Bemused Youths In William Faulkner's Fiction

There are two memorable types of characters within Faulkner's fictions, being violent and resolute or nostalgic and bemused. Faulkner shows a special fondness for the latter. Two typical bemused youths in his fiction are Quentin Compson and Isaac McCaslin. Quentin and Isaac offer two different ways in which bemused youths handle life's dilemmas: one quests in desperation for the meaning of chaotic modern life, while the other tries to question the developing capitalism.In this thesis, I analyze the two bemused youths in Faulkner's fictions and try to explain their bewilderment. Chapter One introduces Faulkner's career and historicizes his interest in bemused youth by briefly stating his relationship with the early 20th century American contemporaries. Chapter Two discusses Quentin Compson as a narrator and author of a Southern legend in Absalom, Absalom! and his frantic monologue in The Sound and the Fury on his last day. Brought up in a morbid family, Quentin lacks the courage to uphold the traditional moral codes. Resorting to the tradition in which he also spots its weakness and sinfulness such as racism and slavery, he simply breaks down and heads to death. In both novels Quentin poses himself as a tragic rebel against the chaotic modern world. Chapter Three offers a critical reading of Faulkner's The Bear, in which I draw on ecocriticism as a critical perspective, discussing Isaac McCaslin's renunciation of his heritage and his powerful condemnation of the problems of the modern world. I argue that Ike, compared with Quentin makes a more positive revolt against a world of mindless development and moral corruption. For the rest of his life, Ike lives a simple life in the wilderness. Nature enables him to obtain courage and liberty far from the madding crowd. Chapter Four winds up the whole thesis with the conclusion that bemused youths in Faulkner's fictions resemble those of his contemporaries' characters. They afford us a unique insight into Faulkner's view of the development of history and human beings, and they have also helped to establish his status as a literary giant in the republic of letters.