"A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once."
William Faulkner
"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain."
William Faulkner
William Faulkner is one of those authors that haunts my academic dreams. I have read his writings throughout my high school and college careers. I still to this day think Faulkner enjoyed writing about crazy people and corpses. I have read "As I Lay Dying" in a college English class and we spent a total of 12 hours talking about how bad the body must have smelled. I believe anyone who can write a story and you can recall specific details from the book two years later has a gift. I can still remember the story about the family caring their mother's body through all those towns and the vultures circling above them. The smell so foul they were told to keep the body outside of the town. He is the most talented writer that I can't stand to read.
"A Rose for Emily"
Oh crazy Emily. Emily doesn't need a rose. The woman just needs some fresh air.
"A Rose for Emily" is about a lonely woman that was controlled by her father. Her father's dominating behavior caused serious mental trauma to Emily. Faulkner draws his readers in by making them feel sorry for Emily, then he waited to the last part of the story to reveal just how mentally disturbed Emily was. In the last line, "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair." Faulkner's way of telling us not only did Emily kill Homer, but she was still sleeping with his dead corpse by only three words "iron-gray hair" is a wonderful piece of writing. I love that Faulkner writes about southerns, but why does he have to make us look so delusional? I also don't understand why Faulkner wrote about people doing weird things with their loved one's bodies. Sorry, I just can't curl up by the fire and enjoy reading a William Faulkner story.
Flannery O'Connor wrote, "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic." I'd love to hear the class talk about which category Emily falls into. (I'll have to remember to ask this Wednesday night!)
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