NCHS AP English Language

Faulkner & Mellville, Connection?

While reading Light In August, it becomes immediatle apparent to the reader that something is different about the way in which Faulker writes his story. There seems to be a general distortion of time, place, and action. But, why? What is Faulkner trying to do with his unique and almost absurd style of writing? The human thought process is a strange beast, it rarely pursues things in the logical straightforward way which we are forced to use for the sake of communication. Faulkner realizes this, and uses an approach very similar to Mellville. Mellville's Moby Dick, is crammed from cover to cover with a ridiculous abundance of similies, metaphors, and mythological references used to convey a general idea (that things often cannot be definied); Faulkner like Mellville, uses the "overkill method", but replaces all the metaphors and references to mythology with many random thoughts. A Light in August, is, if anything, a bunch of thoughts, which by themselves make little to no sense, but when viewed as a whole, paint a picture. Painting a picture is exactly what Faulkner set out to do, the human mind is and odd thing, and Faulkner manages to paint a picture of it by combining a plethora of thoughts.

posted by Mark Francis @ 8:03 PM