My final project. Insurmountable?

I know I have discussed it with a couple of you guys, but my final project for this class will put me toe to toe with my enemy yet again. I have decided that I am converting As I Lay Dying into a poem. The reason?

I'm still trying to figure that out myself. Call it literary masochism for the time being. I think that somewhere deep, in the recesses of my innermost soul, I want to enjoy that story. I've read it one and a half times now, providing me with a pretty good gist of the plot. But The book has a natural tendency to make me put it down. It's like badminton; you can only partake in its charms if you're really willing to do it, and as much as I enjoyed the Sound and The Fury, the reason that I am not a diehard fan of Faulkner is because of this book. Barn Burning and A Rose for Emily are tremendous stories, but the disinterest of the book has polarized my literary palette to force me to sit on the fence.

So I will enter the fray, one last time, with my nemesis. If I can successfully find the boundless merit in this story, then I would not have to dread teaching it in the future. I will face my enemy by studying its every move, feature, and technique.I will convert it into an enemy that I can call my friend. A synthesis of Faulkner's composition with my creativity will result in a beautiful product that even a born cynic can love.

It will be a difficult journey. See you all on the other side.

Odor of Verbena

   I would have to say that I actually did not like Odor of Verbena very much.

   It was easier to follow than the previous Faulkner novels we've read. It was interesting to see Colonel Sartoris in a more in-depth view. But I just didn't connect to it or the characters like I have with the previous stories.

   I did like the theme of becoming a man - a bildungsroman. It's interesting to see a character similar to the boy in Barn Burning because the idea of becoming a man through nonviolence is such a rarely told story. For all of the destructive and unstable characters Faulkner creates, Bayard and Sarty are like flowers in the middle of field of weeds. They somehow grow into these brave and fair men despite their backgrounds and what was instilled in them by their fathers. They seem innocent and fresh, even though Bayard admitted to murder. They are very distinct because they have the ability to break away from what is so engrained in their family. This is a particular part I like about the story.

   I don't like Drusilla. I don't connect with Drusilla or understand her very well. But maybe that is the point. She is supposed to be as mysterious and confusing as her husband Sartoris. It seems strange that the death of a loved one would make her so bloodthirsty, to the point that she becomes hysterical when she realizes Bayard will not kill Redmond. Though, I do like that even she could not help but applaud Bayard's valor. She just seems too out of character for me, maybe because I'm only getting a small piece of her out of The Unvanquished. It just seems like a big leap from loss of a fiance to deranged, vengeance-crazed tom boy. But to each their own.

I just didn't really connect with any of the characters other than Bayard, and the small window of Colonel Sartoris we got. Maybe I should just read the rest of The Unvanquished and make up my mind then!

On my Final Project

Thanks to the discussions we have had the last few weeks, I have decided on what I would like to do for my final project. It will focus mostly on how time is used in literature, focusing on but not limited to Faulkner's unique usage. I sincerely hope that I will find research that others have done already, and build on it, but I haven't had the time to check and see if that is indeed the case. If not, then I will have to start from scratch. With luck, I will have more solid details than I have described thus far when I turn in my project idea to Mr. Andrews.

Time: More Man than Measurement

Over the course of this semester, it has become apparent that traditional chronological storytelling simply doesn't exist for Faulkner. In fact, it could be said that time itself is a character interacting and antagonizing his human characters. Rather than the passage of time serving as catalyst for Faulkner's characters, time is either personified or simply disregarded.

I'm beginning to think that his disregard for (or perversion of) time serves as a very powerful lesson about the rigid characterization of his central players. Many (Quentin Compson and Drusilla immediately come to mind) of Faulkner's characters seem stuck, unable to pry themselves from the romantic notions or failures of the previous generations ingrained in their minds. While Drusilla Hawk escaped the fate of most Confederate soldiers--PTSD and a total loss of identity--she never did break away from the war or the fantasy of the South. Others like Quentin Compson were simply unable to reconcile a rapidly evolving world and the romantic notions he believed was his legacy.We see that Drusilla incapable of moving beyond the Antebellum South, still clinging to antique dueling pistols and the culture they represented. For Quentin, we see someone stuck in the past regardless of the narrator or the chronological lens.

For the more simple characters, such as Benjy, time is irrelevant. Life is just a series of events and triggers to those events, the passage of time is not marked or even acknowledged. Using a different technique, we see the despair of a person hopelessly stuck, regardless of whether or not they are actually aware of it.

Time ceases to become just a catalyst, but rather an antagonist, taunting or punishing its hapless victims for their antiquated mindsets and rigid adherence to a mythical era. It's an interesting way for Faulkner to allow us to perceive his characters as well as force them to act. The fracturing of time allows time to serve a more important role than simply placeholder: it is a person.

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.

Post a Prezi

I do not know how many of you have heard of a Prezi before, but although I am not technology savvy my partner, Bari, is and she has introduced me to a world of technology that I never knew existed. A Prezi is a little like a PowerPoint or a hypertext with a few exceptions. It is a graphed spreadsheet of a picture which, when zoomed into at different places, can harbor text and serve as a very effective presentation tool. I made one for my preceptor group's end of the semester presentation in Servant Leadership last semester and Tim Palmer says that Prezi changed his life, although I’m not sure how, I can imagine it was something like my awakening to technology. So, a Prezi is what I immediately thought of when Mr. Andrews said final project. I was leery about how to go about putting together a Prezi on a Faulknerian concept, however. Fortunately Sonia De Hierro was looking for a partner and a double sophomore team sounded good to me in a fourth level class. I’d thought maybe a family tree collage would be a good idea and Sonia brought allot of great ideas to the drawing board about the genealogy concept and a way to incorporate it into a Prezi project. So instead of a big art piece of collage we are creating a hypertext like Prezi incorporating the family tree concept with many of the families Faulkner creates through his characters. I've been working on creating our own original Prezi design through images made and adapted in my Introduction to Multimedia class, so I’m kind of killing two birds with one stone in the assignment area. I’m really excited about our concept and I certainly hope that it ends up as cool as its beginning to sound. I also hope that it is up to the par of having a four at the beginning of our class title, which seems to be emphasized quite allot in class.

Verbena

An Odor of Verbena was easier to follow along with than The Sound and The Fury, that’s for sure! In this short story I felt that Faulkner was writing about how the Old South was ending and the new beliefs were rising.  Also with Bayard’s character, I thought it was interesting that since he was educated in college his views had changed from those of his father’s.  To be honest I don’t think he ever planned on killing Redmond. Like the Bible says “Thou shall not kill” he believed in this.  I also think it took more courage for him to show up to the dual without any weapons.  He was very brave and wise, and knew that more bloodshed would not bring his father back. 

With Faulkner’s character Drusilla, I thought she was very wild and blood-thirsty.  She wanted Bayard to kill Redmond to revenge his father’s death.  I don’t think Drusilla even cared that her husband died, I think she was more concerned that Bayard carry on the old tradition to kill Redmond. She was stuck in a different time, and couldn’t move on to better things.

An Odor of Verbena and other things

I liked An Odor of Verbena I wish we had had time to read the whole series of stories maybe then we would have had a better understanding of the characters, but I still liked the reading. The thought came to me after class, and it was kind of shared in discussion but not really, that Mr. Redmond had planned on doing the two shots then leaving even before Bayard entered and showed that he had no gun. I think that the shots might have been warning shots for Bayard to stay back but also it showed to the whole town that was listening that the duel happened. The two shots were shot even though not everyone would know who shot first they at least knew it happened. Mr. Redmond disappeared perhaps so that people would have thought that he died in the duel. Perhaps Mr. Redmond was tired of killing too and he just wanted an easy life away from the old Southern ways.

On a different note, I have figured out roughly what my final project is and I'm asking for input from y'all if you have any ideas. I want to write a character analysis essay on Dewey Dell but with music. Since it's hard to describe her character in words, seeing as how she didn't really have a voice in the story, my plan is to describe her through song and then analyze both medias to figure out what is going on in her head. In an earlier post I had mentioned how a song from Les Miserables came to mind when she found out her mother died. If anyone has any other songs I'd be glad to hear them. Thanks.

Odor of Verbena

I really thought Odor of Verbena was a great short story. It was easy to relate to the characters, understand the plot, and was intriguing enough to keep my attention. If it was published today in a magazine, I would read and follow the series. I thought Bayard was very courageous and strong to face death in the face and stay true to his principles. Drusilla reminded me of the wild girls in Louis Lamor western books that I read growing up. She had her own demons that haunted her that she could not lay to rest. She couldn't love anyone because she never let go of her anger at losing her fiance. It was interesting to get to know more about Colonel Satoris who I used to think of as kind, but now think of as callous. It was a nice break in between The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom which are not so easy reads.

Faulkner? In Texas?

Why anyone would question the geographical of where the Faulkner class resides seems a little strange to me. Ok, a lot strange. Tabling my own personal feelings about Faulkner for a minute (or an entire semester), the man's work embodies the universal paradox. By writing specifically about life in South post-Reconstruction, Faulkner hits on several universal themes such as race relations, poverty and the disparity of wealth, women's rights and their in modern society, and mental health to name a few.

To deny the "universality" of Faulkner's work is to shut oneself out from the uncomfortable realities presented  in those works. The fact is the setting in his novels and short stories could be anywhere; whether a rural county in MS. or a slum in urban New York City, the characters in Faulkner's stories crop up anywhere and everywhere.


Despite some folks perceptions that backwards, despotic (even sadistic) policies are exclusive to the South, everybody in the United States--and probably the entire Western world--could recognize instances of the exact same themes rearing their heads from Seattle to Miami and all points in between. This notion that Southern Literature is exclusively for Southerners is inherently false.