An Archettpal Reading Of The Hamlet

William Faulkner, a genius of the world literature in the20th century, was also one of the most outstanding modernists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature by Swedish Academy in1949. Snopes Trilogy which includes The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959) is Faulkner’s first and only trilogy. The Hamlet, being the first novel of Snopes Trilogy, tells the story of Flem who successfully turns from a nobody to a rich man by any kind of means.Archetypal criticism played a very important role in the western criticism in the1950s and the1960s. Northrop Fyre, its founder, published Anatomy of Criticism which stated the mythological archetypal criticism in1975. This thesis applies archetypal criticism to discuss the main characters’ personalities. The main characters chosen from the novel are Flem, Eula, and Mrs. Littlejohn, whose archetypes can be found from fairy tales. Flem, the leading character in The Hamlet, is famous for his venality and cunningness. Acting as a serpent, he breaks the tranquility of Old Frenchmen’s bend. It is sensible to combine him with Satan who disguises himself as a serpent. Eula, a girl Faulkner depicts emphatically stands for the beauty of nature. Her archetypes are Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Persephone. Mrs. Littlejohn, a woman who is of great importance, though having small proportion, is irreplaceable, because of her wisdom; she is compared with the Athene, Goddess of wisdom.Through the study of characters in The Hamlet and their related archetypes, this thesis attempts to discuss the core persons’ characteristics and explore the meaning Faulkner gives them. Even though Faulkner describes Flem in most details, he is sick of him. The person Faulkner likes is Eula and he always associates her with beautiful and natural things. However, the true person he really admires is Mrs. Littlejohn, an intelligent woman.