About William Faulkner

About the Author

• Born in New Albany, Mississippi, in 1897.
• Attended the University of Mississippi in 1919 but dropped out.
• Worked as a book seller's assistant for a short time.
• His first book, Soldier's Pay, was published in 1926.
• The Sound and the Fury was his personal favorite work.
• In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature and participated in screenwriting, increasing his public recognition.

Faulkner as a Writer

• He explored psychological relationships between men and women, and between blacks and whites.
• His works often reflected the southern tradition.
• He used a stream-of-consciousness narrative style.
• His writing paid attention to diction and melody.
• His works employed stylistic devices and figurative language.
• He was known for his high ideals and surprising optimism.
• Famous works include The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom!, and Sanctuary.
• He also wrote a short story titled A Rose for Emily.

About the Speech

• Faulkner was awarded in 1949.
• His acceptance speech is known as "the Banquet Speech."
• The speech was titled "The Writer's Duty."
• This speech aimed to inspire young writers to create good literature.
• It should be understood in the context of the post-World War II era.
• It targets young writers and seeks to persuade them of the significance of literature.

William Faulkner Banquet Speech

• Faulkner delivered the speech at Nobel Banquet at City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950.
• He believed the award recognized his life's work and the effort to create something new from the human spirit.
• Faulkner considered the award to be "in trust".
• He intended to use the moment to inspire young writers to continue their work.

Explanation of the Speech

• Faulkner humbly acknowledged that the award recognized his life's work, etched in "the agony and sweat of the human spirit".
• His purpose was to "create something new" from human experience instead of seeking glory or profit.
• Faulkner chose strategic stylistic elements to appeal to his audience and inspire young writers.
• He began by introducing writing as a topic and emphasizing the tireless efforts involved.
• He refers to writing as "anguish and travail".

Insight into Writings

• According to Faulkner, the tragedy in the world causes people to worry when they will be blown up rather than problems of the human heart.
• According to Faulkner, young writers forget about the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing, and the agony and the sweat of the human heart.
• One must learn to teach himself that the basest of all things to be afraid; and forget for ever, leaving no room in his workshop for the truths of the heart.
• Universal truths are lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.
• Until one does so, he labors under a curse, writing not of the heart but of the glands.

Faulkner's Purpose

• To encourage writers to improve their writing.
• Justification: "The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail".
• Writing is seen as essential to humanity's endurance.
• He uses the the words agony, pity, compassion, honor, endurance and courage.
• By emphasizing universal human emotions, he evokes a display of his purpose.

More Insights into his Writings

• Writing as though he stood among and watched the end of man is to decline to accept the end of man.
• The last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, and even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny, inexhaustible voice, still talking.
• Refusal to accept that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.
• Man is immortal because he has a soul and a spirt to compassion, sacrifice and endurace.
• Poets and writers have the duty to write about these things.
• The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Explanation Continued

• Faulkner thought that contemporary writers have forgotten the heart's conflicts.
• According to Faulkner, contemporary writers focus on matters like lust, hollow victories, and a lack of compassion.
• He declares that man is immortal because he possesses a soul capable of compassion, sacrifice, and endurance.
• According to Faulkner, it is a writer and poet's job to ensure that the glory of the past endures.
• In his quiet southern accent, Faulkner urges others to embrace the profound and universal themes that make stories enduring.

Central Idea

• Good writers want to create something new, but this is difficult because of existential threats.
• Writers must set aside fear and remember love, compassion and sacrifice.
• Without those characteristics books become about despair and doom.
• Faulkner believes that humanity will survive and prosper.
• The role of the writer is to inspire humanity by reminding them of what we are capable of to “endure and prevail.”

Insights into the Speech

• He wanted to create something out of 'agony and sweat' which did not exist in literature.
• Faulkner states that his award is only his 'in trust', and to keep the award on behalf of other people.
• He uses the Nobel Prize acceptance speech to address the young writers going through 'anguish and travail'.

Faulkner's Assertions

• Present real would problems should be dedicated to the human heart in conflict with itself
• This subject alone is worth the agony and the sweat of hard work.
• Writing is about what it means to be human.
• Setting, landscape and other detail is important for a literature, but about people, specifically the human heart.
• Human beings are emotionally and psychologically complex and this is what great is literature is made.

Writing Conflicts

• The kind of writers who produce ‘ephemeral’ works never address within the individual human heart will only write conflicting books.
• Faulkner declares that he refuses to accept that humankind is doomed to die out — but and write is not what is deep.
• Humalkind will live forever, is not the voice who creates language and what will last is the soul- compassions, and sacrifice and endurance.

BackDrop of the Time

• Faulkner writes about people, and what makes mankind glorious.
• His speech was against the backdrop of the growing of nuclear war.
• The Cold War (just four years earlier, Winston Churchill, ‘iron curtain' partition), and it was five years earlier, in 1945, that the atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to the Second World War.

Pausing for Thought

• If humanity was humane because of the atomic bomb that hundreds millions of people.
• Faulkner's speaks of being blown up to allusion of worrying world Indimitable- nature of humans- hope, to the exercise of compassion and to feel/experience love
• His duty-to write is an honor

The Speech’s Legacy

• The speech tells of the strength of people and about remaining strong, being able to stay firm .
• Believing that man to survive and it gives all to be compassionate etc.
• It gave strength to William Faulkner and the rest to seeing as either Russia or the United states made any movement the aggressive, aggressive

Historical Context

• Faulkner gave his speech that in Stockholm city hall in December 10, 1950.
• Most of the speech had conflict which had just begun.
• Faulkner uses references to cold war as an allusion.

Purpose of Speech

• In the first paragraph, Faulkner expresses that it dedicated to his work and not him, did not because of the value or glory.
• Being grateful of interest of work.
• unlike the first paragraph, the second paragraph to give an explanation the message- “ Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical for so long sustained by now that we can even bear it.”

Audience of Speech

• Directed to who and attending on Banquet and and for future nobel prize laurateship.
• “But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.”
• second audience is general people
• .“Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure.”

Tone/ Voice

• Easy and yet caring while he delivering speech.
• The voice is depth and unwavering.
• It’s a memory that remains with you and is etched that it has has wisdom and insight is a literary value.
• William Faulkner wanted to deliver with people being hopeful “immortal”- soul,
• Compassion and endurance-sacrifce.

Language Used

• Formal.
• Person- first person
• Symbolism example- “ when the last dingdong of doom has crashed and faded away.”
• "Value and victories"
• Anaphora- The repetition of phrases, "he stood"

Structure

• The speech is organized in the order of problem to solution.
• Main problem stated- “General and universal physical fear that now we have been able to bear it."
• The final paragraph- states there will be hope, belief and endurance.