The Naturalistic Tendencies In William Faulkner's Early Works

This thesis, by analyzing four novels of William Faulkner's early representative works, including The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary and Light in August, intends to show the influence that naturalism leaves on modernist writing.George Lukacs says that modernism has something that belongs to naturalism in root. Naturalistic philosophic thought, innovative spirit, aesthetic idea and creative thinking have great influence on the American literature of the 20^th century and as a literary trend it will never die in America.The vision of tragedy is one of the most important features of naturalism. The characters in the works of naturalism always seem small and have no free will in this big universe. This feature is reflected fully in Faulkner's early works through all kinds of metaphors of the titles and the tragic destinies of all main characters. Through these four titles, Faulkner expresses the idea that life is meaningless, morality is dying and one has to fall into doomed tragedy and disaster. Besides, the tragic destinies of all main characters are analyzed, like Caddy, Quentin, Benjy, Little Quentin, Dilsey and Jason in The Sound and the Fury, Addie in As I Lay Dying, and Christmas, Hightower, Bunch and Lena in Light in August, all of which show us a stain of vision of tragedy.Determinism is a central feature of naturalism. A person's destiny is determined by environment, heredity and instinct. The main characters in Faulkner's early works share a common background of southern American social or family environment. Both in physical and in spiritual, the southerners turn out to be victims of that special environment, as are shown by Caddy, Quentin and Little Quentin in The Sound and the Fury, Popeye, Temple and Horace in Sanctuary and Christmas, Hightower and Lena in Light in August. What is more, the influence of heredity and instinct on some characters is analyzed. The characters under discussion could not escape from the control of environment, heredity and instinct. Thus they all have a tragic destiny."Struggle for existence, survival of the fittest" is another key feature of naturalism. In the law of the jungle, mankind should struggle for survival. How this feature is reflected in these four works is analyzed. We can find obvious image of "survival of the fittest" in Jason( The Sound and the Fury), Anse, Cash (As I Lay Dying), Popeye (Sanctuary) and Christmas(Light in August). Besides, the feature of "survival of the fittest" is always portrayed through violence and death.Faulkner's early works show us a world of tragedy, despair and violence, however, what he wants to express is his endless concern for this modern world and his hope for its gradual improvement. At this point, he also shares a resonance with naturalism which sets a purpose to find a way to improve the mankind's living state by portraying the cause of failure. But William Faulkner is a great modernist and southern writer, his works are far beyond naturalism and he has his special angle of view and individualistic style of writing.