Surviving In A Changing World Of Multicultural Conflicts: A Study Of William Faulkner's Indian Tales

William Faulkner, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, is well known for his Yoknapatawpha saga. While critics generally focus on the oppositional relationship between black and white in Faulkner's novels, the Native Americans in his works have received least examination. However, these Native Americans are important in filling out the history of Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County because they are an integral part in the multiracial region of Yoknapatawpha. Based on Faulkner's Indian stories, this thesis attempts to trace the events which lead up to the demise of the Indians and Southern failure, and to explore the road to survival and prevailing in the modern world with multicultural conflicts.A large part of criticism launches a crusade against white oppression of the Native Americans, whereas the Indians are also to blame for their tribal and cultural demise, the study of which this thesis is devoted to. When the Native Americans in the four "Wilderness" stories are confronted with white's colonization, some Indians, such as Ikkemotubbe and Moketubbe, casting away Indian traditions, adopt the capitalist way of life. Their Indian tradition is forgotten; their red blood is whitened; and even their conscience is consumed. Therefore their final collapse is inescapable. Contrary to them, in the later transitional period, some Indians, in Go Down, Moses, feel lost in and unadaptable to the capitalist and multicultural society and therefore stubbornly stick to their Indian tradition. Tortured by his triple consciousness, Sam escapes into the wilderness, and only in death can he finally gain his integrated identity and freedom. The white boy Ike McCaslin is a true heir to Indian culture and is obsessed with the idealized Indian past. When he finds the evil side of his family history, he relinquishes his tainted heritage and escapes into the Indian past for his inner peace, which speeds up the decline of the McCaslins.Though Faulkner is devoted to exposing the dark side of the South, his positive attitude toward humankind never changes. In his last novel The Reivers, his belief that man will prevail is fully expressed. As the last Indian of Yoknapatawpha world, Boon Hogganbeck, different from his maladjustment in Go Down, Moses, takes his responsibility to build a "new brand world" in The Reivers. His transformation not only represents the successful assimilation of Indians into modern life but also embodies Faulkner's strong belief that man will endure and prevail.