The Decline Of The Southern Traditional Morality

William Faulkner is a great American modernist writer. During his lifetime, he wrote a lot of novels. But at present, people mainly focus on his several classical novels The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying.However, they seldom do research on Faulkner?s later works. The Hamlet is a representative of his later works. It is the start of Snopes, and also has the highest artistic values in the trilogy of Snopes. The characters Flem and Ratliff in The Hamlet are the representatives of Snopesism and anti-Snopesism. They stand for two distinct moral values. With the success of Flem in The Hamlet, there comes the decline of Southern traditional morality of which Ratliff is a representative. The thesis will choose The Hamlet as the research object and make an analysis of Snopesism by the view of the decline of Southern traditional morality.The thesis adopts the method of describing the decline of the southern traditional morality to analyze Snopesism in The Hamlet. It contains five chapters. The first chapter is the part of introduction. It mainly introduces William Faulkner and The Hamlet. The second chapter explains the nature of Snopesism by analyzing the southern milieu and characteristics of Snopesism. The third chapter analyzes the representative of Snopesism. By analyzing the representative character of Snopesism Flem, we know that Flem is a materialist and he is lack of human nature. The fourth chapter mainly analyzes the opposing force to Snopesism. By analyzing the character Ratliff, we know that Ratliff is a humanist and he is a m an of many good qualities. But finally, he is defeated by Flem. The last chapter serves as the conclusion of the thesis. It mainly makes a study on Snopesism in The Hamlet by describing the decline of the southern traditional morality. One the one hand, the writer loves his hometown, he expects people there to maintain the southern traditional morality; on the other hand, he also realizes the southern traditional morality has its own limitation, it is going to decline one day.