AN ABSTRACT OF A THESIS

THE HOME FRONT IN FAULKNERS WAR FICTION

Roxann Wylie
Master of Arts in English
William Faulkners Light in August, Two Soldiers, and Shall Not Perish,
display how war can have harsh consequences on Americans living at the home front.
Faulkner relies on both a psychological and societal definition of the phrase home
front. In these three works, Faulkner does not describe any of his characters serving
in the war; however, he illustrates that war has remarkably disturbed people residing
either decades removed from a particular war or thousands of miles away from the
fighting. The indirect effects of war tragically change the family situations of these
characters left at home during the war.
The characters in these stories suffer from psychological problems caused by
the aftermath of war. In Light in August, the Civil War has upset Gale Hightowers
family creating mental disruption that Hightower cannot conquer. Hightower has the
inability to muddle through his emotional pain deriving from his familys past, so
instead of conforming to his society, which also suffers from Civil War repercussions,
Hightower recreates an imaginary Civil War home front within his mind. Although
Hightower did not fight in the Civil War, his mental instability comes as an indirect
result of war evolving from memories of his grandfather serving as a Confederate
Soldier.
In Faulkners two short stories Two Soldiers and Shall Not Perish, Major
de Spain and members of the Grier family attempt to bear the depressing
consequences of war. Although the members of these two families desire peace, they
cannot avoid war, even when they try to ignore it. In Two Soldiers, the Grier family
hopes that life will remain quiet in their small Mississippi town, but the loss of their
son forces them to realize that they cannot escape the reality of the Second World
War.
The plot in Faulkners next war story, Shall Not Perish, also centers around
the Grier family, but Faulkner uses this story to display that fighting overseas still
causes devastation to many Americans back at home. Faulkner portrays the families
of different economic and social backgrounds to convey that war affects all classes of
society; no gender, race, or class can escape the fighting, and the tragedies caused by
it hurt and equalize everyone involved.

THE HOME FRONT IN FAULKNERS WAR FICTION

________________________

A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Graduate School
Tennessee Technological University
by
Roxann Wylie

________________________

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
English

________________________

December 2009

UMI Number: 1474653

All rights reserved

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UMI 1474653
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CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL OF THESIS

THE HOME FRONT IN FAULKNERS WAR FICTION
by
Roxann Wylie

Graduate Advisory Committee:

________________________________
Michael Burduck, Chairperson

___________
date

________________________________
Homer Kemp

___________
date

________________________________
Tony Baker

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date

Approved for the Faculty:

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Associate Vice President for Research
and Graduate Studies
___________________________________
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ii

Dedication
I want to dedicate this to God, who has given me my
talents and gifts, so that I might return Him the glory: Not that
we are adequate in ourselves as to consider anything as coming
from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God (2 Corinthians
3:5, New American Standard Bible).

iii

Acknowledgements
I greatly appreciate the continuous support and instruction
from Dr. Burduck, who taught me to love William Faulkners
literature and helped me throughout the entire process of
completing this project. I also want to thank my mom and dad
for providing me the opportunity to achieve my goals and for
encouraging me along the way.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter

Page

1. The Tragedy of War in History, Literature, and Society..1

2. Hightowers Pyschological Home Front.19
3. Joannas Social War Against Racism....34
4. The Inescapable Tragedies of War in Faulkners Two Soldiers and
Shall Not Perish .44
5. Suffering Produces Tragic and Determined Characters..63
6. Works Cited.70
7. Vita...75

CHAPTER 1
THE TRAGEDY OF WAR IN HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND SOCIETY

Psychological frustration and emotional upset define the personal struggles

of those living with the repercussions of war. Twentieth-century war literature
attempts to capture the various effects war has on individuals. Three of William
Faulkners works on war, Light in August, Two Soldiers, and Shall Not
Perish, portray not the common representation of distressed soldiers, but how
war can harshly alter the mental stability of people living on the countrys home
front during and following such a tragic conflict.
A country assimilates governmental, military, and civilian constituents
when engaging in war. War not only dramatically alters the lives of soldiers, but
also disrupts the lives of civilians by tearing apart their communities and families.
The Civil War produced the greatest rupture to United States society in the
nineteenth century, with Southerners suffering insurmountable losses in property,
business, and lives of their loved ones. Kenneth Stamp describes the United
States failure to resolve the conflicts that sparked the Civil War: That they were
not solved short of war is our greatest national tragedy. Our failure not to solve
them short of war is our greatest national failure (160). Americas inability to
reconstruct Southern communities after 1865 contributed to the insoluble
problems that the new country had to conquer and illustrates the setbacks that
most societies must overcome following a tragic war.

People living after the nineteenth-century may not have the ability to
comprehend the massive tragedies Southern communities experienced during and
after the Civil War, yet history and literature relate the emotional, cultural, and
economic strife forced upon many individuals in America. William G. Thomas
explains how historians and authors attempt to offer insight into the unified
community that the Civil War destroyed and the South could not reconstruct.
Thomas states that the Civil War affected American communities more than
people may realize: In the twentieth century Americans tend to see war as
something that happens elsewhere far-away, and to view home front and
battlefield as separate and distinct worlds (313). The Civil War involved not only
those directly associated with the war, such as soldiers and politicians, but also
tragically influenced individuals and communities. The travesties of the Civil War
concerned both soldiers and civilians: Considering Civil War history from the
perspective of communities blurs the distinction between battlefield and home
front. The soldiers on the battlefield were connected inextricably to their
communities, and citizens at home closely followed their communities (Thomas
313).
Literature on war supplies the means for authors to express several
prominent American themes. Writers use novels illustrating the difficult times of
war as a tool for encouraging Americans to be more grateful for their social
stability, economic prosperity, and political freedom. In The American Soldier in
War Fiction, Peter Aichinger states, The war novel has thus provided a medium
of expression for some important themes that are especially related to the

American character (109). Aichinger believes Americans had a peculiar opinion

of warfare: America is a new society, lacking any military tradition, and there is
no reason for it to conform to the outlook of older Western societies (109). Wellknown authors including Thomas Paine, Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Henry
James expressed how America strove to create an individual military structure and
not imitate other countries armed forces. Through their literary works these
authors express how Americans should not live the European way of life but
should have the freedom to practice individual beliefs concerning society and
religion.
According to Aichinger, war-themed novels have inspired a vast number
of American authors since the 1880s and have also established cohesion among
authors of diverse interests. Many authors launched their literary careers by
writing war literature, including Stephen Crane, John Dos Passos, William
Faulkner, James Jones, Irwin Shaw, and Norman Mailer. The war novel genre
also inspired Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville and other accomplished, wellknown authors to pen works about war.
The war novel created a resource available for writers to express masculine
interests through stories with simplistic moral values and daring characters. The
dangerous circumstances in war and the disparity of the characters efforts to
survive allow novelists freedom to create an almost envious dream of bravery,
simplicity, and devotion (Aichinger 109). This aspect of war novels forms a
paradox in American literature: The authors tend to admire the idea of the
soldierly virtues while they detest the fact of the military establishment (109).

Aichingers remarks acknowledge and describe the objective viewpoint of

warfare common in many novels of the nineteenth-century. Two popular authors
of that time period, Crane and Melville, established in their literary works a view
of war as imminent, yet not disastrous, describing it as an interesting, but not
necessarily horrifying phenomenon (115). The perspective in these novels
observes the conflicts of war without taking a judgmental approach.
Authors of war literature strive not merely to analyze the military issues or
psychological issues of the soldiers, but rather to interpret war from various
perspectives. Jones describes how the stance from which the author writes
remains crucial to an interpretation of the war novel, as in much modern
literature (9). Novelists of war want to convey a message that offers an
evaluation on this subject; therefore, they create characters who express their
opinions on war. According to Jones, the war novel usually has an overall
message: The war novel is almost always an ethical forum, expressing outrage or
describing a search for meaning in the dilemma of war (9).
Robert Penn Warrens book, The Legacy of the Civil War, describes how
all facets of war create physical and emotional drama and also depicts how the
Civil War changed the United States forever, concurrently exposing the problems
in American society caused by the dramatic transformation to the United States
economy, politics, and communities (48). Warren discusses the struggling new
culture by questioning its organization: will the new nation avoid cultural
starvation and include individual variety as well as social and individual
integrity (49)? The Civil War harmed society by breaking up families,

economies, and communities, later evolving into problems with individuals who
could not overcome the pernicious changes. Warren explains how the economic
loss following war affects individual people: This cost is psychological, and it is,
of course, different for the winner and the loser (53). The war forced the losing
Southerners to forgo their strong racist beliefs despite feelings of opposition
towards the new integration of cultures (Warren 53). This loss of societal identity
created a loss of individual identity generating not only societal problems but also
mental strife within its members.
In order to comment on this dilemma in society, Stephen Cranes novel
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) overlooks the brutal combat that accompanies
war in order to focus on the conflicting cultures and races forced into integration
by the Civil War. According to John Rowe, the novel illustrates how the Civil
War failed to change the ideas held by society on racism. Rowe establishes that
the novels portrayal of the white men humiliating black men represents the
political and racist issues that Union soldiers forget throughout the rest of Cranes
narrative and suggests reading this narrative as a full symbolic significance about
just what Americans failed to achieve in the Civil War (142).
During World War I, Ernest Hemingway created a new angle on war
embodied in his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929), which pioneered the way for
war novelists who preferred taking a philosophical approach. The novel presents
the story of the protagonist, Lieutenant Henry, who struggles to keep his sense of
reason in a world dominated by war that has become completely irrational. Henry
flees from the fighting to the neutral country of Switzerland. Hemingway presents

this scene as a metaphor for life: The Lieutenants inability to escape the war
represents the inability of any person from escaping problems in the real world, no
matter how hard he or she tries.
Another World War I novel, Thomas Boyds Through the Wheat illustrates
the depressing aspects of war resembling those depicted in A Farewell to Arms.
The main character, William Hicks, enlists in the military with hopes to see some
action (Jones 9); however, after enlisting, Hicks evolves into a fearful, slacking
soldier, who experiences the cruel side of combat when he sees his best friend and
other unarmed soldiers shot to death. This novel reveals the psychological effects
of warfare when Hicks experience finally drives him into insanity. Hicks
experience in World War I resembles Joe Bonhams experience narrated in
Johnny Got His Gun (1939) by Dalton Trumbo. Bonham enlists himself in the
war, but then spends the rest of his life in a hospital bed regretting his decision to
join the war.
World War II novels differ from previous war fiction by creating a more
dramatic version of action and including characters, mostly of commanding rank,
with strong wills and almost preternatural qualities. This type of character
presides in the novels recommended by literary critic Peter G. Jones: William W.
Hainess Command Decision (1948), John P. Marquands Mellville Goodwin,
USA (1951), and James Bassetts Harms Way (1962). The prominent characters
in these World War II novels tend only to struggle after practicing incorrect
judgment, which results in serious consequences.

The twentieth-century novelist and short story writer William Faulkner

successfully displays the personalities of his characters through his narration
techniques. Ineke Bockting expounds the manner in which Faulkners
presentation of his characters thoughts separated his writing from the literary
works of his predecessors: In contrast to characters in the earlier realist
tradition, in the modernistic characters of Faulkners psychological novels The
Sound and the Fury, As I lay Dying, Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! the
complexity, the layeredness, the fluidity, and the paradoxical qualities of identity
itself have become a psychological reality (14). Bockting explains that reality
lies in humans existence and relationship with nature and analyzes the way in
which Faulkner combines research in psychiatry and psychology with literary
style in order to show characters who rely on the mind to create the world in
which they live.
The many characters in Faulkners literary works create tales told from
many diverse perspectives. In Malcolm Cowleys interview with him in The
Portable Faulkner, Faulkner refers to the opinions expressed by his fictional
characters as voices (Cowley 114). Faulkners literary works mirror many
themes in the Southern society of the early twentieth century including social
classification, family and community unity, racism, economic strife, individual
well-being, wars aftermath, and how the government affects civilians, but more
importantly, Faulkners voices reflect the attitudes of many typical groups
associated with these societal problems. Donald M. Kartinager describes how
Faulkners unique writing strategy presents the characters attitudes: The voices

of a vast array of characters demanding to be heard; the voices of interpreters

inside the action, probing the mysteries and meaning of long-ago events; the
voices of outside narrators, reporting with apparent accuracy the scenes taking
place as well as commenting with apparent authority on their significance and
value (28).
Faulkner describes the way he creates some of the characters in his literary
works: Sometimes I do not like the voices, but I dont change it (Cowley 114).
Readers may not always agree with the ideas presented in Faulkners literature,
and the voices may sadden, anger, or disturb its audience, but Faulkners
fictional characters always present a real interpretation of American culture and
communities with the majority of his works highlighting those in the South.
Kartinager compares Faulkner to the narrator in The Sound and the Fury who may
not always agree with the voices, but nevertheless has an obligation to
transcribe what they say: He [the narrator] is still one of those imaginary voices
insisting that, for all the ghostliness of his invisible participation, he too must be
heard and recorded - as if he too were one of the masters the amanuensis Faulkner
must heed, whether he likes it or not (29).
Faulkner presents many voices in his fiction and creates characters with
diverse personalities that flourish throughout his fiction pertaining to the Civil
War and World War II. Christopher C. De Santis discusses Faulkners characters
who mentally struggle through the reconstruction era following the Civil War and
explains how these characters represent the Southern pessimistic attitude, a mindset that opposed their communitys reformation and integration. In Faulkners

Absalom, Absalom!, the Civil War destroys Rosa Coldfields racist ideology and
her dependence on black slaves for the prosperity of her white race. De Santis
describes her bitter character: With the abolishment of slavery comes the
breakdown of the legally-sanctioned barriers that enabled Rosa to exist, in her
own mind untouched by the racial other, and the reality of the situation leads her
to some cumulative over-reach of despair itself (17). Many Southerners during
this period of reconstruction feared the rising power of the black race, and in order
to stop the African Americans from gaining authority, they socially boycotted and
hated the black minorities. Faulkners novels reveal this racist belief but do not
imply that Faulkner held the same Southern prejudices:
The notion that Absalom, Absalom! represents Reconstruction as a
tragic era is correct; the tragedy, however, as Shreve suggests, did
not lie with southern whites such as Miss Rosa or Sutpen, but rather
with the blacks whose aspirations after emancipiation were crushed
by the racism of those characters. (De Santis 22)
Faulkner also portrays the suppression of the black race in his Civil War
novel The Unvanquished, which captures the confusion of white rebels who
contest freeing their slaves contrasted with slaves who strive to obtain their
freedom promised by Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 (Doyle 9).
This story describes how the Union army pushed its way into the South causing
many slave masters to fear that their slaves would rebel. The Unvanquished shows
Faulkners ability and tendency to portray fiction based on attitudes of other
people whom he encountered while living in the Southern Mississippi culture.
Faulkner scholar Don Doyle explains how this novel gives a picture of wars
many consequences that disrupted civilian lives as well as those of the soldiers:

In Faulkners images of burned plantation houses with whites

living in the cabins of their escaped slaves, Faulkner captured the
essence of this cruel new form of war. His own home county had
provided a dress rehearsal for total war that would find its fullest
expression in Shermans March to the sea. (Doyle 8)
Doyle describes the type of war demonstrated in The Unvanquished and
much of Faulkners other war fiction, which invades the home front and goes
beyond military conflict, as total war and offers more exemplification of total
war by retelling the account of Union soldiers mistreatment of the citizens in
Faulkners hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. General Ulysses S. Grant moved his
army into the South in an attempt to gain control of the Mississippi River. The
Union policy of total war created resistance in Mississippi communities,
resulting in gloating from many Mississippi civilians over the Confederates
successful attack on the Union supply station. As punishment for the civilians,
Grant confiscated the food from the farms in the Oxford area leaving the
townspeople in disarray.
History encouraged and inspired Faulkner to write many literary works on
war. Noel Polk explains why Faulkner wrote a substantial amount of war
literature: His life was framed by war--by the cultural memory of the stillregnant physical scars of the Civil War on one endpunctuated throughout by
military irruptions and their bitter residues (vii). Although born after the end of
the Civil War, Faulkner grew up in a Southern community around people who
were obsessed with and often quite knowledgeable about the Civil War (Doyle
3). Civil War tales filled the local newspaper, school, and courthouse square with
stories that enraptured Faulkner as a young man. The war stories, told by those

10

who lived through the Civil War, gave Faulkner research for his future works on
war. Faulkners experience around post-war culture contributed to his adult role
as an intuitive interpreter of his people and their past (Doyle 3).
Unlike Civil War researchers, Faulkner does not attempt to dictate an
accurate history of the Civil War, but rather strives to reveal the circumstances
both preceding and following the Civil War. Faulkner, like most other novelists
narrating Civil War events, focuses on how the war affected civilians because
Civil War experts neglect to study the results of war in the home front. Most
historians only cover the political and military issues of war: The social history
of the home front and combatants was only beginning to be discovered by
historians in the 1930s; novelists were already exploring that terrain (Doyle 5).
Faulkner not only experienced the post-Civil War community of Oxford,
but also lived through the First World War, a conflict that inspired much of his
war literature. His frustrating rejection from the Aviation Section of the United
States Army stimulated the disappointment that he describes in many of his
literary works. In Faulkner: A Biography, Joseph Blotner recorded that Faulkners
explanation for rejection by the military was that to his weight and height were
insufficient. Faulkner later joined the Royal Air Force and barely made it to
Canada two months before Armistice Day in 1918. The end of the First World
War shattered Faulkners romantic dreams of becoming a military pilot. Despite
his frustration over never acquiring first-hand experience in combat, Faulkner still
wrote many war stories and novels. He received war tales as second-hand
information from Civil War veterans and also possessed his own disappointing

11

experience in the Great War that contributed to his understanding of the gravity of
war. Faulkners awareness of wars misfortunes contrasts with the glorified and
positive expectations of war that he once held. Noel Polk compares Faulkner to
individuals longing for war prior to their experiences with it:
Recall the tens of thousands, North and South, who eagerly enlisted
during the Civil War, and who marched off to their deathsand the
thousands of others during World War I, like Faulkner himself,
who longed for war so intensely that they lied about their ages or
went to Canada to enlist. (Polk 142)
Faulkner created original literature that focuses on how war affects the
home front, which reflects his experience in the war torn community of Oxford,
Mississippi. Donald M. Kartiganer explains how Faulkners war fiction does not
report a fictional account of the wars that he wrote about: the Civil War and
World War II. Instead, Faulkner depicts these wars as fantasized as reckless
adventurewars that have paused and are about to begin again, but never the
plausible violent reality of actual battle (Kartiganer 619). Faulkner relates his
encounter with war fiction while uncovering the historical and psychological
background of Southern culture and intermingling his works with the societal
attitudes that he observed in the early twentieth-century. According to Kartiganer,
the tragedies in much of Faulkners war fiction developed out of the crises in his
individual life and family history. Faulkners research and first-hand experience
influenced his innovation of war stories and novels that comment on issues
outside of those merely on the battlefield: Together they comprise a series of
modernist moments that pervade Faulkners fiction, assuming a distinctive

12

resonance in his treatment of the wars that preoccupy him throughout his career
(Kartiganer 620).
Faulkners war fiction presents similar tragedies to those about whom he
wrote in the rest of his literature. Linda J. Holland-Toll explains that Faulkners
literary works establish tragic communities and present mostly corrupt and
incompetent characters who fail to offer any positive resolutions to their
community. The Faulknerian tragedy lies within the hopeless community where
the characters cannot find any purpose. Holland-Toll states: It is equally tragic to
struggle helplessly against forces that are so enervating and so consuming that one
has, in the end, nothing to fall back on save the uncaring community and the
unendurable knowledge that nothing one does is ultimately worth doing (450).
The unresolved conflict, static action, and helpless characters in Faulkners stories
have challenged the standard tragedy illustrated in traditional fiction.
Faulkner derives this hopelessness from a realistic view of the community
and in many of his works reveals the frustrating consequences war brings upon a
society. Mr. Compson in Faulkners novel Absalom, Absalom! overvalues the
ceremony of sending troops off to war: Mimic marching and countermarching of
the sons and the brothers the bright gallant deluded blood and flesh dressed in a
martial glitter of brass and plumes, marching away to a battle (Absalom,
Absalom! 97). Faulkners choice of words describes the scene with a glorified
view of war that he once held as a young man. This segment of the novel
describing the unrealistic perception of war held by many people in Faulkners
society is intermingled with harsh outcomes that society does not envision.

13

Faulkner illustrates this reality when Mr. Compson compares the soldiers to
virgins going to be sacrificed to some heathen Principle, some Priapus (97).
Faulkners 1929 novel Sartoris, later renamed Flags in the Dust, reveals
that society cannot easily forget and overcome war. The characters in this novel
narrate stories from the Civil War and World War I in so much detail that they
practically relive their past war experiences. The aftermath of World War I
inspired Faulkners first novel Soldiers Pay published in 1926. In the novel,
World War I has given Lieutenant Donald Mahon nothing but emotional scars and
an obvious physical scar on his face. The emotionally and physically drained
veteran returns home to Georgia and surprises his friends and family who long
presumed that Mahon died when his plane was shot down. His resurrection
causes his fiance to reject marrying him, leaving him even more unsatisfied and
bitter towards the time he spent serving his country. This novel further represents
the theme in World War I literature of highlighting the lives of low-ranking
soldiers and showing their inability to see the larger strategy of the military.
Faulkner wrote about similar adversity in his four short stories published in
These 13 (1931) and later added Turnabout to the group of World War I stories
when he republished them in The Wasteland section of Collected Stories
(1950). These short stories expose the physical and mental damages suffered by
World War I veterans and express the wasteland theme of men trying to find
meaning in their wartime experience. Ad Astra tells about the evening of seven
drunken soldiers trying to determine their purpose in life following the war,
illustrating how those who survive the war will never be able to return to the

14

lives they knew before, because the world has been irrevocably changed by the
war (Cox 282). In his short stories on the Great War, Faulkner wrote about
soldiers with similar characteristics and strove to shed light on the truth about the
hardships they endured. Abid Vali describes why Faulkners World War I short
stories captured his readers: The protagonists are typically starry-eyed young
men forever changed by their suffering. In a post war era dominated by the search
for a reason for or truth about the war, Faulkners war stories were eminently
fashionable (201).
Another one of Faulkners characters cannot mentally overcome the
problems war caused in his family. In Light in August, Reverend Gale Hightower
dwells on the animosity among family members that developed during the Civil
War. As a child, Hightower became fixated on the stories told by his nanny about
all the glorious fighting of his grandfather during the Civil War, and later in
adulthood he continuously grips those stories with all of his emotions. Through
Hightowers narration, Faulkner shows how the reverend suffers mentally and
emotionally from images of his father and grandfathers constant quarrels over
clashing beliefs on the war. Hightower moves to the Southern town of Jefferson,
Mississippi, in pursuit of a career as a minister; however, he chose Jefferson
because his grandfather spent time there during the Civil War. Alwyn Berland
describes Hightowers obsession with his family, their connection to Jefferson,
and involvement in the Civil War: His grandfather, known only to Hightower
through the oral history of his childhood, became the emotional center of his life,
a figure enshrined in all the romantic, heroic imagery of the doomed chivalrous

15

exploits of the Civil War (47). The grandfather arrived in Jefferson with his
Negro servant in order to escape the war but becomes involved in a cavalry raid
on the local general store. Their experience in Jefferson creates adventurous
family history and attracts Hightower to the town: Jefferson therefore becomes
the focus of young Hightowers lifeat seminary he plots to get an assignment in
Jefferson (Howell 184).
The results of the Civil War deeply affect another character in Light in
August, Joanna Burden, who fights a figurative war against racism and battles to
supply blacks with equal educational rights. With a heritage similar to
Hightowers, Joannas family history also haunts her because her grandfather
strongly supported freedom of the black slaves, yet he viewed blacks as inferior to
the white race; moreover, the Burden family migrated to Mississippi from the
North and receive persecution for their Northern beliefs. Although Joanna lives in
the reconstruction period following the Civil War, her beliefs isolate her from
Southern society and force her to make her house, which is physically distant
from the white community of Jefferson, into a home front escape from the social
war.
Faulkners Collected Stories contains more war literature, including two
short stories that describe the relationships between soldiers, their families, and
World War II. The stories Shall Not Perish and Two Soldiers depict the Grier
familys failed attempt to ignore World War II. In Two Soldiers the eight-yearold narrator faces the difficult situation of watching his older brother, Pete Grier,
depart to fight in World War II. Although the Griers live in a small Mississippi

16

community and believe they are detached from the war, their sons insistence on
leaving them to fight for his country forces the family to become actively involved
in the war.
Shall Not Perish begins with the disheartening scene of the narrator and
Mrs. Grier receiving the telegram announcing Petes death, followed by the
Griers visit to Major de Spain who also grieves over the loss of his son during the
war. Both Major de Spain and Mrs. Grier search for a reason why the war stole
the lives of their sons. These two stories represent how Americans had a positive
outlook on World War II prior to the hardship that they experienced while living
with wars aftermath. The war may have transpired in Europe, but the results still
shock the lives of families across the ocean living in the U.S.
Faulkners war fiction connects war to the home front and displays several
American families involvement with the Civil War and World War II in order to
relate to his readers how the communities and individuals are emotionally torn by
war. War can produce heartbreaking disturbances in civilians no matter their years
removed or miles away from the fighting. Faulkner clearly shows some of the
psychological frustration and emotional upset, which define the personal struggles
of those living with the repercussions of war. Influenced by his own experience
with war, Faulkner offered a perspective in his war literature that preceding
authors had not yet established. Although nineteenth and twentieth century war
literature offered various interpretations on the social changes associated with the
Civil War, World War I, and World War II, Faulkner created an original outlook

17

on wars aftermath which is most evident and emotionally portrayed in his literary
works Light in August, Two Soldiers, and Shall Not Perish.

18

CHAPTER 2
HIGHTOWERS PSYCHOLOGICAL HOME FRONT

In Light in August, Gale Hightower cannot forget his familys adversity

resulting from the Civil War. Half a century after 1865, the phantoms from the
Civil War continue to overwhelm Hightower, influencing most of his thoughts.
Hightower consumes himself with the haunting pictures of his family and
constantly thinks about his dead relatives, an obsession that makes him
incompetent as a clergyman and husband. Memories of Hightowers family
members and their experiences in the Civil War help him invent a home front that
exists only in his mind. Furthermore, the influence of these visions affects more
than his thoughts. Hightowers psychological home front controls his life and
disconnects him from the people outside his imagined world.
Faulkner strives to understand the tragic aftermath of the Civil War by
creating this character and revealing wars long-term negative effects. Elmo
Howell explains how Faulkners literature illustrates the positive outcomes that
adversity can produce: Faulkner seems to be going beyond the despair which
accompanies it to show how suffering can have a therapeutic value (185). The
emotionally disturbed Hightower finds purpose while focusing on his
disadvantages in life and takes pleasure through dwelling on his pain: Hightower
forces a meaning on his life through suffering. To be weak is miserable, says
Miltons Satan, but the higher wisdom is that misery itself can produce joy

19

(Howell 185). Hightower, like many of Faulkners characters, fails to triumph

over adversity.
While sitting and staring from his window into the street, Hightower
reminisces about the hardships experienced by his grandparents and blames the
war for creating all of his familys struggles. Then he remembers his mother who
for nearly twenty years suffered as an invalid because of malnourishment, and he
believes his familys lack of nutritious food after the war caused her starvation;
therefore, Hightower blames his mothers illness on the war: This [her illness]
was the result of the food which she had to subsist on during the last year of the
Civil War. Perhaps this was the reason (Light in August 467). In an attempt to
offer pity for himself and his family, Hightower points out how the Civil War
forced his mother to live without certain comforts: Hence during the war, and
while he was absent from home, his wife [Hightowers mother] had no garden
save what she could make herself or with the infrequent aid of neighbors
(Faulkner, Light in August 467). He looks back on the war with bitterness and
dwells upon the struggles his family went through during the war, which
illustrates how years following a war, unresolved misfortunes and mental
disturbances infect individuals.
His family experienced the death of relatives during the Civil War, but the
suffering of his family did not stop after those losses. The war left emotional scars
on both Hightowers family and life, as revealed through the narration of his
thoughts. Noel Polk describes the metaphor of a physical scar as representing the
emotional wounds a nation suffers following war: A scar is a carapace; tougher

20

and uglier and deader than the flesh it has replaced; monuments, too, no matter
how magnificently marveled, are deader and uglier than the flesh they have
replaced and stand for (143). A nation sets up monuments to remember and
honor those who sacrificed their lives for their country. Hightowers commitment
in life is to glorify his family members who surrendered their lives patriotically.
The tangible and obvious damage from the war has gone, but the unseen effects
continue to dwell in Hightowers mind. A nation goes through a similar process
following a war: War is, in this way, literally written on the bodies of a nations
most expendable citizens. A scar is the sign of death each owes his country, a flag
to which each nation pledges allegiance (Polk 143).
Hightowers emotional scars never heal because he replays his family
history in his uncontrolled imagination, adding many details to his thoughts. The
confederate uniform worn by Hightowers father and carefully packed away in a
trunk inspires Hightowers recollection of his family and the war. At the age of
eight, Hightower finds the uniform and remembers his mother while holding it in
his hands: He did not know what it was, because at first he was almost
overpowered by the evocation of his dead mothers hands which lingered among
the folds (Light in August 469). He should stow away both the uniform and his
memories for preservation but instead unfolds the creases in his fathers coat and
opens his familys resentment towards the war: The cloth itself had assumed the
properties of those phantoms who loomed heroic and tremendous against a
background of thunder and smoke and torn flags which now fill his waking and
sleeping life (Light in August 469).

21

As a child, this obsession with his grandfather and the Civil War became
Hightowers only means of happiness. Hightower hid his unhealthy fascination
from his father because he feared his father would disapprove; therefore, he
secretly returned to his grandfathers old uniform: He would steal again to the
attic and open the trunk and take out the coat and touch the blue patch with that
horrified triumph and sick joy and wonder if his father had killed the man from
whose blue coat the patch came (Light in August 470). An element of sublime
entices Hightower to look at the uniform and wonder about the details of his
grandfathers death. He turns to their servant to flame his addiction with more war
stories: He would go to the kitchen and say to the Negro woman: Tell again
about grandpa. How many Yankees did he kill? (Light in August 470).
Civil War ghosts accompany the war stories that have haunted Hightower
since birth. After the war, his father began his career as a doctor and kept his first
patient, his wife, alive long enough to deliver their son: That son [Hightower]
grew up with phantoms, and side by side with a ghost (Light in August 474).
Hightowers father and mother lived as phantoms beside him; moreover, the war
figuratively tore apart his family and left dead members to dwell in Hightowers
house.
With a strong anti-slavery attitude, the father contradicted the beliefs held
by most Southern society: It was as though a very uncompromising conviction
which propped him upright, as it were, between puritan and cavalier, had become
not defeated and not discouraged, but wiser (Light in August 474). Hightower
refers to this man as wiser due to his decision to become a doctor following the

22

war, a career for which the war trained him. Prior to the war, the father wanted to
become a minister; however, no churches would hire him. Similarly, he officially
became a soldier when the war began yet would not fight. He became useless as a
soldier because of his beliefs: He lived by his principles in peace, and when war
came he carried them into war and lived by them there (Light in August 474).
After his failure to preach and refusal to fight, his father combined the two
careers and became a doctor, a surgeon (Light in August 474). The abolishment
of slavery did not put the father in defeat but rather in victory. He left the war
trained for a new career living in a society forced to observe his longstanding
beliefs opposing slavery.
Hightower describes how the Civil War did not disturb or frustrate his
father as it did other Southerners. The other undefeated soldiers sheepishly walked
home after the war and refused to believe [the war] was dead (Light in August
474). Participating in the war caused Hightowers father to violate his conscience
and act in a manner that opposed his convictions: He took an active part in a
partisan war and on the very side whose partisan war and on the very side whose
principles opposed his own, was proof enough that [he] was two separate and
complete people (Light in August 473).
Even before her death, Hightowers mother lingered in his life as a ghostly
figure causing his remembrance of her with a tomblike appearance and skeleton
hands (Light in August 475). He cannot picture her before she became bedridden
and only imagines her lifeless body: he thought of her as without legs, feet; as
being only that thin face (Light in August 475). Prior to her death, Hightower

23

noticed one last outcry, a sign that the family still possessed forms of life and
would not silently disappear. The phantoms in Hightowers house would perturb
him even during the last moments of his mothers life: It would be like a sound, a
cry. Already before she died, he could feel them through the walls (Light in
August 475).
A third phantom, the black nanny who told Hightower war stories as a
child also haunted his house. This Negro woman would remain a slave even after
the North fought to win her freedom in 1865: The slave, who had ridden away in
the surrey that morning when the son and his bride came home. She rode away a
slave; she returned in 66 still a slave (Light in August 476). The slaves in the
South lacked preparation for freedom, as did this woman. Elizabeth A. Petrino
expresses how the celebratory African-Americans quickly understood the harsh
realities that the word freedom bestowed on them: The jubilation quickly gives
way to the heavy responsibility of freedom for people who lacked the skills to
advance themselves in society (146). President Johnson vetoed an act in 1866
that promoted the equality of blacks, thus demeaning the illiterate group of former
slaves freedom and lowered their chances for gaining social and economic
success.
After experiencing society as a free woman, the nanny refused the freedom
granted to her by the war: Youre free, now, the son told her. Free? Whuts
freedom done except git Marse Gail killed and made a bigger fool outen Pawmp
den even da Lawd Hisself (Light in August 477). Faulkner uses this nanny to
show uncertainties towards the wars accomplishments and illustrate the dilemma

24

the South had with many free but untrained slaves who lacked a place in society.
Only a year before Faulkners birth in 1896, people still doubted the worth of
abolishing slavery, and the Supreme Court decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson only
prolonged the equality of blacks. M. Nell Sullivan argues that this decision
supports the racist treatment toward African-Americans:
Plessy insured that the label nigger would have not only a
psychological but a physical impact as well: the namer was
legally sanctioned to exclude or separate niggers from (white)
others andto impose physical harm on niggers who tried to get
too close-economically, socially, or sexually. (500)
The nanny also hints that the South did not turn to religion for help during their
problems when she states that the war made a bigger fool outen Pawmp den even
da Lawd Hisself (Light in August 477). The South refused to believe God
watched out for them after seeing the brutal killing of many of their friends and
relatives. This passage describes God as imprudent for permitting the war and a
slave man Pawmp as stupid for going to fight in it. A feeling of embarrassment
dwelled among Southerners who watched their men lose the war, and many of
Faulkners characters display this sentiment; however, Hightower does not
experience war directly and cannot understand their humiliation. The echoes from
the war do not seem real to Hightower, who finds no terror in the knowledge that
his grandfather on the contrary had killed men by the hundreds as he was told
and believed (Light in August 477).
Unbearable terror continuously disturbed the nanny and many other
Southerners, but the element of sublime draws Hightower into this world of death
and terror. Although Hightower lacks understanding of the brutality in the war

25

because he did not live through it, he still lives with the aftermath. Similarly,
many Southerners may not have had direct involvement in the war, yet they
remain in a community affected by it.
The adversity in the Hightower family illustrates Southern misfortunes
during and following the Civil War. Hightowers mothers last few years of life
represent the latter part of the Civil War, which tore down the people of the South
with physical, economic, and emotional hardships. Her death symbolizes the
Southern defeat at the end of the Civil War with her pain showing how even
Southern civilians experienced emotional pain caused by the deaths of their family
members and friends serving in the Confederate army.
The phantoms in the Hightower house illustrate the traditions and beliefs
that many Southerners held on to after the abolishment of slavery, beliefs that
haunted Americans in the years to come. Hightowers mother represents the
economic crisis occurring at the end of the Civil War: They [the phantoms] were
the house: he dwelled within them, within their dark and allembracing and
aftermath of physical betrayal (Light in August 475). Most Southerners faced
leaving behind them the old way of life in order to adopt the life forced on them, a
transformation that they did not want or welcome: To the individual Southerner,
the outcome of the war meant that he must henceforth conform to the American
pattern. This was the most painful consequenceat least ten thousand
Southerners fled the country (Howell 186). Those Southerners could not free
themselves from the past and forget their beloved society that existed before 1861.
Unlike the Southerners that fled, Hightower dwells on his familys past, their

26

conflicts and tragedies, which resembles the emotional struggle that many
Southerners experienced at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Hightowers grandfather leaves his house to his son paralleling the Souths
surrender to the North: On the day of the sons wedding, the father surrendered
the house. He was waiting on the porch, with the key to the house in hand, when
the bride and the bridegroom arrived (Light in August 471). Faulkner
intentionally makes the day of the sons wedding occur on the same day that the
grandfather leaves the son his house, symbolizing the North celebration of their
victory and abolition of slavery. The son considers this day a commemoration, but
the grandfather resents it. Similar to the grandfather watching the bride and groom
enter his house, the Southerners saw the Northern businessmen parade into their
towns in triumph.
Southerners resisted their newly formulated and integrated culture, an
attitude that Faulkner reveals through the grandfathers resentment: Youd find
me dull and Id find you dull. And who knows? The cuss might corrupt me. Might
corrupt me in my old age into heaven (Light in August 472). He represents the
Southerners who feared that the Union would distort their society. Faulkner used
old age of the grandfather to represent the long-lasting traditions held in the
South, traditions that the war finally forced to a halt.
The death of Hightowers grandfather symbolizes the trampled Southern
pride and jumbled culture that resulted from the Confederacys defeat. An absence
of slavery forced Southerners who did not leave the states to give up their allwhite segregated society and slave-run businesses; however, conflicts arose while

27

some resisted the integration. Hightowers description of a servant disbelieving

that his grandfather has died depicts how the South refused to acknowledge the
evolving and more unified American society: They could not make him entertain
for a moment the idea that the master might be dead (Light in August 476). The
South could not believe that they lost the war and their traditions had passed
away. The servants frustration and inability to comprehend his masters death
expresses how the South felt about losing the war: Not Marse Gail. Not him. Dey
wouldnt dare to kill a Hightower. Dey wouldnt dare (Light in August 476). The
South also did not believe the North would go to such extreme measures and
sacrifice the lives of so many men in order to stop the South from leaving the
Union. Some even hoped that the South would rise again, which Faulkner reflects
in the servants hope that the master Hightower still lives: Dey got him hid
somewhar, trying to sweat outen him whar me and him hid Mistis coffee pot and
de gole waiter (Light in August 476).
Hightower relates to the Southerners who were in shock when the
Confederates lost not only the war but also their rights as slaveholders. His
obsession with Southern heritage prevents him from conforming to society
because his bewilderment with the phantoms of his family and of the Civil War
place him in an imagined community full of hopes for keeping the old South,
whose hopes shattered in 1865. Hightowers grandfather held the same beliefs,
but due to the time period, his principles attached him to the world around him.
According to Brooks, Faulkner designs Hightowers character not only to

28

represent the Southern traditions but also to portray how ones convictions
establish his involvement in society:
The issue is not that of a Northern or Southern heritage or even that
of a sensual or ascetic temperament: both traditions and
temperaments are represented in their ancestors. The real issue is
whether ones relation to ones heritage permits participation in life
or isolates one from lifewhether it connects past with present or
is simply a private obsession. (Brooks 61)
Although Hightower lives in the Civil War, peaceful town of Jefferson, he
cannot adapt to the reconstructed community and isolates himself from society.
Hightower becomes an alien as a result of his obsession with the traditional beliefs
on race and religion.
Hightower never had direct involvement in the Civil War and only
participates in it through his mind, which depicts his poor mental state.
Regardless, Hightower sees the fighting as something very real and present: You
can see it, hear it: the shouts, the shots, the shouting of triumph and terror, the
drumming hoovesyou can feel, hear in the darkness horses pulled short up,
plunging; clashes of arms whispers overloud, hard breathing, the voices still
triumphant (Light in August 483). Hightowers unhealthy fascination with the
Civil War isolates him from the community in Jefferson. John Lewis Longley Jr.
explains how Hightower creates his own difficulties: He is obsessed with the
idea of the grandfather and is preoccupied with reconstructing an imaginary life
built around the grandfathers accidental presence in Jefferson long ago (229).
Other scholars argue that Hightower does not merely experience psychologically
disruptive illusions rather his vision becomes the ultimate reality.

29

Harvey L. Gable Jr. argues that Hightowers visions help him overcome
his emotional injuries and physical weaknesses in order to receive spiritual
revelation and freedom. If Gables theory were true, Hightowers reality does not
exist in the Jefferson community; therefore, the society that excommunicates him
becomes void. Hightowers conscience expresses reality, and at the end the
chapter Hightowers vision of the wheel shows his apotheosis and final triumph
over physical restraints: The incident takes on additional importance because it is
a moment when underlying cosmology of revelation seems to be revealedwhen
the sky opens and, as it were, for Hightower (Harvey 426).
Paradoxically, Hightowers illusions about his family history more
truthfully express why he isolates himself from the rest of Jefferson. The power
this disturbance has on Hightowers life becomes evident when he makes his
decision to move to the small Mississippi community. Like the many soldiers and
supportive patriotic civilians entering the Civil War, Hightower also entered
Jefferson with a hopeful purpose. Listen Hightower tells his wife, God must
call me to Jefferson because my life died there, was shot from the saddle of a
galloping horse in a Jefferson street one night twenty years before it was ever
born (Light in August 478).
Hightower has allowed the war and the phantoms of his familys ruin to
direct his entire life. Hightowers actions evolve around his grandfathers ruin,
which causes him to hurt the only family member who remained alive, yet he does
not realize this until his old age. Hightower has previously thought that he has
only influenced himself with his odd behavior: It is any mans privilege to

30

destroy himself, so long as he does not injure anyone else, so long as he lives to
himself (Light in August 490). Then Hightower stops his thought process because
he finally realized his greatest failure: Revealled to my wife my hunger, my
egoinstrument of her despair and shame (Light in August 490). His wifes
hunger causes him to remember how he neglected his wife, and for the first time
this realization leaves him in shock: Motionless, unbreathing, there comes upon
him a consternation which is about to be actual horror (Light in August 490).
While pastoring a congregation in Jefferson, Hightower cannot avoid
society and causes a disruption to others with his recurring outbursts during
church: His church members are bewildered and shocked by his concern with his
grandfather, and his neglect of his wife drives her to nymphomania and eventually
to a scandalous death (Longley 229). He ignores the pain like anyone else by
hiding it: I dont want to think this. I must not think this. I dare not think this
(Light in August 490). Hightower cannot overcome the fact that he forced his wife
into insanity and death by the way he treated her. His destructive memories have
caused a life of pain not only to himself but to his wife: As the wheel of his
memory turns on and on, he comes to realize that his own cold selfishness, his
absorption in the Confederate grandfather, has caused his wifes disgrace and
death (Longley 203).
Hightowers life analogously portrays the Souths involvement in the Civil
War. As Hightower forced his wife to move with him to Jefferson, the fighting in
the South caused involvement from even neutral civilians. Enthusiastically,
Hightower brings his new wife to Jefferson in order to follow his grandfathers

31

steps, but as his fascination with his grandfather continues, his purpose grows
more tragic. In a similar manner, the Southerners positively approached the Civil
War; however, after the many deaths and much economic loss, the South became
frustrated and bitter about entering the war, while even doubting their purpose for
fighting. Hightower describes himself, but the picture can also illustrate the war:
Then if this is so, if I am the instrument of despair and death, then I am in turn
instrument of someone outside myselfI have been a single instant of his death
(Light in August 491).
The final reminiscence that Faulkner gives Hightower is his description of
the wild bugles and the clashing sabers and the dying thunder of hooves (Light
in August 493). In The Yoknapatawpha Country, Brooks observes: most readers
have assumed that Hightower, old and exhausted, his head bandaged after
Christmas blows, dies (70); however, Brooks believes Faulkner implied that
Hightower does not die. Brooks adequately explains the value of this argument:
This is obviously highly interesting; but as far as the larger scheme of the book is
concern, it hardly matters (70-71). Faulkner intended for the end of Hightowers
life to be uncertain in order to reflect the unknown prevalence of the South after
the Civil War. People doubted that the Southern communities could survive
following their defeat.
With no first hand experience in the tragedies of the Civil War, Hightower
still becomes consumed by mental and emotional disturbances. His family
members possessed differing positions on the fighting to free the slaves, which
created conflicts that continued to haunt the Hightower family for years following

32

the war. Hightower refuses to conform to the new reconstruction of the South and
cannot rid his mind of the Civil War fantasies and memories, which causes an
imprisonment in a mental home front illustrating the issues that the Southern
society could not defeat following 1865.

33

CHAPTER 3
JOANNAS SOCIAL WAR AGAINST RACISM

Years after 1865, the Civil War affects Hightower and Joanna Burden in
Light in August, which Faulkner portrays by describing their disconnection from
the community around them. Both these characters alienate themselves because of
their delusional beliefs and create a safe haven from their community. Hightower
detaches himself from society because he cannot overcome the past, while Joanna
becomes isolated because she holds ideas about integration that communities in
the future will accept but those around her reject. Similar to the mental home front
created in Hightowers mind, Joanna also creates a home front where she escape
from the white racists in order to fight her own war for black equality.
Unlike Hightower, Joanna becomes physically isolated in order to defend
her views that dissent from the majority of community members. She lives alone
in a large house separate from white society and close to the cabins inhabited by
African Americans. One Negro boy informs Joe Christmas of Joannas secluded
living situation: No, sir. Aint no Mr. Burden. Aint nobody live there but her
(Light In August 227). Christmas finds her living situation most curious and
inquires about it: And she lives there by herself. Dont she get scared, but the
boy merely replies: Who going to harm her, right here at town? Colored folks
around here looks after her Light in August 227).
Joanna leaves her isolated house only to travel on business affairs,
encouraging black colleges and attempting to create equal opportunities for

34

minority students: She visited the schools in person and talked to the teachers
and students. She leaves her business affairs to be conducted by a Negro lawyer in
Memphis, who was a trustee of one of the schools (Light in August 234). Joanna
does not live during the Civil War, yet she involves herself so much with the
social problems after 1865 that readers can see how it detrimentally affected her
life.
Joanna and Hightower both have family histories that present pictures of
the conflicts that arose in the South during and following the Civil War. Cleanth
Brooks discusses how Hightowers life differed from the lives of his father and
grandfather because he lacked interaction with people: Both the grandfathers and
fathers of Joanna and Hightower were whole men, fully related to the world
outside them, fully alive (61).
Calvin Burden, Joannas grandfather, celebrates his wedding, which
illustrates the union of the North and South in 1865. The North enjoyed their
victory at the end of the war, but the South refused to join in rejoicing.
Comparatively, before the end of Calvins wedding celebration, he wants to
denounce the religious beliefs of those around him: The wedding celebration was
still in progress, and his first step was to formally deny allegiance to the Catholic
Church (Light in August 241). This wedding celebration represents the festivities
of unifying the North and South at the end of the Civil War and also parallels
Hightowers father and mothers marriage. In parallel, immediately following his
wedding ceremony, Calvin pulls away from Catholicism, which presents a
metaphor for the Souths attitude at the end of the war. Calvin symbolizes

35

Southerners who immediately wanted to rebel against Northern rules following

the Civil War. The South refused to obey Northern societal rules in 1865, and
Calvin refuted the Catholic creeds after his wedding ceremony.
Calvin represents the unruly South that subsequent to the Civil War
continued to rebel against conforming to the religious, political, and societal
beliefs of the North. With Protestantism reigning in the south, many southerners
refuted Catholic beliefs, and Calvin embodies this group of people. Calvins name
symbolizes the Reformation period with John Calvin and reveals the movement of
people wanting to refute the standard Christian church in order to create new
beliefs. Calvin longs to separate his family from Catholicism, depicting how
Southerners aspire to refute the churches that dominated the North and conform to
Protestantism. Calvin began reforming his sons religion by reading the Bible to
him:
Burdenbegan to read to the child in Spanishin a foreign tongue
with harsh extemporized dissertations composed half of the bleak
and bloodless logic which he remembered from his father on
interminable New England Sundays, and half of the immediate
hellfire and tangible brimstone of which any country Methodist
circuit ride would have been proud. (Light in August 242)
With determination to conform his childs religious beliefs, Calvin
presents a tainted view of religion by intermingling the Bible with his passionate
additives. Faulkner creates Calvins strong, individual religious beliefs to depict
the Protestant communities created by those in the South after 1865: The creation
of these religious communities with their own belief systems and styles of
worship by virtue of their existence and expression outside of the guise and
control of their owners, was a profound act of resistance that gave its membersa

36

sense of personal and communal control (Stevenson 351). Both Calvin and those
establishing Southern religious communities utilize their spiritual doctrine as a
way of refuting the Catholic Church and establishing their own individuality.
Similarly, B. E. Stevenson recounts the history of a black Christian slave
Charlotte Brooks in order to explain how blacks in the South turned to their
spiritual communities to fill both religious and social needs: Charlotte was not
just a black Christian, she was a Protestant, and she detested the Catholicism of
her new owner in Louisiana (349). Brooks and other slaves in the South refused
to conform to the Catholic Church and, as Faulkner illustrates with Calvin, began
to shake off those religious holds on their life following the war.
The Burden family depicts the conflict created when the end of the Civil
War forced integration in the South. Although Calvin and his son both possess
white ethnicity, they have different physical appearances: The two of them
would be alone in the room: the tall, gaunt, Nordic man, and the small, dark, vivid
child who had inherited his mothers build and coloring like people of two races
(Light in August 242). This description implies that their physical appearances
reflect their racial beliefs on society, revealing a contrast in persona that shows
how integration in the South brought not only outward physical diversities but
various societal beliefs as well.
Calvins strong antislavery viewpoint parallels that of Hightowers father,
which exemplifies the religious and political conflicts that flourish throughout the
novel and illustrates how the abolition of slavery caused political differences on
the South. Calvin, Joanna, and Hightowers father possess beliefs that disagree

37

with the social norm of their time period. In an effort to dissociate from the
ancient pro-slavery opinions in the South, Calvin excommunicates himself from
the Catholic church: The next day he said that he meant it, anyhow; that he
would not belong to a church full of frogeating slaveholders (Light in August
241).
Although Calvins antislavery viewpoint remains more consistent with
Northern attitudes, he strives to make his opinion known: Here Burden spent
much of his time talking politics and in his harsh loud voice cursing slavery and
slaveholders (Light in August 243). Calvins forceful opinion shows how the
North overpowered the South with their beliefs following the Civil War: His
reputation had come with him and he was known to carry a pistol and his opinions
were received without comment, at least (Light in August 243). Overpowering
anyone who opposed him, Calvin became determined to abolish the attitudes of
individuals supporting slavery.
By creating this ruthless character, Faulkner reveals how after the removal
of slavery, the North immediately tried to demolish the attitudes of those
supporting slavery in the South. Immediately after the Civil War, conflicts existed
between the former slaveholders in the South and those with antislavery attitudes,
which Faulkner illustrates in Calvins violent belief in the abolition of not only
slavery but anyone who still believes in it: Burden killed a man in an argument
over slavery (Light in August 242).
Immediately following the war, the North wanted to crush any viewpoints
supporting slavery, and Faulkner illustrates this with Calvins attempt to control

38

his son: Ill learn you to hate two things, he [Calvin] would say, or Ill frail the
tar out of you. And those things are hell and slaveholders (Light in August 243).
Calvin forces his position on the two primary disagreements existing between the
North and South, which involve race and religion.
Although slavery ended, no influence could stomp out the racism problems
in the South, and no one could hurry the slow process of integrating blacks into
the community. Calvin held strong beliefs in favor of freeing the slave, yet he
absolutely refused integrating with blacks. Faulkner exposes Calvins radical
opinion in favor of keeping blacks out of his family lineage and disgust when he
discovers his grandson is half black: Another damn black Burden, he said.
Folks will think I bred to a damn slaver (Light in August 247). Similarly, the
South began to accept the freed slaves, yet they did not want African Americans
invading their dominantly white communities. Calvin expresses a viewpoint of
blacks as socially inferior to whites: Damn, lowbuilt black folks: lowbuilt
because of the weight of the wrath of God, black because of the sin of the human
bondage staining their flesh and blood (Light in August 247).
Faulkner uses this same racist man to put the future into perspective, a
future community that peacefully unifies all races. Calvin believes the black
slaves one day will become part of their Southern society: But we done freed
them now, both black and white alike. Theyll bleach out now. In a hundred years,
they will be white folks again (Light in August 248). Calvins figurative
description of the African Americans becoming white expresses his prediction
that racism will fade out and finally welcome blacks into the white community.

39

Faulkner, however, uses conflicts that involve the Burden family to

symbolize Southern society that refused to integrate following the Civil War. A
Confederate soldier kills Joannas half black, half brother: He had just turned
twenty when he was killed in town two-miles away by an ex-slaveholder and
Confederate soldier named Sartoris, over a question of negro voting (Light in
August 249). The murder of this half black man over political equality illustrates
that although Southerners complied with the newly founded antislavery laws, they
refuted the belief that blacks shared equal rights as citizens and fought anyone
who tried to give the former slaves civil liberty.
Faulkner creates other white characters in Light in August who share
Calvins belief in black inferiority. Percy Grimm, a member of the National
Guard, states that the white race is superior to any and all other races and that the
American is superior to all other white races and that the American uniform is
superior to all men (Light in August 451). His position in the military symbolizes
the United States government that prolonged granting the freed slaves their civil
rights. Sullivan explains how many of the characters in Light in August use racism
to raise, achieve and maintain superior positions in the community: From the
most ignorant--Doc Hines and Percy Grimm--to the most educated--Gavin
Stevens--all the white citizens believe that black "blood" contaminates its bearer
with moral depravity or evil, and that belief in turn stabilizes their own identities
in the Yoknapatawpha play of signifiers (501).
Joannas grandfather supported the freedom of slaves, yet he purposely
degraded the black race; however, she passionately worked to eliminate racism in

40

the South. Because Burden regretted Calvins ill treatment of blacks, her father,
Nathaniel, hid the gravesites of her grandfather and half brother, who is also
named Calvin: When they brought grandfather and Calvin home that evening,
father waited until after dark and buried them and hid the graves, leveled the
mounds and put brush and things over them (Light in August 249). Her fathers
beliefs and the Burdens persecution based on their Northern cultural background
influenced her strong antiracist beliefs. Joanna continues to tell Christmas why
they hid their family graves:
They hated us here. We were Yankees. Foreigners. Worse than
foreigners: enemies. Carper baggers. And itthe Warstill too
close for even the ones that got whipped to be very sensible.
Stirring up the Negroes to murder and rape, they called it.
Threatening white supremacy. (Light in August 249)
Generations following the Civil War, Joanna still suffers as a result of her
family heritage, so instead of striving to conform to her society and denouncing
her Northern culture and beliefs, she receives inspiration and becomes determined
to reconstruct her segregated and quarrelsome society.
Joanna describes racism as a never ending curse on the white race: I
thought of all the children coming forever and ever into the world, white, with the
black shadow already falling upon them before they drew breath (Light in August
253). The racist characters in Light in August, Grimm and Joannas grandfather,
view the black race as a curse on whites because of the intolerances that exist
between the two ethnicities, but Joanna does not hate the black race, rather she
hates the treatment that her white people give to minorities. She fights to see
unity and equality among both ethnic groups because she knows that peaceful

41

integration remains the only way the South will prosper: You must struggle, rise.
But in order to rise, you must raise the shadow with you (Light in August 253).
Joanna knows that the blacks will eventually receive political and social
equality, but she cannot foresee her own race ever overcoming its prejudices:
The curse of the black race is Gods curse. But the curse of the white race is the
black man who will be forever Gods chosen own because He once cursed him
(Light in August 253). The incorporation of a curse from God refers to a biblical
analogy with the black race symbolizing Gods chosen people, the Israelites, who
served as slaves for years in Egypt but eventually escaped and flourished in the
land promised to them by God. Joannas description of the white mans curse
represents Gods curse, which is upon everyone else excluded from Gods chosen
people. This analogy reveals Joannas belief that, like the Israelites, the black race
will eventually receive equal rights, but the white race will continuously be
haunted by racism.
Although her ideas about integration remain consistent with Northern
opinions on the issue, Joanna suffers in the South because her opinion on racial
equality differs from that of other whites. Brooks describes both Joanna and
Hightower as victims of the Civil War due to their abnormalities: Hightower has
willfully locked himself into the past in his worship of his grandfathers heroic
image. Joannas loyalty to her grandfathers precepts has played its part too,
preventing her from having any real part in the living community about her
(164). Unlike the communities around her, Joanna wants to see integration and

42

peace among intermingled races, yet she knows that no man, white or black can
ignore the continuous conflict caused by racism.
Joanna starts her own war against racial inequality, which further separates
her from the Southerners. The Civil War has ended, but for Joanna the social war
creates more battles: It was all over then. The killing in uniform and with flags,
and the killing without uniforms and flagsand we were foreigners, strangers,
that thought differently from the people whose country we had come into without
being asked or wanted (Light in August 255). War devoid of uniforms and flags
signifies the conflict relating to the civil rights of blacks.
Susan Hayes Tully explains how Joannas determination results in her
separation from white society: Her desire to carry out the abolitionist
commission of her father thwarts her ability to develop naturally as a woman and
to live successfully within her community (356). In order to defend herself
against persecution in the community, Joanna creates a safe haven in her house
where she has physical protection and emotional security within the black
community surrounding her. Her isolated house becomes a home front providing
an escape after fighting for black education and training black schools to do the
same.

43

CHAPTER 4
THE INESCAPABLE TRAGEDIES OF WAR IN FAULKNERS TWO
SOLDIERS AND SHALL NOT PERISH

Faulkners World War II short story Two Soldiers illustrates a young

boys love for his brother Pete and prepares readers for the tragedy that occurs in
Shall Not Perish. While the two stories present several outlooks that many
people have on war, they also display the consequences of war on most citizens,
including the families living miles away from the fighting. These stories of the
Grier and de Spain families portray how war affects everyone, regardless of their
financial situation or community status, thus equalizing a countrys citizens.
Although people try to avoid and ignore war, no one can escape the aftermath that
can tear apart families and emotionally scar individuals. Two Soldiers provides
a World War II introduction to both the narrator and to readers, while Shall Not
Perish presents characters in search of meaning during their chaotic wartime life.
Faulkner uses these characters to reveal how America has gone to war for a
greater purpose and how citizens should strive to support their country
wholeheartedly.
Although these two stories offer several views on the effects of war,
Faulkner utilizes one storyteller to describe the events in a first person narrative.
This technique differs from Faulkner novels, in which he usually offers several
third person narratives. James Ferguson describes the benefits of Faulkners more
focused short fiction: In the smaller scope of short fiction, the use of a witness-

44

or protagonist-narrator can help give a story concentration, intensity, ironythe

kinds of effects that make such piecesfascinating works of art (175-176). The
narrator of Two Soldiers and Shall Not Perish adds an subjective view of
World War II that educates the characters on war while the readers also gain more
understanding.
Both stories illustrate Faulkners complex plot organization: We can find
in the novels, as well as the short stories, the structural pattern I have noted in
which Faulkner begins with a climatically disruptive disequilibrium (Ferguson
179). At the beginning of Two Soldiers, Pete disrupts the peace of the family
and surprises most of his family members with his decision to enlist as a soldier in
World War II:
Then one nighthe said, I got to go. Go where? I said. To
that war, Pete said. Before we even finish getting in the
firewood? Firewood, hell, Pete said. (Collected Stories 83).
Pete determines that his daily chores are meaningless compared to the job
of fighting for his country, but the nine-year-old narrator refuses to part with his
older brother and wants to also fight in World War II in order to avoid separation
from him: I got to go too. If you got to go, then so have I (Collected Stories 84).
The narrators young age disqualifies him for joining the army with Pete, and no
begging will persuade Pete to stay with the little brother who needs him. The
young narrator does not understand the seriousness of war and hopes that he can
one day join Pete. Once he realizes that he cannot fight, he tells Pete: But maybe
it will run a few years longer and I can get there. Maybe someday I will jest walk
in on you (Collected Stories 86). The young Grier boy hopes that Pete will serve

45

overseas for many years, so that he can become a soldier with his brother when he
comes of age.
None of the Grier family has the ability to understand why Pete wants to
fight for his country. Petes mother also opposes Petes decision to sign up for the
army, yet unlike the narrator she realizes the possible grief that the family may
bear, and she cannot accept the burden. Mrs. Grier continues to cry and tell her
husband: I dont want him to go. I would rather go myself in his place, if I could
(Collected Stories 84). She wants to give Japan control of distant states, such as
Hawaii, if that will leave her community in peace. Her anguish foreshadows the
loss of her son and the emotional burden that his death will cause the family. She
allows her son to leave because she sees his determination; however, she does not
understand why overseas military conflict should affect her. She knows the war
will destroy her dream of keeping her family together: Them Japanese could take
it and keep it, so long as they left me and my family and my children alone
(Collected Stories 84). Although Petes mother lives away from the war and tries
everything to keep it from affecting her family, she knows that she cannot protect
her family from the tragedies of war. She remembers her familys past
involvement in the war; her brother left his family to become a soldier at age
nineteen, which she mentions in order to show how war alters the lives of people
of all ages. She fails to justify how war breaks apart families, yet she knows she
must accept it. A previous war, most likely World War I, separated Mrs. Griers
mother from her son. Similarly, World War II brings distance to the next
generation of Griers. Petes mother cries out for reasoning: Our mother couldnt

46

understand it then, any more than I can now. She told Marsh [her brother] if he
had to go, he had to go. And so, if Petes got to go to this one, hes got to go to it.
Jest dont ask me to understand why (Collected Stories 85).
Mr. Grier also opposes Petes enlistment and acknowledges that the family
will suffer more hardships without his help on the farm: What will I do for help
on the farm with you gone? It seems to me Ill get mighty behind (Collected
Stories 85). Petes father realizes that the war will cause economic stress on his
family. Faulkner illustrates that war begins a reaction that financially disrupts
many families, even the families located miles from the action. Mr. Grier
expresses the belief that the United States should not become involved in war
unless forced: The country aint being invaded. Our President in Washington
D.C., is watching the conditions and he will notify us (Collected Stories 85).
Faulkner uses Mr. Grier to display how many individuals view defense as the only
valid reason for entering a war and to show the pessimistic attitude on World War
II that many Americans held before Pearl Harbors attack.
Petes parents want to live in the peaceful and rural community of
Jefferson, Mississippi and avoid any war occurring in other parts of the world,
regardless of how it affects other Americans; however, Mr. and Mrs. Grier
tragically fail to escape World War II as they fall short in understanding the
purpose of it. The Grier familys opposition to war parallels the attitudes of other
Faulkner characters in this section of Collected Stories. In All the Tall Men,
Faulkner creates another middle-class family of farmers who want to work hard
and peacefully reside in the countryside of Mississippi devoid of political or

47

government conflict, but the U.S. government eventually pulls the family into its
affairs. The McCallum sons disregard the federal orders to sign up in the draft;
therefore, a U.S. investigator arrives at their country home to force the young
mens enlistment. Although these men have disobeyed governmental rule, Hans
Skei explains how this type of character displays the hard working attitude and
contentment that Faulkner admires most:
The free, independent farmers want to be left in peace, but they
feel a strong sense of duty and loyalty to their community and to
their country. Their goals are not to buy more land and grow big
and rich and importantThey simply want to make a living where
God has placed them. (William Faulkner: The Novelist as Short
Story Writer 266)
In Two Soldiers, Petes parents strongly believe that they can work hard
and not become involved in the war going on across the ocean, but Pete
determines that he has a responsibility to help his country in fighting the war. The
family portrays a viewpoint that disproves but supports the war, living isolated
peaceful lives yet fulfilling the duty that civilians have in serving their country
during war.
Both the Griers and the McCallums attempt to ignore the world outside of
their community because they believe in maintaining self-sufficiency. These
families have no need for governmental aid: Because they try to keep their
integrity and some pride and self-esteem in the midst of social deterioration, their
estrangement is the result of a society which has forgotten all these important
values, which Faulkners narrators refer to as the old verities of the heart (Skei
40). The family takes pride in their success and independence and does not want
the war to interrupt their prosperity. Mr. Grier asks his son: Besides, whatll I do

48

for help on the farm with you gone? It seems to me Ill get mighty far behind
(Collected Stories 85). According to Mr. Grier, his family income is more
important than supporting his country by fighting in the army.
Mr. Grier values his business more than serving the country and seems
unpatriotic; however, the Griers work ethic may make them perfect patriots. Skei
describes this type of character as courageous and highly suitable for war: those
who live by strict standards for decent conduct and honorable behaviortheir
attitudes and beliefs combine with an unflaggering love for the land and
undeviating patriotism to make them ideal defenders in time of war (William
Faulkner: The Novelist as Short Story Writer 267).
Two Soldiers differs from previously published war literature because
Faulkner does not establish the soldier in this story as the protagonist. Rather, the
nine-year-old boy supports Pete going to fight in the war, although he does not
know why Pete enlists himself as a soldier. Unforeseen tragedy overwhelms his
parents with fear, but the young narrator possesses both a naive and ignorant
viewpoint of war, causing a curiosity that compels him to follow Pete to Memphis
in an unconscious attempt to find reasoning amidst the chaos of his brothers
sudden departure. By sending the narrator to Memphis, Faulkner demonstrates an
element of writing similar to that used in many of his short stories about World
War I in These 13: The stories in the second sectionare framed by the first four
stories in the first section, which deal with World War I or its effects, and by the
stories in the final section, concerned, as Millgate suggests, with Americans
abroad who are undergoing some kind of enlarging experience (Ferguson 150).

49

Like many characters who travel overseas, the narrator journeys to a distant city,
farther than he has ever traveled before, and his experience remarkably broadens
his viewpoint on life.
Although an adolescent, the narrator exemplifies courage and
determination, which makes him an admirable, young hero. After using his
diplomatic skills to acquire a bus ticket to Memphis, the narrator continues his
search for Pete: I went to the table where the soldier was writing, and I said,
Wheres Pete? And he looked up and I said, My brother. Pete Grier. Where is
he? (Collected Stories 95). Portraying heroic bravery and ignorance, he stabs a
soldier with his pocketknife in order to see Pete before his departure. The narrator
has traveled miles and withstood the opposition of many adults to find his brother
only to receive the command to go back home: You must go home. You must
look after maw, and I am depending on you to look after my ten acres (Collected
Stories 96). Disappointed and frustrated, this young Grier, who previously hoped
to follow his brother, obeys his commands out of love and respect.
Smadar Shiffman argues that most of Faulkners protagonists exist
paradoxically: their fate results as a product of their own characteristics. Typical
Faulkner heroes act upon individual ideas, which become vital to the main plot in
Faulkners short stories. In Two Soldiers, the narrator acts upon his peculiar
personality and becomes center of the action as he abandons his parents and
hitchhikes to Memphis. The narrators ideological expectation in finding and
joining his brother in war represents one trait that Faulkner gives many of his
characters: Faulknerian protagonists major characteristic, frequently a virtue that

50

is instrumental in bridging about his (and, on rare occasions, her) success,

inevitably and paradoxically, also motivates his or her own downfall within the
same narrative framework (Shiffman 20). Taking control of his own destiny and
leaving Mississippi, his self-willed personality brings him to disappointment when
he must return home empty-handed and no more acquainted with the
understanding of World War II that he set out to find.
Through the confused narrator and unresolved ending, Faulkner displays a
theme that Skei has noticed in other Faulkner works: The potential for freedom,
even to choose ones own ethical value, in a world apparently devoid of meaning,
requires open texts and demands a technique that allows the hero to reflect
(Reading Faulkners Best Short Stories 40). Returning to Mississippi without any
more knowledge about war, the narrator realizes that his experience has prepared
him for the future and for carrying out his brothers request to care for his family
and land. He follows the same path home that he took to Memphis: We was back
on the same highway the bus run on this morningthe patches of stores and them
big gins and sawmills, and Memphis running on for miles (Collected Stories 99).
The narrator may not understand the meaning of World War II, but he
gains a better understanding of life and realizes that it goes by fast, which will aid
him in coping with his brothers death in the war. As he describes the car ride
home, he reveals his newly found maturity: We was going fast now. At this rate,
before I knowed it we would be home again (Collected Stories 99). In this quote,
the narrator consciously describes how the car seems to move quickly, yet he
figuratively refers to life in general. Both Faulkner and the narrator express that

51

life goes by fast and before anyone expects it, individuals are taken home, the
religious reference to physical death. At this point, the narrator does not know the
emotional pain that World War II will cause him, but he realizes that the war is
dramatically altering his life.
In Shall Not Perish, Faulkner uses this young man to reiterate how
quickly ones life can end and utilizes the war to force individuals to think about
the temporality of life. After hearing the news of Petes death, the narrator thinks:
And that was all. One day there was Pearl Harbor. And the next week Pete went
to Memphis, to join the army and go there and help them (Collected Stories 101).
The narrator of these two stories remembers hearing the news about the bombing
of Pearl Harbor and how shortly after that Pete enlists for the war, which retells
the fast paced action in Two Soldiers. In Shall Not Perish, the same young
man continues to dwell on the events in his life: And one morning Mother stood
at the field fence with a little scrap of paper not even big enough to start a fire
withA Ship was. Now it was not. Your son was one of them (Collected Stories
101-102). Faulkner illustrates the sudden events in life by contrasting the
narrators memory of Pete leaving one day with his immediate reflection on the
moment he saw his mother receive the news of Petes death, a thought process
that further establishes the idea of life as a short experience.
The narrator also expresses an unknown frustration: All of a sudden I
begun to cry. I never knowed I was fixing to, and I couldnt stop it. I set there by
that soldier, crying (Collected Stories 99). His tears reveal the pain that he feels
in watching his brother leave but also the love and support that he has for his

52

brother going to war. Mr. and Mrs. Griers absence in this part of the story
highlights the narrators support of his brother leaving, which contradicts the
pessimistic attitude held by his parents. The narrators tears demonstrate his
feeling of loneliness, a theme portrayed in many characters appearing in
Faulkners short fiction.
In the article Existential Experience in Faulkners Short Fiction, Hans
Skei describes how Faulkners many short stories include numerous lonely,
estranged, lost souls in the midst of organized life in a community of men (69).
Adults and family members constantly surround the narrator of Two Soldiers,
yet Faulkner gives him a feeling of loneliness, which results from his positive
attitude towards World War II that contradicts the attitude of his parents.
Moreover, the narrator feels alienated because he tries to keep his integrity and
some pride and self-esteem in the midst of a deterioration of all values (69).
Regardless of whether he understands his brothers purpose in going to war, the
narrator values Pete enough to support him going, but his parents do not show this
type of support for Pete and act as a deterrent to the narrators optimistic view of
the war.
World War II forces the eight-year-old narrator to view life as an adult;
therefore, he must realize that harsh upsets and abrupt separation from loved ones
occur at times. War has separated two brothers and taken away a role model. After
Pete leaves, the narrator has no one to help him carry his bird egg collection: But
the box was too big to tote a long ways and have to worry with (Collected Stories
89). His inability to tote the box symbolizes his immaturity and lack of experience

53

with emotional burdens prior to his trip to Memphis, but later his experience
educates him and enables him to understand the seriousness of life and
relationships.
Faulkner reveals the close bond between these two brothers during their
final time together: He just laid his hand on my head a minute. And then I be dog
if he didnt lean down and kiss me, and I heard his feet and then the door, and I
never looked up and that was all (Collected Stories 97). His brothers absence
causes him to grow up fast, and Faulkner establishes that the narrator has realized
this by his adult drinking habits. The narrator tells the woman caring for him: I
reckon Ill just have some ham and eggs and coffee (Collected Stories 98). His
choice in coffee, a typical adult drink, shows how he has transformed into an
atypical eight-year old.
Shall Not Perish continues the Grier family story approximately six
months after Petes departure and begins with the notification of his death. The
narrator grieves after hearing the news of his brothers death, which completes the
young Griers transformation from child to adult. A small envelope comes with
the death announcement that causes an emotional stress in Mrs. Grier, but the
narrator refuses to believe that his brother has died. Amidst all the confusion, the
narrator begins yelling out of despair while Mr. Grier attempts to contain him:
Then I was the one Father had to grab and hold, trying to hold me, having to
wrastle with me like I was another man instead of just nine (Collected Stories
101). Faulkner describes the narrator as a man juxtaposed to his father, which

54

represents how this serious and harsh event in the young mans life has forced him
to mature immediately.
At this point in the story, the narrator is the only character in the story
wanting to grieve over his brother, which shows contrast to his family who do not
spend substantial time morning the loss of their son: And we allowed ourselves
one day to grieve (Collected Stories 102), but the narrator discourages this
superficial way to overcome emotional struggles. His parents try to ignore their
emotional pain while the narrator wants to embrace and overcome it. Instead of
comforting each other and mourning as a close family, the Griers choose to hide
their pain. The narrator observes how his father makes no attempt to comfort his
wife during their hardship: When the message came about Pete, Father never
touched her (Collected Stories 103). The familys short period of mourning
surprises the narrator: one day to grieve, and that was all (Collected Stories
102). After Petes death, the mother pretends that the war does not exist and does
not acknowledge the families around her also suffering from the death of a loved
one. The Griers receive the news of a friend: Its Major de Spains boy, he
said. In town. The av-yator. That was home last fall in his officer uniform. He
run his airplane into a Japanese battleship and blowed it up. So they knowed
where he was at. Then she [Mrs. Grier] got up and washed her hands and came
back and sat down again. Read it, she said. (Collected Stories 103).
Tragedy invades homes all around the Griers, but they have chosen to
ignore the war and the pain that it has caused; however, Mr. and Mrs. Grier do not
realize that they cannot just ignore wars aftermath. Disasters during World War II

55

affected many people belonging to communities outside of Jefferson: We would

see the pictures and names of soldiers and sailors from other counties and towns
in Mississippi and Arkansas and Tennessee (Collected Stories 102). The narrator
expresses how the death of World War II soldiers causes pain to many other
families: Then it happened again. Maybe we forgot that it could and was going
to, again and again, to people who loved sons and brothers as we loved Pete
(Collected Stories 102).
Although the Griers try to forget the war following Petes death, they
cannot overlook the deaths of the other sons in their community. No Americans
could ignore the misfortunes produced by the war, and the effects of war crushed
everyone in the community, regardless of their social classification, and according
to the narrator, upper, middle, and lower class people mourn the deaths of
soldiers:
All the grieving about the earth, the rich and the poor too, whether
they lived with ten nigger servants in the fine big painted houses in
town or whether they lived on and by seventy acres of not extra
good land like us or whether all they owned was the right to sweat
today for what they would eat tonight could say, At least this there
was some point to why we grieved. (Collected Stories 103)
Faulkner uses this passage to express the notion of war equalizing society
because no amount of money or power could help anyone escape wars suffering.
From the wealthy businessmen to the southern plantation owners to the hardworking farmhand, World War II distributed something to all Americans: the right
to grieve over the loss of life.
While the Grier family changes clothes to visit De Spain and comfort him
after the death of his son, Mr. Grier commands the young Grier boy to stop

56

shining his shoes in order to impress the rich De Spain family: De Spain is
richYou shine all your shoes like you aimed yourself to wear them: just the
parts that you can see yourself by looking down (Collected Stories 104).
Although the narrator continues to refer to De Spain as the rich man, Mr. Grier
knows that the De Spains money does not make him inferior. The Grier family
arrives at the De Spain mansion, and the narrator realizes that he should have
listened to his father: And then it never mattered whether our shoes were shined
at all or not (Collected Stories 106). The narrator knows that the appearance of
his shoes no longer matter because the riches of the De Spain household no longer
matter as they focus on the loss of their twenty-three year old son. All the money
and power of De Spain could not protect his son during World War II. Mrs. Grier
describes De Spains prestige: A banker powerful in money and politics both,
that Father said had made governors and senators too in Mississippi (Collected
Stories 107).
Faulkner contrasts these two families in order to show the similar pain that
they both struggle to overcome. During this period of mourning, the Griers and De
Spain search for the reason that the country had to fight in the war and steal their
sons lives. De Spain wants to pray that the country will avoid war, thus avoiding
more sacrifice of soldiers: Go back home and pray. Not for the dead one: for the
one they have so far left you, that something somewhere somehow will save him
(Collected Stories 107). De Spain does not understand why his son has died in
World War II, thus causing his confusion about the purpose of the country
entering into the war.

57

The antiwar attitudes of the characters in Shall Not Perish reflect the
Southerners view of war that evolved after the long traumatic Civil War: As
David Goldfield has reminded us in a recent book, Southern society became more
insular, more ideologically homogenous, and less tolerant than it had been before
the war (Skykes 523). The Confederate loss in the Civil War embarrassed
Southerners and gave them a pessimistic attitude towards war. Mrs. Grier and De
Spain represent the bitterness of the South that caused the dissenting opinions
towards World War II.
De Spain believes the soldiers in the Civil War fought for the purpose of
freeing their countrymen: His [Pete Griers] forefathers fought and died, even
though what they fought and died for was a dream (Collected Stories 108);
however, he also misunderstands their service that substantially helped Americans
because he deems that the United States government is unbeneficial: For his
country! He had no country: this one I too repudiate. His country and mine both
was ravaged and polluted and destroyed eighty years ago, before even I was born
(Collected Stories 108). Noel Polk explains that a nation cannot stand without
war, even if the cause of the war is unseen: Whether its cause is just or unjust, no
nation can live unless it plans for the slaughter of some of its young people
(141). The characters in Shall Not Perish sway between expressing patriotism
and resentment towards war. Mrs. Grier and De Spain must quit trying to justify
the war and begin uniting with their country: To think patriotically is to excite us
to an equally mindless defense of war and governments, and to be patriotic is in

58

fact to perform our parts in the national script of war, to do what we are told and
expected to do (Polk 141).
The loss of Mrs. Griers son has also confused her, but she views World
War II: Weep. Not for him: for us, the old, who dont know why (Collected
Stories 109). She cannot find a reason for her son sacrificing his life in a war
overseas, but she knows that she still mourns for him: Women are not supposed
to know why their sons must die in battle; maybe all they are supposed to do is
just to grieve for them (Collected Stories 109). Mrs. Grier provides a neutral
position on the fighting and continually suggests that they should weep for their
lost sons instead of allowing their deaths to cause bitterness towards their country.
H.C. Messer describes Faulkners tragic characters who search for their
meaning and reason to move forward in a life full of hardship. Like Mrs. Grier
and De Spain, Faulkners characters cry out with a voice undeniably exhausted
of meaning in the face of the tragic lives and deaths of people (Messer 14).
Though Faulkners stories display peoples incessant hunt for purpose during
chaotic experiences, his stories lack resolution and feature characters who never
find significance through their trials. Faulkners fiction seldom proves wholly
adequate to lend meaning to that which it continually struggles even to
encompass (Messer 14). The ending of Shall Not Perish remains consistent
with the rest of Faulkners fiction because although Mrs. Grier discovers how to
look at her distraught life with hope, Faulkner provides no change to the despair
of De Spain and Mr. Grier.

59

Shall Not Perish concludes with Mrs. Grier rationalizing the war and
preaching to her family members not why her son and the rest of the American
soldiers died in World War II but for what they sacrificed their lives: All the little
places that men and women have lived in and loved whether they had anything to
paint pictures of them with or not (Collected Stories 114). Ironically, the mother
and only woman in this story heroically becomes the only character able to see
beyond the devastation. John Lowe argues that Faulkner uses the mother figure as
a symbol for America and supports his position by describing Faulkner and his
brothers dependence on their own mother while growing up: Thus, Faulkners
own mother, the initial source of identity, ultimately, through art, becomes
America herself (96). Shall Not Perish illustrates Lowes theory as the Grier
mother explains to the other characters that the Americans motivation to fight is
to protect and unite their country.
Donald M. Kartiganer offers more support on Faulkners view of war by
analyzing his war literature. Faulkner values the peoples involvement in war
higher than the outcome of the war: As for territory won or lost, casualties
suffered or inflicted, prisoners captured, planes downed-these are not the purpose
(although occasionally they are the results) (Kartiganer 620). During the last
moments in Shall Not Perish, Mrs. Grier disregards the military results of
World War II and focuses on her patriotic participation. She even neglects to
dwell on the loss of her son and never even mentions the details of his death.
Kartiganer describes the importance of war to Faulkners characters: What

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counts is the manner of engagement, however irrelevant to the wars ultimate

purpose (Kartiganer 620).
Mrs. Grier describes the peaceful communities of Mississippi and the
United States as little places and suggests that American soldiers endure
suffering so that the United States can enjoy harmony. Mrs. Grier continues to pay
tribute to the soldiers by referring to the treaties attained after war and describing
the soldiers perseverance:
All the little places quiet enough to be lived in and loved and the
names of them before they were quiet enough, and the names of
the deeds that made them quiet enough, and the names of the men
and women who did the deeds, who lasted and endured and fought
the battles and lost them and fought them again because they
didnt even know they have been whipped. (Collected Stories
114)
World War II caused an insurmountable amount of grief to the De Spains
and Griers because both families tragically lost family members; however, Mrs.
Grier expresses that they can look past their suffering to the future of Americans
and the purpose of their sacrifices: The name of what they did and died for
because just one single word, louder than any thunder. It was America, and it
covered all the western earth (Collected Stories 115).
Petes enlistment forces the Grier family into involvement with World War
II and brings the young narrator of Two Soldiers face-to-face with the
seriousness and results of a war fought overseas. Although seemingly far away, no
American could avoid World War II. Furthermore, the consequences that
accompany the fighting equalize all classes of society. Both the Grier and De
Spain families muddle through their pain and find a purpose in the war, and

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although the war does not physically affect those on the American home front,
civilians should patriotically support their soldiers in order to unite the people
together for the country.

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CHAPTER 5
SUFFERING PRODUCES TRAGIC AND DETERMINED CHARACTERS

Light in August, Two Soldiers, and Shall Not Perish portray characters
who become indirectly involved in war yet suffer considerably from its
devastating results. The Civil War and World War II haunt the families in these
works with mental and emotional pain. For Hightower, the aftermath has ventured
many years to infect his mind with the family conflict caused by the Civil War,
the same war that burdens Joanna with socially unacceptable beliefs on racial
equality. In World War II, the Grier and De Spain families experience trauma
caused by the deaths of their sons. The victims in both of these wars express a
sense of helplessness in a time and place removed from the fighting.
The plot in each of these works presents a separate conclusion about the
war offered by a different character. Hightower decides that he will continue
living in memory of the Civil War, while Joanna and the young Grier boy
positively look to the future, and Mrs. Grier accepts the deaths in the war as a
necessary contributor to the circle of life. The Civil War throws Hightower back
into the past and gives Joanna dreams for future Southern society; moreover,
World War II makes the narrator of Two Soldiers think about his future.
Contrastingly, Mrs. Grier offers a neutral view of war not as either a beginning or
an end to life but rather a means of creating more life for some countrymen and
ending the lives of others.

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According to Hightower in Light in August, war causes life to halt and

even rewind. Hightowers obsession with the Civil War mentally ends his life
making him incompetent in creating any new memories; furthermore, his
memories go backwards as he reminisces about his family history. Faulkner
creates Hightowers life to represent how some people cannot function after
disruptive, dramatic events and portrays Hightowers hopelessness by describing
him staring out of the window in his house: Now the final copper light of
afternoon fades; now the street beyond the low maples and the low signboard is
prepared and empty, framed by the study window like a stage (Light in August
466). The light fading symbolizes Hightowers life, which has been dying out
since his move to Jefferson. His wife notices how Hightower lacks purpose in his
life and longingly waits for his death: She knew and had not forgot with division
and regret and despair, why he would sit here at this window and wait for
nightfall (Light in August 467).
Faulkner expresses how, because of the Civil War, Hightower has died to
his world in Jefferson and actually dwells in a world surrounded by the Civil
Wars aftermath: The copper light has completely gone now; the world hangs in
green suspension in color and texture like light through colored glass (Light in
August 469). The light represents Hightowers life fading to death, and the green
world describes his view of Jefferson, but he does not live in that world. He lives
in the past and watches the world from his confined house. Hightower troubles
himself and isolates himself from society because he refuses to advance with the
evolving community. He contradicts Faulkners statements regarding time: Time

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is a [forward] and continuous thing which is a part of motion (Kerr 367). Of

course, Hightower breaks this rule because he does not move with time but wants
to live backwards. The Civil War has destroyed his emotional well being, thus
annihilating his ability to progress in any aspect of his life. Faulkner gives
Hightower a reminiscent view of the war to remind his audience of the ignored
aspects in history: Forgotten was the decade-long struggle known as
ReconstructionIt was a past seen through Faulkners imagination, one that
enabled historians to see what they had so long ignored as they set about revisiting
the war and the issues of race that it left unresolved (Doyle 17).
Hightower depicts a useless view of the Civil War and how it caused his
figurative death: I had already died one night twenty years before I saw light.
And that my salvation must be to return to the place to die where my life had
ceased before it began (Light in August 478). Hightower believes that the Civil
War killed him even before his birth, which symbolizes how the Civil War ruined
his life emotionally and economically. Alfred Kazin establishes that Hightowers
mental disturbance disallows him having a mind: Hightower not only lives by his
thoughts, he has no life but his thoughtsFor just as his life is over, and he has no
function but to brood, so Faulkner has signified in Hightower that wholly
retrospective, watchful concern, not with the past but with their bondage to the
past (155).
Faulkner describes Hightowers life figuratively in order to express the
negative outlook on war as merely a destroyer of life and hope: I have been a
single instant of darkness in which a horse galloped and a gun crashed (Light in

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August 491). The darkness that overwhelms Hightowers life also symbolizes the
Southerners loss of purpose following the Confederate defeat. Elmo Howell
describes how the Civil War darkened the Souths future: In 1860, the future of
the South looked bright; but after four years of war, its defeat was so thorough
that half a century later it had not recovered from the psychical wound it received
at Appomattox (185). Hightowers hopelessness in life exemplifies the wounded
South and its surrender following the war: Surrender meant the ultimate loss of
identity as a people which is not the usual outcome of civilized warfare (Howell
185). Hightowers dead mental state mirrors the psychological struggles suffered
by the Southerners, who like Hightower failed to move past the tragedies of the
war: This experience resulted in a traumatic effect on the Southern mind which
has not yet disappeared (Light in August 186).
In contrast to Hightowers beliefs, which cause his static mindset, Joanna
expresses new ideas for integration and equal rights of minority citizens. Joanna
communicates to black universities and colleges on equal educational
opportunities, and Faulkner uses light to symbolize Joannas bright ideas. When
Joanna first appears in Light in August, she carried a candle, holding it high, so
that its light fell upon her face (Light in August 231). The candle represents her
desire to reconstruct the racist Southern society, a desire that she supports by
expressing the great need for equality among races.
Joanna becomes a light in the dark South tainted by racism, but during her
lifetime, Southerners reject her ideas and cause her isolation: As an adult she is
completely alone; although surrounded by the blacks she commits herself to help,

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she is isolated from the community and denied any interpersonal relationships
(Tully 356). Joanna and Hightower become outcasts in Southern society because
their beliefs cannot peacefully exist in the Souths reconstruction period: Joanna
Burdens tragedy is a subtle synthesis of Gail Hightowers and Joe Christmass.
Hightower represents a man whose existence in the present is denied by the
inability to escape the past (Tully 356). Joanna, however, finds her identity not in
the past but in the future: Like Hightower, Joanna is fettered to the past, but it is
a past she has little understanding of, a past in which she takes not direct role
(Tully 356). Ironically, the present South has no position for Joanna; therefore,
she becomes an outsider because her beliefs agree more with the ideas of future
societies who welcome integration.
The outlooks on war presented in Two Soldiers and Shall Not Perish
differ substantially. The first of these two stories appearing in Collected Stories
represents war as a time of new beginnings as the Grier boy describes the dawn
while narrating his trip to Memphis: Daybreak was jest starting when I walked
up the hill into town. I could smell breakfast cooking in the cabins (Collected
Stories 88). In this passage, the sketch of daybreak and everyday cooking
illustrates how the war creates a fresh start in life for Americans. The narrator
offers further illustration at the end of Two Soldiers by describing the sun again:
And now I could see Memphis good, bright in the sunshine, while we was
swinging around it (Collected Stories 99). The narrators run-in with the military
has given him a different perspective on life. For him, life still continues but
maybe a little more fast-paced: Then we was running again between the fields

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and woods, running fast now, and except for that soldier, it was like I hadnt never
been to Memphis a-tall (Collected Stories 99). For the narrator, World War II has
forced him to see how life goes by quickly: We was going fast now. At this rate,
before I knowed it we would be home again (Collected Stories 99).
The focus in Shall Not Perish switches from the narrators perspective of
war to Mrs. Griers viewpoint and expresses war as life altering in a more
negative sense. Mrs. Grier has influenced the narrators view of World War II,
and he now does not see war as the cause of new beginnings but rather the means
to an end. He describes the wheel as symbolic of life: It was like the wheel, like
the sunset itself, hubbed at that little place that dont even show on the map
(Collected Stories 114).
Faulkner also uses the wheel in Light in August as a metaphor depicting
the worlds never ending process of birth to life to death:
The Wheel, released, seems to rush on with a long sighing sound.
He [Hightower] sits motionless in its aftermath, in his cooling
sweat, while the sweat pours and pours. The Wheel whirls on. It is
going fast and smooth now, because it is freed now of burden, of
vehicle, axle, all. In the lambent suspension of August into which
night is about the fully come, it seems to engender and surround
itself with a faint glow like a halo. (Light in August 491)
Hightowers sweat represents the physical toiling that war demands of people, and
the halo symbolizes the honor deserved by those who give their life in war.
Faulkner includes the wheel as the illustration for life showing how life whirls
on following war (Light in August 491). In Light in August and Shall Not
Perish, the picture of the wheel does not appear until the end of the respective
stories, which demonstrates Elizabeth M. Kerrs theory on Faulkners use of

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symbols: Faulkners prevailing irony and paradox may be symbolically indicated

with thematic imagery serving to create dramatic tension, or to confirm, amplify,
or contradict a plot (11). Faulkner interweaves all of these symbols at the end of
this chapter to reestablish Hightower as representing wars aftermath and to
contradict Hightowers belief by arguing that life continues after war.
The Civil War affects how Hightower views life, which is more negative
than the Griers outlook. He sees life and war as something occurring without
purpose or meaning: The wheel turns on. It spins now, fading, without progress
(Collected Stories 492). Joanna expresses the most unselfish view of life of all
these characters by desiring and working for the rights of minorities and their
future, rather than striving to acquire her own gain. For the young Grier boy, life
occurs in order to create memories, and he describes all of the people and places
that he bears in mind while he views the wheel: Never a one too big for it to
touch, never a one too little to be remembered;the places that men and women
have liven in and loved whether they had anything to paint pictures of them or
not (Collected Stories 114).

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Vita
Roxann Wylie was raised in Tyler, Texas with her two
sisters and two younger brothers. She received her Bachelors
degree in broadcast journalism from Texas Tech University prior
to moving to Tennessee to study English. She strives to love
God with each day of her life and show love to those around her.

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