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AN ABSTRACT OF A THESIS

THE HOME FRONT IN FAULKNERS WAR FICTION

Roxann Wylie

Master of Arts in English

William FaulknersLight in August, Two Soldiers, and Shall Not Perish,display how war can have harsh consequences on Americans living at the home front.

Faulkner relies on both a psychological and societal definition of the phrase homefront. In these three works, Faulkner does not describe any of his characters servingin the war; however, he illustrates that war has remarkably disturbed people residing

either decades removed from a particular war or thousands of miles away from thefighting. The indirect effects of war tragically change the family situations of these

characters left at home during the war.

The characters in these stories suffer from psychological problems caused bythe aftermath of war. InLight in August, the Civil War has upset Gale Hightowers

family creating mental disruption that Hightower cannot conquer. Hightower has theinability to muddle through his emotional pain deriving from his familys past, so

instead of conforming to his society, which also suffers from Civil War repercussions,Hightower recreates an imaginary Civil War home front within his mind. Although

Hightower did not fight in the Civil War, his mental instability comes as an indirectresult of war evolving from memories of his grandfather serving as a Confederate

Soldier.

In Faulkners two short stories Two Soldiers and Shall Not Perish, Major

de Spain and members of the Grier family attempt to bear the depressingconsequences of war. Although the members of these two families desire peace, they

cannot avoid war, even when they try to ignore it. In Two Soldiers, the Grier familyhopes that life will remain quiet in their small Mississippi town, but the loss of theirson forces them to realize that they cannot escape the reality of the Second World

War.

The plot in Faulkners next war story, Shall Not Perish, also centers around

the Grier family, but Faulkner uses this story to display that fighting overseas stillcauses devastation to many Americans back at home. Faulkner portrays the familiesof different economic and social backgrounds to convey that war affects all classes of

society; no gender, race, or class can escape the fighting, and the tragedies caused byit hurt and equalize everyone involved.

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THE HOME FRONT IN FAULKNERS WAR FICTION

________________________

A Thesis

Presented to

the Faculty of the Graduate School

Tennessee Technological University

by

Roxann Wylie

________________________

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF ARTS

English

________________________

December 2 9

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UMI Number: 1474653

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERSThe quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscriptand there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,

a note will indicate the deletion.

UMI 1474653Copyright 2010by ProQuest LLC.

All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected againstunauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest LLC789 East Eisenhower Parkway

P.O. Box 1346Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346

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CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL OF THESIS

THE HOME FRONT IN FAULKNERS WAR FICTION

by

Roxann Wylie

Graduate Advisory Committee:

________________________________ ___________

Michael Burduck, Chairperson date

________________________________ ___________

Homer Kemp date

________________________________ ___________Tony Baker date

Approved for the Faculty:

___________________________________Francis Otuonye

Associate Vice President for Researchand Graduate Studies

___________________________________Date

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edication

I want to dedicate this to God, who has given me my

talents and gifts, so that I might return Him the glory: Not that

we are adequate in ourselves as to consider anything as coming

from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God (2 Corinthians

3:5, New American Standard Bible).

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Acknowledgements

I greatly appreciate the continuous support and instruction

from Dr. Burduck, who taught me to love William Faulkners

literature and helped me throughout the entire process of

completing this project. I also want to thank my mom and dad

for providing me the opportunity to achieve my goals and for

encouraging me along the way.

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v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

1. The Tragedy of War in History, Literature, and Society..1

2. Hightowers Pyschological Home Front.19

3. Joannas Social War Against Racism....34

4. The Inescapable Tragedies of War in Faulkners Two Soldiers and

Shall Not Perish .44

5. Suffering Produces Tragic and Determined Characters..63

6. Works Cited.70

7. Vita...75

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CHAPTER 1

THE TRAGEDY OF WAR IN HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND SOCIETY

Psychological frustration and emotional upset define the personal struggles

of those living with the repercussions of war. Twentieth-century war literature

attempts to capture the various effects war has on individuals. Three of William

Faulkners works on war,Light in August, Two Soldiers, and Shall Not

Perish, portray not the common representation of distressed soldiers, but how

war can harshly alter the mental stability of people living on the countrys home

front during and following such a tragic conflict.

A country assimilates governmental, military, and civilian constituents

when engaging in war. War not only dramatically alters the lives of soldiers, but

also disrupts the lives of civilians by tearing apart their communities and families.

The Civil War produced the greatest rupture to United States society in the

nineteenth century, with Southerners suffering insurmountable losses in property,

business, and lives of their loved ones. Kenneth Stamp describes the United

States failure to resolve the conflicts that sparked the Civil War: That they were

not solved short of war is our greatest national tragedy. Our failure not to solve

them short of war is our greatest national failure (160). Americas inability to

reconstruct Southern communities after 1865 contributed to the insoluble

problems that the new country had to conquer and illustrates the setbacks that

most societies must overcome following a tragic war.

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People living after the nineteenth-century may not have the ability to

comprehend the massive tragedies Southern communities experienced during and

after the Civil War, yet history and literature relate the emotional, cultural, and

economic strife forced upon many individuals in America. William G. Thomas

explains how historians and authors attempt to offer insight into the unified

community that the Civil War destroyed and the South could not reconstruct.

Thomas states that the Civil War affected American communities more than

people may realize: In the twentieth century Americans tend to see war as

something that happens elsewhere far-away, and to view home front and

battlefield as separate and distinct worlds (313). The Civil War involved not only

those directly associated with the war, such as soldiers and politicians, but also

tragically influenced individuals and communities. The travesties of the Civil War

concerned both soldiers and civilians: Considering Civil War history from the

perspective of communities blurs the distinction between battlefield and home

front. The soldiers on the battlefield were connected inextricably to their

communities, and citizens at home closely followed their communities (Thomas

313).

Literature on war supplies the means for authors to express several

prominent American themes. Writers use novels illustrating the difficult times of

war as a tool for encouraging Americans to be more grateful for their social

stability, economic prosperity, and political freedom. In The American Soldier in

War Fiction, Peter Aichinger states, The war novel has thus provided a medium

of expression for some important themes that are especially related to the

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American character (109). Aichinger believes Americans had a peculiar opinion

of warfare: America is a new society, lacking any military tradition, and there is

no reason for it to conform to the outlook of older Western societies (109). Well-

known authors including Thomas Paine, Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Henry

James expressed how America strove to create an individual military structure and

not imitate other countries armed forces. Through their literary works these

authors express how Americans should not live the European way of life but

should have the freedom to practice individual beliefs concerning society and

religion.

According to Aichinger, war-themed novels have inspired a vast number

of American authors since the 1880s and have also established cohesion among

authors of diverse interests. Many authors launched their literary careers by

writing war literature, including Stephen Crane, John Dos Passos, William

Faulkner, James Jones, Irwin Shaw, and Norman Mailer. The war novel genre

also inspired Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville and other accomplished, well-

known authors to pen works about war.

The war novel created a resource available for writers to express masculine

interests through stories with simplistic moral values and daring characters. The

dangerous circumstances in war and the disparity of the characters efforts to

survive allow novelists freedom to create an almost envious dream of bravery,

simplicity, and devotion (Aichinger 109). This aspect of war novels forms a

paradox in American literature: The authors tend to admire the idea of the

soldierly virtues while they detest the fact of the military establishment (109).

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Aichingers remarks acknowledge and describe the objective viewpoint of

warfare common in many novels of the nineteenth-century. Two popular authors

of that time period, Crane and Melville, established in their literary works a view

of war as imminent, yet not disastrous, describing it as an interesting, but not

necessarily horrifying phenomenon (115). The perspective in these novels

observes the conflicts of war without taking a judgmental approach.

Authors of war literature strive not merely to analyze the military issues or

psychological issues of the soldiers, but rather to interpret war from various

perspectives. Jones describes how the stance from which the author writes

remains crucial to an interpretation of the war novel, as in much modern

literature (9). Novelists of war want to convey a message that offers an

evaluation on this subject; therefore, they create characters who express their

opinions on war. According to Jones, the war novel usually has an overall

message: The war novel is almost always an ethical forum, expressing outrage or

describing a search for meaning in the dilemma of war (9).

Robert Penn Warrens book, The Legacy of the Civil War, describes how

all facets of war create physical and emotional drama and also depicts how the

Civil War changed the United States forever, concurrently exposing the problems

in American society caused by the dramatic transformation to the United States

economy, politics, and communities (48). Warren discusses the struggling new

culture by questioning its organization: will the new nation avoid cultural

starvation and include individual variety as well as social and individual

integrity (49)? The Civil War harmed society by breaking up families,

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economies, and communities, later evolving into problems with individuals who

could not overcome the pernicious changes. Warren explains how the economic

loss following war affects individual people: This cost is psychological, and it is,

of course, different for the winner and the loser (53). The war forced the losing

Southerners to forgo their strong racist beliefs despite feelings of opposition

towards the new integration of cultures (Warren 53). This loss of societal identity

created a loss of individual identity generating not only societal problems but also

mental strife within its members.

In order to comment on this dilemma in society, Stephen Cranes novel

The Red Badge of Courage (1895) overlooks the brutal combat that accompanies

war in order to focus on the conflicting cultures and races forced into integration

by the Civil War.According to John Rowe, the novel illustrates how the Civil

War failed to change the ideas held by society on racism. Rowe establishes that

the novels portrayal of the white men humiliating black men represents the

political and racist issues that Union soldiers forget throughout the rest of Cranes

narrative and suggests reading this narrative as a full symbolic significance about

just what Americansfailedto achieve in the Civil War (142).

During World War I, Ernest Hemingway created a new angle on war

embodied in his novelA Farewell to Arms (1929), which pioneered the way for

war novelists who preferred taking a philosophical approach. The novel presents

the story of the protagonist, Lieutenant Henry, who struggles to keep his sense of

reason in a world dominated by war that has become completely irrational. Henry

flees from the fighting to the neutral country of Switzerland. Hemingway presents

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this scene as a metaphor for life: The Lieutenants inability to escape the war

represents the inability of any person from escaping problems in the real world, no

matter how hard he or she tries.

Another World War I novel, Thomas Boyds Through the Wheatillustrates

the depressing aspects of war resembling those depicted inA Farewell to Arms.

The main character, William Hicks, enlists in the military with hopes to see some

action (Jones 9); however, after enlisting, Hicks evolves into a fearful, slacking

soldier, who experiences the cruel side of combat when he sees his best friend and

other unarmed soldiers shot to death. This novel reveals the psychological effects

of warfare when Hicks experience finally drives him into insanity. Hicks

experience in World War I resembles Joe Bonhams experience narrated in

Johnny Got His Gun (1939) by Dalton Trumbo. Bonham enlists himself in the

war, but then spends the rest of his life in a hospital bed regretting his decision to

join the war.

World War II novels differ from previous war fiction by creating a more

dramatic version of action and including characters, mostly of commanding rank,

with strong wills and almost preternatural qualities. This type of character

presides in the novels recommended by literary critic Peter G. Jones:William W.

Hainess Command Decision(1948), John P. MarquandsMellville Goodwin,

USA(1951), and James BassettsHarms Way(1962). The prominent characters

in these World War II novels tend only to struggle after practicing incorrect

judgment, which results in serious consequences.

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The twentieth-century novelist and short story writer William Faulkner

successfully displays the personalities of his characters through his narration

techniques. Ineke Bockting expounds the manner in which Faulkners

presentation of his characters thoughts separated his writing from the literary

works of his predecessors: In contrast to characters in the earlier realist

tradition, in the modernistic characters of Faulkners psychological novels The

Sound and the Fury,As I lay Dying,Light in AugustandAbsalom, Absalom! the

complexity, the layeredness, the fluidity, and the paradoxical qualities of identity

itself have become a psychological reality (14). Bockting explains that reality

lies in humans existence and relationship with nature and analyzes the way in

which Faulkner combines research in psychiatry and psychology with literary

style in order to show characters who rely on the mind to create the world in

which they live.

The many characters in Faulkners literary works create tales told from

many diverse perspectives. In Malcolm Cowleys interview with him in The

Portable Faulkner, Faulkner refers to the opinions expressed by his fictional

characters as voices (Cowley 114). Faulkners literary works mirror many

themes in the Southern society of the early twentieth century including social

classification, family and community unity, racism, economic strife, individual

well-being, wars aftermath, and how the government affects civilians, but more

importantly, Faulkners voices reflect the attitudes of many typical groups

associated with these societal problems. Donald M. Kartinager describes how

Faulkners unique writing strategy presents the characters attitudes: The voices

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of a vast array of characters demanding to be heard; the voices of interpreters

inside the action, probing the mysteries and meaning of long-ago events; the

voices of outside narrators, reporting with apparent accuracy the scenes taking

place as well as commenting with apparent authority on their significance and

value (28).

Faulkner describes the way he creates some of the characters in his literary

works: Sometimes I do not like the voices, but I dont change it (Cowley 114).

Readers may not always agree with the ideas presented in Faulkners literature,

and the voices may sadden, anger, or disturb its audience, but Faulkners

fictional characters always present a real interpretation of American culture and

communities with the majority of his works highlighting those in the South.

Kartinager compares Faulkner to the narrator in The Sound and the Furywho may

not always agree with the voices, but nevertheless has an obligation to

transcribe what they say: He [the narrator] is still one of those imaginary voices

insisting that, for all the ghostliness of his invisible participation, he too must be

heard and recorded - as if he too were one of the masters the amanuensis Faulkner

must heed, whether he likes it or not (29).

Faulkner presents many voices in his fiction and creates characters with

diverse personalities that flourish throughout his fiction pertaining to the Civil

War and World War II. Christopher C. De Santis discusses Faulkners characters

who mentally struggle through the reconstruction era following the Civil War and

explains how these characters represent the Southern pessimistic attitude, a mind-

set that opposed their communitys reformation and integration. In Faulkners

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Absalom, Absalom!, the Civil War destroys Rosa Coldfields racist ideology and

her dependence on black slaves for the prosperity of her white race. De Santis

describes her bitter character: With the abolishment of slavery comes the

breakdown of the legally-sanctioned barriers that enabled Rosa to exist, in her

own mind untouched by the racial other, and the reality of the situation leads her

to some cumulative over-reach of despair itself (17). Many Southerners during

this period of reconstruction feared the rising power of the black race, and in order

to stop the African Americans from gaining authority, they socially boycotted and

hated the black minorities. Faulkners novels reveal this racist belief but do not

imply that Faulkner held the same Southern prejudices:

The notion thatAbsalom, Absalom! represents Reconstruction as a

tragic era is correct; the tragedy, however, as Shreve suggests, didnot lie with southern whites such as Miss Rosa or Sutpen, but rather

with the blacks whose aspirations after emancipiation were crushed

by the racism of those characters. (De Santis 22)

Faulkner also portrays the suppression of the black race in his Civil War

novel The Unvanquished, which captures the confusion of white rebels who

contest freeing their slaves contrasted with slaves who strive to obtain their

freedom promised by Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 (Doyle 9).

This story describes how the Union army pushed its way into the South causing

many slave masters to fear that their slaves would rebel. The Unvanquished shows

Faulkners ability and tendency to portray fiction based on attitudes of other

people whom he encountered while living in the Southern Mississippi culture.

Faulkner scholar Don Doyle explains how this novel gives a picture of wars

many consequences that disrupted civilian lives as well as those of the soldiers:

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In Faulkners images of burned plantation houses with whites

living in the cabins of their escaped slaves, Faulkner captured theessence of this cruel new form of war. His own home county had

provided a dress rehearsal for total war that would find its fullest

expression in Shermans March to the sea. (Doyle 8)

Doyle describes the type of war demonstrated in The Unvanquished and

much of Faulkners other war fiction, which invades the home front and goes

beyond military conflict, as total war and offers more exemplification of total

war by retelling the account of Union soldiers mistreatment of the citizens in

Faulkners hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. General Ulysses S. Grant moved his

army into the South in an attempt to gain control of the Mississippi River. The

Union policy of total war created resistance in Mississippi communities,

resulting in gloating from many Mississippi civilians over the Confederates

successful attack on the Union supply station. As punishment for the civilians,

Grant confiscated the food from the farms in the Oxford area leaving the

townspeople in disarray.

History encouraged and inspired Faulkner to write many literary works on

war. Noel Polk explains why Faulkner wrote a substantial amount of war

literature: His life was framed by war--by the cultural memory of the still-

regnant physical scars of the Civil War on one endpunctuated throughout by

military irruptions and their bitter residues (vii). Although born after the end of

the Civil War, Faulkner grew up in a Southern community around people who

were obsessed with and often quite knowledgeable about the Civil War (Doyle

3). Civil War tales filled the local newspaper, school, and courthouse square with

stories that enraptured Faulkner as a young man. The war stories, told by those

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who lived through the Civil War, gave Faulkner research for his future works on

war. Faulkners experience around post-war culture contributed to his adult role

as an intuitive interpreter of his people and their past (Doyle 3).

Unlike Civil War researchers, Faulkner does not attempt to dictate an

accurate history of the Civil War, but rather strives to reveal the circumstances

both preceding and following the Civil War. Faulkner, like most other novelists

narrating Civil War events, focuses on how the war affected civilians because

Civil War experts neglect to study the results of war in the home front. Most

historians only cover the political and military issues of war: The social history

of the home front and combatants was only beginning to be discovered by

historians in the 1930s; novelists were already exploring that terrain (Doyle 5).

Faulkner not only experienced the post-Civil War community of Oxford,

but also lived through the First World War, a conflict that inspired much of his

war literature. His frustrating rejection from the Aviation Section of the United

States Army stimulated the disappointment that he describes in many of his

literary works. InFaulkner: A Biography, Joseph Blotner recorded that Faulkners

explanation for rejection by the military was that to his weight and height were

insufficient. Faulkner later joined the Royal Air Force and barely made it to

Canada two months before Armistice Day in 1918. The end of the First World

War shattered Faulkners romantic dreams of becoming a military pilot. Despite

his frustration over never acquiring first-hand experience in combat, Faulkner still

wrote many war stories and novels. He received war tales as second-hand

information from Civil War veterans and also possessed his own disappointing

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experience in the Great War that contributed to his understanding of the gravity of

war. Faulkners awareness of wars misfortunes contrasts with the glorified and

positive expectations of war that he once held. Noel Polk compares Faulkner to

individuals longing for war prior to their experiences with it:

Recall the tens of thousands, North and South, who eagerly enlistedduring the Civil War, and who marched off to their deathsand the

thousands of others during World War I, like Faulkner himself,

who longed for war so intensely that they lied about their ages orwent to Canada to enlist. (Polk 142)

Faulkner created original literature that focuses on how war affects the

home front, which reflects his experience in the war torn community of Oxford,

Mississippi. Donald M. Kartiganer explains how Faulkners war fiction does not

report a fictional account of the wars that he wrote about: the Civil War and

World War II. Instead, Faulkner depicts these wars as fantasized as reckless

adventurewars that have paused and are about to begin again, but never the

plausible violent reality of actual battle (Kartiganer 619). Faulkner relates his

encounter with war fiction while uncovering the historical and psychological

background of Southern culture and intermingling his works with the societal

attitudes that he observed in the early twentieth-century. According to Kartiganer,

the tragedies in much of Faulkners war fiction developed out of the crises in his

individual life and family history. Faulkners research and first-hand experience

influenced his innovation of war stories and novels that comment on issues

outside of those merely on the battlefield: Together they comprise a series of

modernist moments that pervade Faulkners fiction, assuming a distinctive

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resonance in his treatment of the wars that preoccupy him throughout his career

(Kartiganer 620).

Faulkners war fiction presents similar tragedies to those about whom he

wrote in the rest of his literature. Linda J. Holland-Toll explains that Faulkners

literary works establish tragic communities and present mostly corrupt and

incompetent characters who fail to offer any positive resolutions to their

community. The Faulknerian tragedy lies within the hopeless community where

the characters cannot find any purpose. Holland-Toll states: It is equally tragic to

struggle helplessly against forces that are so enervating and so consuming that one

has, in the end, nothing to fall back on save the uncaring community and the

unendurable knowledge that nothing one does is ultimately worth doing (450).

The unresolved conflict, static action, and helpless characters in Faulkners stories

have challenged the standard tragedy illustrated in traditional fiction.

Faulkner derives this hopelessness from a realistic view of the community

and in many of his works reveals the frustrating consequences war brings upon a

society. Mr. Compson in Faulkners novelAbsalom, Absalom! overvalues the

ceremony of sending troops off to war: Mimic marching and countermarching of

the sons and the brothers the bright gallant deluded blood and flesh dressed in a

martial glitter of brass and plumes, marching away to a battle (Absalom,

Absalom! 97). Faulkners choice of words describes the scene with a glorified

view of war that he once held as a young man. This segment of the novel

describing the unrealistic perception of war held by many people in Faulkners

society is intermingled with harsh outcomes that society does not envision.

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Faulkner illustrates this reality when Mr. Compson compares the soldiers to

virgins going to be sacrificed to some heathen Principle, some Priapus (97).

Faulkners 1929 novel Sartoris,later renamedFlags in the Dust, reveals

that society cannot easily forget and overcome war. The characters in this novel

narrate stories from the Civil War and World War I in so much detail that they

practically relive their past war experiences. The aftermath of World War I

inspired Faulkners first novel Soldiers Paypublished in 1926. In the novel,

World War I has given Lieutenant Donald Mahon nothing but emotional scars and

an obvious physical scar on his face. The emotionally and physically drained

veteran returns home to Georgia and surprises his friends and family who long

presumed that Mahon died when his plane was shot down. His resurrection

causes his fiance to reject marrying him, leaving him even more unsatisfied and

bitter towards the time he spent serving his country. This novel further represents

the theme in World War I literature of highlighting the lives of low-ranking

soldiers and showing their inability to see the larger strategy of the military.

Faulkner wrote about similar adversity in his four short stories published in

These 13 (1931) and later added Turnabout to the group of World War I stories

when he republished them in The Wasteland section of Collected Stories

(1950). These short stories expose the physical and mental damages suffered by

World War I veterans and express the wasteland theme of men trying to find

meaning in their wartime experience. Ad Astra tells about the evening of seven

drunken soldiers trying to determine their purpose in life following the war,

illustrating how those who survive the war will never be able to return to the

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lives they knew before, because the world has been irrevocably changed by the

war (Cox 282). In his short stories on the Great War, Faulkner wrote about

soldiers with similar characteristics and strove to shed light on the truth about the

hardships they endured. Abid Vali describes why Faulkners World War I short

stories captured his readers: The protagonists are typically starry-eyed young

men forever changed by their suffering. In a post war era dominated by the search

for a reason for or truth about the war, Faulkners war stories were eminently

fashionable (201).

Another one of Faulkners characters cannot mentally overcome the

problems war caused in his family. InLight in August, Reverend Gale Hightower

dwells on the animosity among family members that developed during the Civil

War. As a child, Hightower became fixated on the stories told by his nanny about

all the glorious fighting of his grandfather during the Civil War, and later in

adulthood he continuously grips those stories with all of his emotions. Through

Hightowers narration, Faulkner shows how the reverend suffers mentally and

emotionally from images of his father and grandfathers constant quarrels over

clashing beliefs on the war. Hightower moves to the Southern town of Jefferson,

Mississippi, in pursuit of a career as a minister; however, he chose Jefferson

because his grandfather spent time there during the Civil War. Alwyn Berland

describes Hightowers obsession with his family, their connection to Jefferson,

and involvement in the Civil War: His grandfather, known only to Hightower

through the oral history of his childhood, became the emotional center of his life,

a figure enshrined in all the romantic, heroic imagery of the doomed chivalrous

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exploits of the Civil War (47). The grandfather arrived in Jefferson with his

Negro servant in order to escape the war but becomes involved in a cavalry raid

on the local general store. Their experience in Jefferson creates adventurous

family history and attracts Hightower to the town: Jefferson therefore becomes

the focus of young Hightowers lifeat seminary he plots to get an assignment in

Jefferson (Howell 184).

The results of the Civil War deeply affect another character inLight in

August, Joanna Burden, who fights a figurative war against racism and battles to

supply blacks with equal educational rights. With a heritage similar to

Hightowers, Joannas family history also haunts her because her grandfather

strongly supported freedom of the black slaves, yet he viewed blacks as inferior to

the white race; moreover, the Burden family migrated to Mississippi from the

North and receive persecution for their Northern beliefs. Although Joanna lives in

the reconstruction period following the Civil War, her beliefs isolate her from

Southern society and force her to make her house, which is physically distant

from the white community of Jefferson, into a home front escape from the social

war.

Faulkners Collected Stories contains more war literature, including two

short stories that describe the relationships between soldiers, their families, and

World War II. The stories Shall Not Perish and Two Soldiers depict the Grier

familys failed attempt to ignore World War II. In Two Soldiers the eight-year-

old narrator faces the difficult situation of watching his older brother, Pete Grier,

depart to fight in World War II. Although the Griers live in a small Mississippi

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community and believe they are detached from the war, their sons insistence on

leaving them to fight for his country forces the family to become actively involved

in the war.

Shall Not Perish begins with the disheartening scene of the narrator and

Mrs. Grier receiving the telegram announcing Petes death, followed by the

Griers visit to Major de Spain who also grieves over the loss of his son during the

war. Both Major de Spain and Mrs. Grier search for a reason why the war stole

the lives of their sons. These two stories represent how Americans had a positive

outlook on World War II prior to the hardship that they experienced while living

with wars aftermath. The war may have transpired in Europe, but the results still

shock the lives of families across the ocean living in the U.S.

Faulkners war fiction connects war to the home front and displays several

American families involvement with the Civil War and World War II in order to

relate to his readers how the communities and individuals are emotionally torn by

war. War can produce heartbreaking disturbances in civilians no matter their years

removed or miles away from the fighting. Faulkner clearly shows some of the

psychological frustration and emotional upset, which define the personal struggles

of those living with the repercussions of war. Influenced by his own experience

with war, Faulkner offered a perspective in his war literature that preceding

authors had not yet established. Although nineteenth and twentieth century war

literature offered various interpretations on the social changes associated with the

Civil War, World War I, and World War II, Faulkner created an original outlook

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on wars aftermath which is most evident and emotionally portrayed in his literary

worksLight in August, Two Soldiers, and Shall Not Perish.

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CHAPTER 2

HIGHTOWERS PSYCHOLOGICAL HOME FRONT

InLight in August, Gale Hightower cannot forget his familys adversity

resulting from the Civil War. Half a century after 1865, the phantoms from the

Civil War continue to overwhelm Hightower, influencing most of his thoughts.

Hightower consumes himself with the haunting pictures of his family and

constantly thinks about his dead relatives, an obsession that makes him

incompetent as a clergyman and husband. Memories of Hightowers family

members and their experiences in the Civil War help him invent a home front that

exists only in his mind. Furthermore, the influence of these visions affects more

than his thoughts. Hightowers psychological home front controls his life and

disconnects him from the people outside his imagined world.

Faulkner strives to understand the tragic aftermath of the Civil War by

creating this character and revealing wars long-term negative effects. Elmo

Howell explains how Faulkners literature illustrates the positive outcomes that

adversity can produce: Faulkner seems to be going beyond the despair which

accompanies it to show how suffering can have a therapeutic value (185). The

emotionally disturbed Hightower finds purpose while focusing on his

disadvantages in life and takes pleasure through dwelling on his pain: Hightower

forces a meaning on his life through suffering. To be weak is miserable, says

Miltons Satan, but the higher wisdom is that misery itself can produce joy

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(Howell 185). Hightower, like many of Faulkners characters, fails to triumph

over adversity.

While sitting and staring from his window into the street, Hightower

reminisces about the hardships experienced by his grandparents and blames the

war for creating all of his familys struggles. Then he remembers his mother who

for nearly twenty years suffered as an invalid because of malnourishment, and he

believes his familys lack of nutritious food after the war caused her starvation;

therefore, Hightower blames his mothers illness on the war: This [her illness]

was the result of the food which she had to subsist on during the last year of the

Civil War. Perhaps this was the reason (Light in August467). In an attempt to

offer pity for himself and his family, Hightower points out how the Civil War

forced his mother to live without certain comforts: Hence during the war, and

while he was absent from home, his wife [Hightowers mother] had no garden

save what she could make herself or with the infrequent aid of neighbors

(Faulkner,Light in August467). He looks back on the war with bitterness and

dwells upon the struggles his family went through during the war, which

illustrates how years following a war, unresolved misfortunes and mental

disturbances infect individuals.

His family experienced the death of relatives during the Civil War, but the

suffering of his family did not stop after those losses. The war left emotional scars

on both Hightowers family and life, as revealed through the narration of his

thoughts. Noel Polk describes the metaphor of a physical scar as representing the

emotional wounds a nation suffers following war: A scar is a carapace; tougher

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and uglier and deader than the flesh it has replaced; monuments, too, no matter

how magnificently marveled, are deader and uglier than the flesh they have

replaced and stand for (143). A nation sets up monuments to remember and

honor those who sacrificed their lives for their country. Hightowers commitment

in life is to glorify his family members who surrendered their lives patriotically.

The tangible and obvious damage from the war has gone, but the unseen effects

continue to dwell in Hightowers mind. A nation goes through a similar process

following a war: War is, in this way, literally written on the bodies of a nations

most expendable citizens. A scar is the sign of death each owes his country, a flag

to which each nation pledges allegiance (Polk 143).

Hightowers emotional scars never heal because he replays his family

history in his uncontrolled imagination, adding many details to his thoughts. The

confederate uniform worn by Hightowers father and carefully packed away in a

trunk inspires Hightowers recollection of his family and the war. At the age of

eight, Hightower finds the uniform and remembers his mother while holding it in

his hands: He did not know what it was, because at first he was almost

overpowered by the evocation of his dead mothers hands which lingered among

the folds (Light in August469). He should stow away both the uniform and his

memories for preservation but instead unfolds the creases in his fathers coat and

opens his familys resentment towards the war: The cloth itself had assumed the

properties of those phantoms who loomed heroic and tremendous against a

background of thunder and smoke and torn flags which now fill his waking and

sleeping life (Light in August469).

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As a child, this obsession with his grandfather and the Civil War became

Hightowers only means of happiness. Hightower hid his unhealthy fascination

from his father because he feared his father would disapprove; therefore, he

secretly returned to his grandfathers old uniform: He would steal again to the

attic and open the trunk and take out the coat and touch the blue patch with that

horrified triumph and sick joy and wonder if his father had killed the man from

whose blue coat the patch came (Light in August470). An element of sublime

entices Hightower to look at the uniform and wonder about the details of his

grandfathers death. He turns to their servant to flame his addiction with more war

stories: He would go to the kitchen and say to the Negro woman: Tell again

about grandpa. How many Yankees did he kill? (Light in August470).

Civil War ghosts accompany the war stories that have haunted Hightower

since birth. After the war, his father began his career as a doctor and kept his first

patient, his wife, alive long enough to deliver their son: That son [Hightower]

grew up with phantoms, and side by side with a ghost (Light in August474).

Hightowers father and mother lived as phantoms beside him; moreover, the war

figuratively tore apart his family and left dead members to dwell in Hightowers

house.

With a strong anti-slavery attitude, the father contradicted the beliefs held

by most Southern society: It was as though a very uncompromising conviction

which propped him upright, as it were, between puritan and cavalier, had become

not defeated and not discouraged, but wiser (Light in August474). Hightower

refers to this man as wiser due to his decision to become a doctor following the

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war, a career for which the war trained him. Prior to the war, the father wanted to

become a minister; however, no churches would hire him. Similarly, he officially

became a soldier when the war began yet would not fight. He became useless as a

soldier because of his beliefs: He lived by his principles in peace, and when war

came he carried them into war and lived by them there (Light in August474).

After his failure to preach and refusal to fight, his father combined the two

careers and became a doctor, a surgeon (Light in August474). The abolishment

of slavery did not put the father in defeat but rather in victory. He left the war

trained for a new career living in a society forced to observe his longstanding

beliefs opposing slavery.

Hightower describes how the Civil War did not disturb or frustrate his

father as it did other Southerners. The other undefeated soldiers sheepishly walked

home after the war and refused to believe [the war] was dead (Light in August

474). Participating in the war caused Hightowers father to violate his conscience

and act in a manner that opposed his convictions: He took an active part in a

partisan war and on the very side whose partisan war and on the very side whose

principles opposed his own, was proof enough that [he] was two separate and

complete people (Light in August473).

Even before her death, Hightowers mother lingered in his life as a ghostly

figure causing his remembrance of her with a tomblike appearance and skeleton

hands (Light in August475). He cannot picture her before she became bedridden

and only imagines her lifeless body: he thought of her as without legs, feet; as

being only that thin face (Light in August475). Prior to her death, Hightower

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noticed one last outcry, a sign that the family still possessed forms of life and

would not silently disappear. The phantoms in Hightowers house would perturb

him even during the last moments of his mothers life: It would be like a sound, a

cry. Already before she died, he could feel them through the walls (Light in

August475).

A third phantom, the black nanny who told Hightower war stories as a

child also haunted his house. This Negro woman would remain a slave even after

the North fought to win her freedom in 1865: The slave, who had ridden away in

the surrey that morning when the son and his bride came home. She rode away a

slave; she returned in 66 still a slave (Light in August476). The slaves in the

South lacked preparation for freedom, as did this woman. Elizabeth A. Petrino

expresses how the celebratory African-Americans quickly understood the harsh

realities that the word freedom bestowed on them: The jubilation quickly gives

way to the heavy responsibility of freedom for people who lacked the skills to

advance themselves in society (146). President Johnson vetoed an act in 1866

that promoted the equality of blacks, thus demeaning the illiterate group of former

slaves freedom and lowered their chances for gaining social and economic

success.

After experiencing society as a free woman, the nanny refused the freedom

granted to her by the war: Youre free, now, the son told her. Free? Whuts

freedom done except git Marse Gail killed and made a bigger fool outen Pawmp

den even da Lawd Hisself (Light in August477). Faulkner uses this nanny to

show uncertainties towards the wars accomplishments and illustrate the dilemma

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the South had with many free but untrained slaves who lacked a place in society.

Only a year before Faulkners birth in 1896, people still doubted the worth of

abolishing slavery, and the Supreme Court decision ofPlessy vs. Fergusononly

prolonged the equality of blacks. M. Nell Sullivan argues that this decision

supports the racist treatment toward African-Americans:

Plessy insured that the label nigger would have not only a

psychological but a physical impact as well: the namer waslegally sanctioned to exclude or separate niggers from (white)

others andto impose physical harm on niggers who tried to get

too close-economically, socially, or sexually. (500)

The nanny also hints that the South did not turn to religion for help during their

problems when she states that the war made a bigger fool outen Pawmp den even

da Lawd Hisself (Light in August477). The South refused to believe God

watched out for them after seeing the brutal killing of many of their friends and

relatives. This passage describes God as imprudent for permitting the war and a

slave man Pawmp as stupid for going to fight in it. A feeling of embarrassment

dwelled among Southerners who watched their men lose the war, and many of

Faulkners characters display this sentiment; however, Hightower does not

experience war directly and cannot understand their humiliation. The echoes from

the war do not seem real to Hightower, who finds no terror in the knowledge that

his grandfather on the contrary had killed men by the hundreds as he was told

and believed (Light in August477).

Unbearable terror continuously disturbed the nanny and many other

Southerners, but the element of sublime draws Hightower into this world of death

and terror. Although Hightower lacks understanding of the brutality in the war

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because he did not live through it, he still lives with the aftermath. Similarly,

many Southerners may not have had direct involvement in the war, yet they

remain in a community affected by it.

The adversity in the Hightower family illustrates Southern misfortunes

during and following the Civil War. Hightowers mothers last few years of life

represent the latter part of the Civil War, which tore down the people of the South

with physical, economic, and emotional hardships. Her death symbolizes the

Southern defeat at the end of the Civil War with her pain showing how even

Southern civilians experienced emotional pain caused by the deaths of their family

members and friends serving in the Confederate army.

The phantoms in the Hightower house illustrate the traditions and beliefs

that many Southerners held on to after the abolishment of slavery, beliefs that

haunted Americans in the years to come. Hightowers mother represents the

economic crisis occurring at the end of the Civil War: They [the phantoms] were

the house: he dwelled within them, within their dark and allembracing and

aftermath of physical betrayal (Light in August475). Most Southerners faced

leaving behind them the old way of life in order to adopt the life forced on them, a

transformation that they did not want or welcome: To the individual Southerner,

the outcome of the war meant that he must henceforth conform to the American

pattern. This was the most painful consequenceat least ten thousand

Southerners fled the country (Howell 186). Those Southerners could not free

themselves from the past and forget their beloved society that existed before 1861.

Unlike the Southerners that fled, Hightower dwells on his familys past, their

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conflicts and tragedies, which resembles the emotional struggle that many

Southerners experienced at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Hightowers grandfather leaves his house to his son paralleling the Souths

surrender to the North: On the day of the sons wedding, the father surrendered

the house. He was waiting on the porch, with the key to the house in hand, when

the bride and the bridegroom arrived (Light in August471). Faulkner

intentionally makes the day of the sons wedding occur on the same day that the

grandfather leaves the son his house, symbolizing the North celebration of their

victory and abolition of slavery. The son considers this day a commemoration, but

the grandfather resents it. Similar to the grandfather watching the bride and groom

enter his house, the Southerners saw the Northern businessmen parade into their

towns in triumph.

Southerners resisted their newly formulated and integrated culture, an

attitude that Faulkner reveals through the grandfathers resentment: Youd find

me dull and Id find you dull. And who knows? The cuss might corrupt me. Might

corrupt me in my old age into heaven (Light in August472). He represents the

Southerners who feared that the Union would distort their society. Faulkner used

old age of the grandfather to represent the long-lasting traditions held in the

South, traditions that the war finally forced to a halt.

The death of Hightowers grandfather symbolizes the trampled Southern

pride and jumbled culture that resulted from the Confederacys defeat. An absence

of slavery forced Southerners who did not leave the states to give up their all-

white segregated society and slave-run businesses; however, conflicts arose while

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some resisted the integration. Hightowers description of a servant disbelieving

that his grandfather has died depicts how the South refused to acknowledge the

evolving and more unified American society: They could not make him entertain

for a moment the idea that the master might be dead (Light in August476). The

South could not believe that they lost the war and their traditions had passed

away. The servants frustration and inability to comprehend his masters death

expresses how the South felt about losing the war: Not Marse Gail. Not him. Dey

wouldnt dare to kill a Hightower. Dey wouldnt dare (Light in August476). The

South also did not believe the North would go to such extreme measures and

sacrifice the lives of so many men in order to stop the South from leaving the

Union. Some even hoped that the South would rise again, which Faulkner reflects

in the servants hope that the master Hightower still lives: Dey got him hid

somewhar, trying to sweat outen him whar me and him hid Mistis coffee pot and

de gole waiter (Light in August476).

Hightower relates to the Southerners who were in shock when the

Confederates lost not only the war but also their rights as slaveholders. His

obsession with Southern heritage prevents him from conforming to society

because his bewilderment with the phantoms of his family and of the Civil War

place him in an imagined community full of hopes for keeping the old South,

whose hopes shattered in 1865. Hightowers grandfather held the same beliefs,

but due to the time period, his principles attached him to the world around him.

According to Brooks, Faulkner designs Hightowers character not only to

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represent the Southern traditions but also to portray how ones convictions

establish his involvement in society:

The issue is not that of a Northern or Southern heritage or even that

of a sensual or ascetic temperament: both traditions andtemperaments are represented in their ancestors. The real issue is

whether ones relation to ones heritage permits participation in life

or isolates one from lifewhether it connects past with present oris simply a private obsession. (Brooks 61)

Although Hightower lives in the Civil War, peaceful town of Jefferson, he

cannot adapt to the reconstructed community and isolates himself from society.

Hightower becomes an alien as a result of his obsession with the traditional beliefs

on race and religion.

Hightower never had direct involvement in the Civil War and only

participates in it through his mind, which depicts his poor mental state.

Regardless, Hightower sees the fighting as something very real and present: You

can see it, hear it: the shouts, the shots, the shouting of triumph and terror, the

drumming hoovesyou can feel, hear in the darkness horses pulled short up,

plunging; clashes of arms whispers overloud, hard breathing, the voices still

triumphant (Light in August483). Hightowers unhealthy fascination with the

Civil War isolates him from the community in Jefferson. John Lewis Longley Jr.

explains how Hightower creates his own difficulties: He is obsessed with the

idea of the grandfather and is preoccupied with reconstructing an imaginary life

built around the grandfathers accidental presence in Jefferson long ago (229).

Other scholars argue that Hightower does not merely experience psychologically

disruptive illusions rather his vision becomes the ultimate reality.

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Harvey L. Gable Jr. argues that Hightowers visions help him overcome

his emotional injuries and physical weaknesses in order to receive spiritual

revelation and freedom. If Gables theory were true, Hightowers reality does not

exist in the Jefferson community; therefore, the society that excommunicates him

becomes void. Hightowers conscience expresses reality, and at the end the

chapter Hightowers vision of the wheel shows his apotheosis and final triumph

over physical restraints: The incident takes on additional importance because it is

a moment when underlying cosmology of revelation seems to be revealedwhen

the sky opens and, as it were, for Hightower (Harvey 426).

Paradoxically, Hightowers illusions about his family history more

truthfully express why he isolates himself from the rest of Jefferson. The power

this disturbance has on Hightowers life becomes evident when he makes his

decision to move to the small Mississippi community. Like the many soldiers and

supportive patriotic civilians entering the Civil War, Hightower also entered

Jefferson with a hopeful purpose. Listen Hightower tells his wife, God must

call me to Jefferson because my life died there, was shot from the saddle of a

galloping horse in a Jefferson street one night twenty years before it was ever

born (Light in August478).

Hightower has allowed the war and the phantoms of his familys ruin to

direct his entire life. Hightowers actions evolve around his grandfathers ruin,

which causes him to hurt the only family member who remained alive, yet he does

not realize this until his old age. Hightower has previously thought that he has

only influenced himself with his odd behavior: It is any mans privilege to

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destroy himself, so long as he does not injure anyone else, so long as he lives to

himself (Light in August490). Then Hightower stops his thought process because

he finally realized his greatest failure: Revealled to my wife my hunger, my

egoinstrument of her despair and shame (Light in August490). His wifes

hunger causes him to remember how he neglected his wife, and for the first time

this realization leaves him in shock: Motionless, unbreathing, there comes upon

him a consternation which is about to be actual horror (Light in August490).

While pastoring a congregation in Jefferson, Hightower cannot avoid

society and causes a disruption to others with his recurring outbursts during

church: His church members are bewildered and shocked by his concern with his

grandfather, and his neglect of his wife drives her to nymphomania and eventually

to a scandalous death (Longley 229). He ignores the pain like anyone else by

hiding it: I dont want to think this. I must not think this. I dare not think this

(Light in August490). Hightower cannot overcome the fact that he forced his wife

into insanity and death by the way he treated her. His destructive memories have

caused a life of pain not only to himself but to his wife: As the wheel of his

memory turns on and on, he comes to realize that his own cold selfishness, his

absorption in the Confederate grandfather, has caused his wifes disgrace and

death (Longley 203).

Hightowers life analogously portrays the Souths involvement in the Civil

War. As Hightower forced his wife to move with him to Jefferson, the fighting in

the South caused involvement from even neutral civilians. Enthusiastically,

Hightower brings his new wife to Jefferson in order to follow his grandfathers

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steps, but as his fascination with his grandfather continues, his purpose grows

more tragic. In a similar manner, the Southerners positively approached the Civil

War; however, after the many deaths and much economic loss, the South became

frustrated and bitter about entering the war, while even doubting their purpose for

fighting. Hightower describes himself, but the picture can also illustrate the war:

Then if this is so, if I am the instrument of despair and death, then I am in turn

instrument of someone outside myselfI have been a single instant of his death

(Light in August491).

The final reminiscence that Faulkner gives Hightower is his description of

the wild bugles and the clashing sabers and the dying thunder of hooves (Light

in August 493). In The Yoknapatawpha Country, Brooks observes: most readers

have assumed that Hightower, old and exhausted, his head bandaged after

Christmas blows, dies (70); however, Brooks believes Faulkner implied that

Hightower does not die. Brooks adequately explains the value of this argument:

This is obviously highly interesting; but as far as the larger scheme of the book is

concern, it hardly matters (70-71). Faulkner intended for the end of Hightowers

life to be uncertain in order to reflect the unknown prevalence of the South after

the Civil War. People doubted that the Southern communities could survive

following their defeat.

With no first hand experience in the tragedies of the Civil War, Hightower

still becomes consumed by mental and emotional disturbances. His family

members possessed differing positions on the fighting to free the slaves, which

created conflicts that continued to haunt the Hightower family for years following

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the war. Hightower refuses to conform to the new reconstruction of the South and

cannot rid his mind of the Civil War fantasies and memories, which causes an

imprisonment in a mental home front illustrating the issues that the Southern

society could not defeat following 1865.

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CHAPTER 3

JOANNAS SOCIAL WAR AGAINST RACISM

Years after 1865, the Civil War affects Hightower and Joanna Burden in

Light in August, which Faulkner portrays by describing their disconnection from

the community around them. Both these characters alienate themselves because of

their delusional beliefs and create a safe haven from their community. Hightower

detaches himself from society because he cannot overcome the past, while Joanna

becomes isolated because she holds ideas about integration that communities in

the future will accept but those around her reject. Similar to the mental home front

created in Hightowers mind, Joanna also creates a home front where she escape

from the white racists in order to fight her own war for black equality.

Unlike Hightower, Joanna becomes physically isolated in order to defend

her views that dissent from the majority of community members. She lives alone

in a large house separate from white society and close to the cabins inhabited by

African Americans. One Negro boy informs Joe Christmas of Joannas secluded

living situation: No, sir. Aint no Mr. Burden. Aint nobody live there but her

(Light In August227). Christmas finds her living situation most curious and

inquires about it: And she lives there by herself. Dont she get scared, but the

boy merely replies: Who going to harm her, right here at town? Colored folks

around here looks after herLight in August227).

Joanna leaves her isolated house only to travel on business affairs,

encouraging black colleges and attempting to create equal opportunities for

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minority students: She visited the schools in person and talked to the teachers

and students. She leaves her business affairs to be conducted by a Negro lawyer in

Memphis, who was a trustee of one of the schools (Light in August234). Joanna

does not live during the Civil War, yet she involves herself so much with the

social problems after 1865 that readers can see how it detrimentally affected her

life.

Joanna and Hightower both have family histories that present pictures of

the conflicts that arose in the South during and following the Civil War. Cleanth

Brooks discusses how Hightowers life differed from the lives of his father and

grandfather because he lacked interaction with people: Both the grandfathers and

fathers of Joanna and Hightower were whole men, fully related to the world

outside them, fully alive (61).

Calvin Burden, Joannas grandfather, celebrates his wedding, which

illustrates the union of the North and South in 1865. The North enjoyed their

victory at the end of the war, but the South refused to join in rejoicing.

Comparatively, before the end of Calvins wedding celebration, he wants to

denounce the religious beliefs of those around him: The wedding celebration was

still in progress, and his first step was to formally deny allegiance to the Catholic

Church (Light in August241). This wedding celebration represents the festivities

of unifying the North and South at the end of the Civil War and also parallels

Hightowers father and mothers marriage. In parallel, immediately following his

wedding ceremony, Calvin pulls away from Catholicism, which presents a

metaphor for the Souths attitude at the end of the war. Calvin symbolizes

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Southerners who immediately wanted to rebel against Northern rules following

the Civil War. The South refused to obey Northern societal rules in 1865, and

Calvin refuted the Catholic creeds after his wedding ceremony.

Calvin represents the unruly South that subsequent to the Civil War

continued to rebel against conforming to the religious, political, and societal

beliefs of the North. With Protestantism reigning in the south, many southerners

refuted Catholic beliefs, and Calvin embodies this group of people. Calvins name

symbolizes the Reformation period with John Calvin and reveals the movement of

people wanting to refute the standard Christian church in order to create new

beliefs. Calvin longs to separate his family from Catholicism, depicting how

Southerners aspire to refute the churches that dominated the North and conform to

Protestantism. Calvin began reforming his sons religion by reading the Bible to

him:

Burdenbegan to read to the child in Spanishin a foreign tonguewith harsh extemporized dissertations composed half of the bleak

and bloodless logic which he remembered from his father on

interminable New England Sundays, and half of the immediatehellfire and tangible brimstone of which any country Methodist

circuit ride would have been proud. (Light in August242)

With determination to conform his childs religious beliefs, Calvin

presents a tainted view of religion by intermingling the Bible with his passionate

additives. Faulkner creates Calvins strong, individual religious beliefs to depict

the Protestant communities created by those in the South after 1865: The creation

of these religious communities with their own belief systems and styles of

worship by virtue of their existence and expression outside of the guise and

control of their owners, was a profound act of resistance that gave its membersa

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sense of personal and communal control (Stevenson 351). Both Calvin and those

establishing Southern religious communities utilize their spiritual doctrine as a

way of refuting the Catholic Church and establishing their own individuality.

Similarly, B. E. Stevenson recounts the history of a black Christian slave

Charlotte Brooks in order to explain how blacks in the South turned to their

spiritual communities to fill both religious and social needs: Charlotte was not

just a black Christian, she was a Protestant, and she detested the Catholicism of

her new owner in Louisiana (349). Brooks and other slaves in the South refused

to conform to the Catholic Church and, as Faulkner illustrates with Calvin, began

to shake off those religious holds on their life following the war.

The Burden family depicts the conflict created when the end of the Civil

War forced integration in the South. Although Calvin and his son both possess

white ethnicity, they have different physical appearances: The two of them

would be alone in the room: the tall, gaunt, Nordic man, and the small, dark, vivid

child who had inherited his mothers build and coloring like people of two races

(Light in August242). This description implies that their physical appearances

reflect their racial beliefs on society, revealing a contrast in persona that shows

how integration in the South brought not only outward physical diversities but

various societal beliefs as well.

Calvins strong antislavery viewpoint parallels that of Hightowers father,

which exemplifies the religious and political conflicts that flourish throughout the

novel and illustrates how the abolition of slavery caused political differences on

the South. Calvin, Joanna, and Hightowers father possess beliefs that disagree

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with the social norm of their time period. In an effort to dissociate from the

ancient pro-slavery opinions in the South, Calvin excommunicates himself from

the Catholic church: The next day he said that he meant it, anyhow; that he

would not belong to a church full of frogeating slaveholders (Light in August

241).

Although Calvins antislavery viewpoint remains more consistent with

Northern attitudes, he strives to make his opinion known: Here Burden spent

much of his time talking politics and in his harsh loud voice cursing slavery and

slaveholders (Light in August243). Calvins forceful opinion shows how the

North overpowered the South with their beliefs following the Civil War: His

reputation had come with him and he was known to carry a pistol and his opinions

were received without comment, at least (Light in August243). Overpowering

anyone who opposed him, Calvin became determined to abolish the attitudes of

individuals supporting slavery.

By creating this ruthless character, Faulkner reveals how after the removal

of slavery, the North immediately tried to demolish the attitudes of those

supporting slavery in the South. Immediately after the Civil War, conflicts existed

between the former slaveholders in the South and those with antislavery attitudes,

which Faulkner illustrates in Calvins violent belief in the abolition of not only

slavery but anyone who still believes in it: Burden killed a man in an argument

over slavery (Light in August242).

Immediately following the war, the North wanted to crush any viewpoints

supporting slavery, and Faulkner illustrates this with Calvins attempt to control

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his son: Ill learn you to hate two things, he [Calvin] would say, or Ill frail the

tar out of you. And those things are hell and slaveholders (Light in August243).

Calvin forces his position on the two primary disagreements existing between the

North and South, which involve race and religion.

Although slavery ended, no influence could stomp out the racism problems

in the South, and no one could hurry the slow process of integrating blacks into

the community. Calvin held strong beliefs in favor of freeing the slave, yet he

absolutely refused integrating with blacks. Faulkner exposes Calvins radical

opinion in favor of keeping blacks out of his family lineage and disgust when he

discovers his grandson is half black: Another damn black Burden, he said.

Folks will think I bred to a damn slaver (Light in August247). Similarly, the

South began to accept the freed slaves, yet they did not want African Americans

invading their dominantly white communities. Calvin expresses a viewpoint of

blacks as socially inferior to whites: Damn, lowbuilt black folks: lowbuilt

because of the weight of the wrath of God, black because of the sin of the human

bondage staining their flesh and blood (Light in August247).

Faulkner uses this same racist man to put the future into perspective, a

future community that peacefully unifies all races. Calvin believes the black

slaves one day will become part of their Southern society: But we done freed

them now, both black and white alike. Theyll bleach out now. In a hundred years,

they will be white folks again (Light in August248). Calvins figurative

description of the African Americans becoming white expresses his prediction

that racism will fade out and finally welcome blacks into the white community.

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Faulkner, however, uses conflicts that involve the Burden family to

symbolize Southern society that refused to integrate following the Civil War. A

Confederate soldier kills Joannas half black, half brother: He had just turned

twenty when he was killed in town two-miles away by an ex-slaveholder and

Confederate soldier named Sartoris, over a question of negro voting (Light in

August249). The murder of this half black man over political equality illustrates

that although Southerners complied with the newly founded antislavery laws, they

refuted the belief that blacks shared equal rights as citizens and fought anyone

who tried to give the former slaves civil liberty.

Faulkner creates other white characters inLight in Augustwho share

Calvins belief in black inferiority. Percy Grimm, a member of the National

Guard, states that the white race is superior to any and all other races and that the

American is superior to all other white races and that the American uniform is

superior to all men (Light in August451). His position in the military symbolizes

the United States government that prolonged granting the freed slaves their civil

rights. Sullivan explains how many of the characters inLight in Augustuse racism

to raise, achieve and maintain superior positions in the community: From the

most ignorant--Doc Hines and Percy Grimm--to the most educated--Gavin

Stevens--all the white citizens believe that black "blood" contaminates its bearer

with moral depravity or evil, and that belief in turn stabilizes their own identities

in the Yoknapatawpha play of signifiers (501).

Joannas grandfather supported the freedom of slaves, yet he purposely

degraded the black race; however, she passionately worked to eliminate racism in

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the South. Because Burden regretted Calvins ill treatment of blacks, her father,

Nathaniel, hid the gravesites of her grandfather and half brother, who is also

named Calvin: When they brought grandfather and Calvin home that evening,

father waited until after dark and buried them and hid the graves, leveled the

mounds and put brush and things over them (Light in August249). Her fathers

beliefs and the Burdens persecution based on their Northern cultural background

influenced her strong antiracist beliefs. Joanna continues to tell Christmas why

they hid their family graves:

They hated us here. We were Yankees. Foreigners. Worse thanforeigners: enemies. Carper baggers. And itthe Warstill too

close for even the ones that got whipped to be very sensible.Stirring up the Negroes to murder and rape, they called it.

Threatening white supremacy. (Light in August249)

Generations following the Civil War, Joanna still suffers as a result of her

family heritage, so instead of striving to conform to her society and denouncing

her Northern culture and beliefs, she receives inspiration and becomes determined

to reconstruct her segregated and quarrelsome society.

Joanna describes racism as a never ending curse on the white race: I

thought of all the children coming forever and ever into the world, white, with the

black shadow already falling upon them before they drew breath (Light in August

253). The racist characters inLight in August, Grimm and Joannas grandfather,

view the black race as a curse on whites because of the intolerances that exist

between the two ethnicities, but Joanna does not hate the black race, rather she

hates the treatment that her white people give to minorities. She fights to see

unity and equality among both ethnic groups because she knows that peaceful

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integration remains the only way the South will prosper: You must struggle, rise.

But in order to rise, you must raise the shadow with you (Light in August253).

Joanna knows that the blacks will eventually receive political and social

equality, but she cannot foresee her own race ever overcoming its prejudices:

The curse of the black race is Gods curse. But the curse of the white race is the

black man who will be forever Gods chosen own because He once cursed him

(Light in August253). The incorporation of a curse from God refers to a biblical

analogy with the black race symbolizing Gods chosen people, the Israelites, who

served as slaves for years in Egypt but eventually escaped and flourished in the

land promised to them by God. Joannas description of the white mans curse

represents Gods curse, which is upon everyone else excluded from Gods chosen

people. This analogy reveals Joannas belief that, like the Israelites, the black race

will eventually receive equal rights, but the white race will continuously be

haunted by racism.

Although her ideas about integration remain consistent with Northern

opinions on the issue, Joanna suffers in the South because her opinion on racial

equality differs from that of other whites. Brooks describes both Joanna and

Hightower as victims of the Civil War due to their abnormalities: Hightower has

willfully locked himself into the past in his worship of his grandfathers heroic

image. Joannas loyalty to her grandfathers precepts has played its part too,

preventing her from having any real part in the living community about her

(164). Unlike the communities around her, Joanna wants to see integration and

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peace among intermingled races, yet she knows that no man, white or black can

ignore the continuous conflict caused by racism.

Joanna starts her own war against racial inequality, which further separates

her from the Southerners. The Civil War has ended, but for Joanna the social war

creates more battles: It was all over then. The killing in uniform and with flags,

and the killing without uniforms and flagsand we were foreigners, strangers,

that thought differently from the people whose country we had come into without

being asked or wanted (Light in August255). War devoid of uniforms and flags

signifies the conflict relating to the civil rights of blacks.

Susan Hayes Tully explains how Joannas determination results in her

separation from white society: Her desire to carry out the abolitionist

commission of her father thwarts her ability to develop naturally as a woman and

to live successfully within her community (356). In order to defend herself

against persecution in the community, Joanna creates a safe haven in her house

where she has physical protection and emotional security within the black

community surrounding her. Her isolated house becomes a home front providing

an escape after fighting for black education and training black schools to do the

same.

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CHAPTER 4

THE INESCAPABLE TRAGEDIES OF WAR IN FAULKNERS TWO

SOLDIERS AND SHALL NOT PERISH

Faulkners World War II short story Two Soldiers illustrates a young

boys love for his brother Pete and prepares readers for the tragedy that occurs in

Shall Not Perish. While the two stories present several outlooks that many

people have on war, they also display the consequences of war on most citizens,

including the families living miles away from the fighting. These stories of the

Grier and de Spain families portray how war affects everyone, regardless of their

financial situation or community status, thus equalizing a countrys citizens.

Although people try to avoid and ignore war, no one can escape the aftermath that

can tear apart families and emotionally scar individuals. Two Soldiers provides

a World War II introduction to both the narrator and to readers, while Shall Not

Perish presents characters in search of meaning during their chaotic wartime life.

Faulkner uses these characters to reveal how America has gone to war for a

greater purpose and how citizens should strive to support their country

wholeheartedly.

Although these two stories offer several views on the effects of war,

Faulkner utilizes one storyteller to describe the events in a first person narrative.

This technique differs from Faulkner novels, in which he usually offers several

third person narratives. James Ferguson describes the benefits of Faulkners more

focused short fiction: In the smaller scope of short fiction, the use of a witness-

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or protagonist-narrator can help give a story concentration, intensity, ironythe

kinds of effects that make such piecesfascinating works of art (175-176). The

narrator of Two Soldiers and Shall Not Perish adds an subjective view of

World War II that educates the characters on war while the readers also gain more

understanding.

Both stories illustrate Faulkners complex plot organization: We can find

in the novels, as well as the short stories, the structural pattern I have noted in

which Faulkner begins with a climatically disruptive disequilibrium (Ferguson

179). At the beginning of Two Soldiers, Pete disrupts the peace of the family

and surprises most of his family members with his decision to enlist as a soldier in

World War II:

Then one nighthe said, I got to go. Go where? I said. To

that war, Pete said. Before we even finish getting in the

firewood? Firewood, hell, Pete said. (Collected Stories83).

Pete determines that his daily chores are meaningless compared to the job

of fighting for his country, but the nine-year-old narrator refuses to part with his

older brother and wants to also fight in World War II in order to avoid separation

from him: I got to go too. If you got to go, then so have I (Collected Stories84).

The narrators young age disqualifies him for joining the army with Pete, and no

begging will persuade Pete to stay with the little brother who needs him. The

young narrator does not understand the seriousness of war and hopes that he can

one day join Pete. Once he realizes that he cannot fight, he tells Pete: But maybe

it will run a few years longer and I can get there. Maybe someday I will jest walk

in on you (Collected Stories86). The young Grier boy hopes that Pete will serve

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overseas for many years, so that he can become a soldier with his brother when he

comes of age.

None of the Grier family has the ability to understand why Pete wants to

fight for his country. Petes mother also opposes Petes decision to sign up for the

army, yet unlike the narrator she realizes the possible grief that the family may

bear, and she cannot accept the burden. Mrs. Grier continues to cry and tell her

husband: I dont want him to go. I would rather go myself in his place, if I could

(Collected Stories 84). She wants to give Japan control of distant states, such as

Hawaii, if that will leave her community in peace. Her anguish foreshadows the

loss of her son and the emotional burden that his death will cause the family. She

allows her son to leave because she sees his determination; however, she does not

understand why overseas military conflict should affect her. She knows the war

will destroy her dream of keeping her family together: Them Japanese could take

it and keep it, so long as they left me and my family and my children alone

(Collected Stories84). Although Petes mother lives away from the war and tries

everything to keep it from affecting her family, she knows that she cannot protect

her family from the tragedies of war. She remembers her familys past

involvement in the war; her brother left his family to become a soldier at age

nineteen, which she mentions in order to show how war alters the lives of people

of all ages. She fails to justify how war breaks apart families, yet she knows she

must accept it. A previous war, most likely World War I, separated Mrs. Griers

mother from her son. Similarly, World War II brings distance to the next

generation of Griers. Petes mother cries out for reasoning: Our mother couldnt

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understand it then, any more than I can now. She told Marsh [her brother] if he

had to go, he had to go. And so, if Petes got to go to this one, hes got to go to it.

Jest dont ask me to understand why (Collected Stories85).

Mr. Grier also opposes Petes enlistment and acknowledges that the family

will suffer more hardships without his help on the farm: What will I do for help

on the farm with you gone? It seems to me Ill get mighty behind (Collected

Stories85). Petes father realizes that the war will cause economic stress on his

family. Faulkner