More Love, More Hate--Faulkner's Paradoxical Feeling Towards American South As Revealed By The Sound And The Fury

William Faulkner (1897-1962), is a distinguished American novelist who has been celebrated as "may well be in accomplishment and international reputation the nearest thing to a Shakespeare this country has had." (Inge 368-369) Thanks to his ingenious endowments and strenuous efforts, so many classics come out one after another - among which The Sound and the Fury is of particular importance and is well worthy of detailed comprehension. The Sound and the Fury has been recognized as the one "marks the beginning of the so-called major period of his literary career." (Lester, 123), which no doubt bears full witness to the significance of this novel. However, that's only part of the story. Actually The Sound and the Fury reveals Faulkner's complex feelings towards American South and his inner conflict from the very beginning of his literary career.So this paper first attempts to probe into Faulkner's paradoxical emotion interwoven with love and hate towards his homeland, the Deep South. Instinctively Faulkner loves this land where he was born and grows up; and what's more, he takes obsessive interest in his aristocratic background and legendary ancestors. However, in addition to a native southerner Faulkner is meanwhile a righteous writer with a sober mind, who is conscious of the innate evil of American South all the time. As a result, he can't help feeling guilty, and is accordingly thrown into a quandary filled with genuine love as well as vehement hatred. Anyhow he is fortunate and sensible enough to take literary creation as his lifelong course. By this means he manages to write in an indirect way his dilemma into so many classic works and let loose his pressure to a great extent - which noticeably is none other than the definition of the so-called sublimation, based on the principles of psychoanalysis. Particularly in The Sound and the Fury, by delineating in it in minute detail perverted passion between family members and paying special attention to the depressive complex between the only daughter Caddy and her three brothers, Faulkner actually spares no efforts to convey likewise his own depressed desire and conflict feeling towards American South, and in this way releases to the full his inner tension.And what's more important, with the help of his work Faulkner manages to obtain his goal of reinforcing hope of life in mankind. No matter how much trouble he has put himself to, Faulkner believes invariably in the future of human beings as a whole, as he states in his celebrated speech on receiving Nobel Prize for Literature: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail." (Faulkner, 1954: 4)...