Solid Unity Of Theme And Structure In The Wild Palms

William Faulkner, a modern American novelist, a winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, enjoys worldwide popularity. Being deep-rooted in the life of the American South, earnestly concerned about the fate of human beings, courageous in artistic exploration, Faulkner made outstanding contributions to the treasure-house of world literature by creating a large number of works characterized by a strong local color, a profound consciousness of history, and a unique artistic style.Faulkner wrote and flourished in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. More criticism and commentary have been written about Faulkner than any other major American writer of the twentieth century. In his life time, 22 novels and more than 70 short stories got published. Among the 22 novels, sixteen belong to the Yoknapatawpha chronicle, including most of his well-recognized masterpieces like The Sound and the Fury. Yoknapatawha County is both an imaginary, mythical and an actual region. Reality and myth have endowed his Yoknapatawpha novels with seductive charms and endless beauty.The Wild Palms, his eleventh novel, one of the few non-Yoknapatawpha novels, came out in January 1939 and immediately provoked a renewed interest in Faulkner's works. From the time it was published, debate has raged about its structure, quality and meaning. If the majority of critics have come to regard Absalom, Absalom! as the most profound of Faulkner's 22 novels, and if The Unvanquished stands as the most conventional, The Wild Palms might distinguish itself as the most controversial.The Wild Palms is composed of two separate stories, 'Old Man' about the Mississippi in flood and 'Wild Palms' about a disastrous love affair. Its peculiarity lies in its structure-the alternating chapters of two long stories whose plots, characters, settings and themes seem completely unrelated. However, a careful and close study will reveal a great number of amazing parallels and contrasts between the two stories. The two plots are equivalent in meaning, but contrasted in externals; they are alike as outer and inner, positive and negative; they are genuinely bound together through theme and structure.With its peculiarity and originality, The Wild Palms-Faulkner's eleventh and one of the three non-Yoknapatawpha novels-survives my selection and comes under my careful study. This thesis begins with a brief account of Faulkner's life and career, and some relevant biographical information, especially his love with Meta Carpenter. Faulkner wrote The Wild Palms at what seemed to him the painful end of a love affair with Meta, a woman with whom he had been deeply involved both romantically and sexually and a relationship whose setting had been Hollywood. Faulkner's The Wild Palms bears profound connection and resemblance to his personal and sexual entanglement with Meta Carpenter.The focus of this thesis is on the solid unity of theme and structure of the two stories in The Wild Palms. Despite the seemingly irrelevance of 'Wild Palms' and 'Old Man', there is enough similarity to invite comparisons and contrasts between the two stories-perhaps the most useful contrast being that the tall convict of 'Old Man' defines himself as a moral creature inside the restraints he is confronted by, whereas the lovers of 'Wild Palms' strive to escape from all the restraints that they see as treats to the absoluteness of their love. Faulkner, at the ?time he explained his alternating the chapters, did say that the to/stories treat 'two types of love'. In the love story the theme deals with an effort to find liberty and absolute love, ending in disaster. In the convict story the theme deals with an effort to escape from liberty, likewise ending in disaster. Parallels and contrasts in theme and structure are deliberately sought and identified in this thesis.A further attempt is made to interpret and appreciate the stylistic techniques and symbolic references by Faulkner-an exceptionally brilliant, original and versatile stylist. A lot contrastive symbols are ingeniously used by Faulkner, such as the im...