Self Preservation

While we were reading An Odor of Verbena there was a lot of discussion about fighting for the myth of the Old south, about their way of life. Certainly there is a lot of fighting to keep the spirit of the civil war alive against the infiltration of the "carpet baggers". However, I don't think that the idea of the "south" is what Faulkner's characters are fighting for. Each character fought for their own reasons which led to slight differences in their actions. For example, Drusilla fought because she had nothing left to live for. The war had taken her fiance and she devoted years of her life to fighting out of vengeance. When there is no longer a war to fight, what does a fighter have left? Nothing. So she was driven to find a new fight, to keep going because there really was nothing left for her. Nobody fights for a cause, there is never a fight simply because someone intellectually thinks that something is worth fighting for. People fight for who they are.  They fight for what defines them  whether it be a fiance, a way of life, a child, they fight for who they believe that they are. If you let something define you and that is taken away then you will fight for that for the rest of your life. I think this story is an example of the preservation of self far more than preservation of a culture.