuality of each character. Thus, characters try to understand their own identity. Identity is presented as a result of numerous circumstances.
Values characterize these characters: honor, pride, friendship, courage, and the pity of the Southern people, who are often portrayed as warmer than Northern people. If they choose or reject any of these values, they evolve in one direction or another. These values are presented as true to real identity.
Each character is free to choose or reject any of these values.
Faulkner stated, “The characters teach the writer things that he didn’t know.” He learned from his free characters.
Types of Narrators
Fallible Narrator
Develops a point of view, recognizes mistakes, and tries to correct their vision. Ultimately, observes the limitations of their own understanding. Both the characters and the narrator recognize that they are not perfect.
Rhetoric Narrator
Completes the reader’s view of the character, providing extra information.
Faulkner explores the complexity of the human mind. He proceeds by combining spaces and time.
His narrators are often omniscient; they know everything.
Faulkner is often considered to have failed as a poet because he did not succeed at poetry. But he loved language.
Classification of Faulkner’s Fiction
The Story Novel
Often set in Yoknapatawpha County, connected to Oxford (south of Mississippi). These are novels composed of short stories characterized by three aspects:
- First, they can be considered as a narrative unit.
- Second, each story is connected to the other stories.
- Third, these stories are a way of exploring characters.
Novel of Formal Juxtaposition
These novels have significant action and focus on a particular state of mind of characters. Faulkner plays with past and present because each character develops interior monologues. He introduced time and space in order to present the multiple options of human action. It is necessary to observe the uniqueness of the human experience, not just a unique identity.
Punishment and pain were often associated with jail in his works. Prison was not only a punishment, but Faulkner also explored how the experience could potentially transform a person.
Faulkner has been compared with Tolstoy.