Heterotopia In William Faulkner’s Novel The Bear And The Old People

William Faulkner is one of the greatest novelists in the history of 20th century, and his works vividly depict the natural scenery and social reality of the American south. After creating a place named "Yoknapatawpha County", William Faulkner devoted his life to the detailed description of this "land with the size of a stamp" and provided readers with a motley and bizarre place of interest.William Faulkner has long been known for the intricacy and dubiousness of his works. After he passed away, his works have never been forgotten for the following more than half a century; readers and critics still appreciate and interpret these literary boutiques generation after generation.This thesis intends to start from combing the concept of heterotopia French philosopher Michel Foucault proposed, and analyze the heterotopian features the big woods have in the two stories The Bear and The Old People. Furthermore, the thesis also discusses the unique role this space plays in these stories with the hope to better understand and interpret the two novels.This thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is the introduction, in which the thesis will make a detailed and comprehensive introduction to relevant research on William Faulkner both home and abroad. Besides, the thesis will also comb the concept of heterotopia respectively in this part. In the second part, this thesis will verify the heterotopian characteristics of the big woods in the novels to prove that the woods is not only a background of the stories and place where characters doing activities but a typical heterotopia which exerts its own unique influences. In the third part, the thesis will analyze the role the big woods plays in the characterization of the characters like the growth of Issac, the shift of Boon, etc. In the fourth part, the thesis will single out a character in two stories named Sam Fathers and elaborate on the unique effect the big woods exerts on his identity construction and personality construction.As Faulkner says, the focus of these novels lies in "the relationship between the white and the black in the south", and the big woods is the ideal place to represent this complicated relationship. Through the records written in account books, we see a rotten old south where the black people are slaves, the possession and tool of planters; they have no dignity or freedom at all. In contrast, the big woods from the pen of William Faulkner are the paradise of the black. They can cooperate with the white planters in hunting and even get respect from them by their love towards the woods and excellent hunting capacity. The novelist expresses his view of race through the creation that the white and the black shall give mutual respect to each other and cooperate together. Spaces like the big woods in the stories are very hard to find, but if people can treat different races equally, the relationship between different races will be better and better.