William Faulkner explored the problem of Old South through the study of the father figure who represented the past world. The South and the Fury(1929) is a starting work in the long series of study of the father figure and his legacies. In this text, ...
William Faulkner explored the problem of Old South through the study of the father figure who represented the past world. The South and the Fury(1929) is a starting work in the long series of study of the father figure and his legacies. In this text, the loss of validity of values of the Old South, the world of fathers was presented through Quentin whose destiny showed the danger of one´s obsession with the dead values of the Old South.
The failure of the Old South was fundamentally related with the problematic race relations. In this text those problematic race relations were not concretly issued but obscurely veiled. Race relationship was treated only as the received relationship between master and slave. Quentin regarded blacks as slaves, himself as a white master. The problem of the Old South, the relation between the while master´s collapse and black slave´s tortures were not confronted in this text.
Nevertheless the existence of blacks was presented as shadows and was found to give some tensions on Quentin´s mind. In Quentin´s unconsciousness there were some fears of blacks, which were related with the virginity of the white sister symbolizing the virginity of the Old South. Those fears of blacks, the problematic race relationship were explored in writer´s next great works, The Light in August(1931) and Absalom, Absalom!(1936).