Emotional Literature

   "He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."
   I would argue that this is the idea behind Sanctuary, if not most of Faulkner's stories. It's always said to know what it is to be happy, one must feel pain. Faulkner's characters usually go through an exaggerated amount of pain, such as Temple; it's neverending torment. But that's what it is to have a soul. The difference between man and animal is that humans feel these heart-wrenching, horrible acts of evil deep within. Reading Sanctuary, you're stomach lurches with disgust of Popeye and then maybe with a smidge of compassion when you read the last chapter. Reading Sanctuary, you're mind is stuck between sympathy and disappointment when it comes to Horace Benbow. Reading Sanctuary gives the reader an array of emotions that is hard to sift through, but the idea is that Faulkner elicits true emotions of mankind. 
   Though Sanctuary doesn't really lift your heart, the very idea that it elicited something within you is remarkable. And it's not only remarkable in an emotional way, because the idea of literature staving off any sort of universal lobotomy would be similar to the metaphor Faulkner uses that a poet's voice is a 'pillar' for man. Faulkner's stories create emotions, which are what seperate man from animals, thus helping him endure the lifetime of the universe. Literature is not purely letters and words to leave behind, but in hopes that the emotions and true humanity, in the sense of humans being eternally flawed, would also live on.