Parable thinking in W. Faulner's novel "A fable"

Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine
Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University
Department of Foreign Philology
Parable thinkingin W. FAULNER’s novel “A FABLE”
 
Graduation Paper
by Yana Kolomiets
student of theDepartment
of ForeignPhilology
5 E/Sp group
ScientificAdviser:
AssociateProfessor
Alekseyeva N.S.
 
Reviewer:
AssociateProfessor
Kononova Zh.A.
Kharkiv — 2010

CONTENTS
 
INTRODUCTION
PART I. W.FAULKNER AND HIS CREATIVEACTIVITIES
1.1 Development of a writer
1.2 W. Faulkner’s aesthetic views
PART II. FEATURES OF A PARABLE
2.1 Parable as a genre
2.2 Form and content of parables
PART III. W. FAULKNER’S “A FABLE” AS ANPIECE OF PARABLE THINKING
3.1 General characteristic of the novel
3.2 Allegoric character of the novel
3.3 Christian symbolism in the novel
3.4 The figure of Christ in the novel PART IV. Methodological reccomendations FOR TEACHING FAULKNER’S CREATIVE WRITING
Conclusion
ReferenceS

INTRODUCTION
 
American literature, to which Faulkner belongs, iscomparatively new. Yet among many writers that it includes, there are thosewhose works present special interest for literary criticism. William Faulkneris, undoubtedly, one of the most significant and outstanding representatives ofAmerican literature. More than simply a renowned Mississippi writer, the NobelPrize-winning novelist and short story writer is acclaimed throughout the worldas one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. Among his greatest worksare the novels all set in the same small Southern county — novels that include Absalom,Absalom!, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and above all,A Fable — that would one day be recognized among the greatest novels ever written by anAmerican.
A Fable occupies acurious position among Faulkner’s works. Written during the period of hisgreatest acclaim, the first major novel he produced after receiving the NobelPrize in 1950, it appeared at a time when critics were undoubtedly mostdisposed to heap praise upon him for the slimmest of reasons. A Fablewas awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1955, but wasconsidered a failure by practically all the reviewers and many of theinfluential critics; few commentators have since found reasons to alter theiropinions.
Since Faulkner’s literary career his works had beenstudied well and many critic works were published. But there still there aresome “white spots” in these studies, and the novel A Fable is one ofthem. Actually it is not studied properly. In critical reviews not muchattention is paid to parable thinking in this novel that is very important fordirect comprehension of the philosophical ideas and concepts presented here.
Thus,the topicality of the research consists inthe fact that at present parable as a genre attracts more attention of theresearchers as a strong aesthetic and philosophical phenomenon.
Undertaking our research, we formulated our aimas discovery and the analysis of the parable thinking in Faulkner’s novel.
The aim determines the concrete tasks of thediploma paper:
· to consider Faulkner’s life and its connectionwith his creative activities, as it is necessary for the understanding of thenovel;
· to highlight the main features of parable, itspeculiarities and the differencesbetween parable and novel;
· to single out the parable thinking in the novel.
The object of the research is W. Faulkner’s writings and parable as a literary genre.
The subject of the research is the novel A Fable and features of parable thinking in it.
Realization of the tasks has been accomplished with thehelp of the following methods:
· historical-sociological method whichmeans historical and sociological conditions of the writing;
· biographical method of the research toconsider Faulkner’s life and its connection with his creative works;
· descriptive method which involvedgathering information about the writer’s life and creative activities,examining it deeply and thoroughly and for analyzing the text proper;
· method of text interpretation to studythe novel properly, to single out the parable thinking in it.
Scientific novelty consistsin the fact that the phenomenon ofparable thinking in this novel hasbeen studied for the first time.
Practical value of theresearch is that the results can be used during the lessons of Englishliterature at school or seminars on World literature at higher educationalestablishments.

PART I. W. FAULKNERAND HIS CREATIVE ACTIVITIES
 
1.1 Developmentof a writer
William Cuthbert Faulkner was born on September 25,1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons born to Murry and MaudButler Falkner. He was named after his great-grandfather, William ClarkFalkner, the Old Colonel, who had been killed eight years earlier in a duelwith his former business partner in the streets of Ripley, Mississippi. Alawyer, politician, planter, businessman, Civil War colonel, railroadfinancier, and finally, a best-selling writer of the novel The White Rose ofMemphis, the Old Colonel, even in death, loomed as a larger-than-life modelof personal and professional success for his male descendants.
A few days before William’s fifth birthday, the Falknersmoved to Oxford, Mississippi, at the urging of Murry’s father, John WesleyThompson Falkner. Called the Young Colonel out of homage to his father ratherthan to actual military service, the younger Falkner had abruptly decided tosell the railroad begun by his father. Disappointed that he would not inheritthe railroad, Murry took a series of jobs in Oxford, most of them with the helpof his father. The elder Falkner, meanwhile, founded the First National Bank ofOxford in 1910.
When a young man William demonstrated artistic talent,drawing and writing poetry, but around the sixth grade he began to growincreasingly bored with his studies. His earliest literary efforts wereromantic, conscientiously modeled on English poets such as Burns, Thomson,Housman, and Swinburne. While still in his youth, he also made the acquaintanceof two individuals who would play an important role in his future: a childhoodsweetheart, Estelle Oldham, and a literary mentor, Phil Stone.
William’s other close acquaintance from this periodarose from their mutual interest in poetry. When Stone read the young poet’swork, he immediately recognized William’s talent and set out to give Faulknerencouragement, advice and models for study [21, p.202-214].
Earlier, Faulkner had tried to join the U.S. Army AirForce, but he had been turned down because of his height. In his RAFapplication, he lied about numerous facts, including his birth date andbirthplace, in an attempt to pass himself as British. He also spelled his name“Faulkner”, believing it looked more British, and in meeting with RAF officialshe affected a British accent.
Though he had seen no combat in his wartime militaryservice, upon returning to Oxford in December 1918, he allowed others tobelieve he had. He told many stories of his adventures in the RAF, most ofwhich were highly exaggerated or patently untrue, including injuries that hadleft him in constant pain and with a silver plate in his head. His briefservice in the RAF would also serve him in his written fiction, particularly inhis first published novel, Soldiers’ Pay, in 1926.
Back in Oxford, he first engaged in a footloose life,basking in the temporary glory of a war veteran. In 1919, he enrolled at theUniversity of Mississippi in Oxford under a special provision for war veterans,even though he had never graduated from high school. In August, his firstpublished poem, L’Apres-Midi d’un Faune, appeared in The New Republic.While a student at Ole Miss, he published poems and short stories in the campusnewspaper, the Mississippian, and submitted artwork for the universityyearbook. In the fall of 1920, Faulkner helped to found a dramatic club oncampus called The Marionettes, for which he wrote a one-act play titled TheMarionettes but which was never staged. After three semesters of study atOle Miss, he dropped out in November 1920. Over the next few years, Faulknerwrote reviews, poems, and prose pieces for The Mississippian and had severalodd jobs. At the recommendation of Stark Young, a novelist in Oxford, in 1921he took a job in New York City as an assistant in a bookstore managed byElizabeth Prall [23]. His most notorious job during this period was his stintas postmaster in the university post office from the spring of 1922 to October31, 1924. By all accounts, he was a terrible postmaster, spending much of histime reading or playing cards. When a postal inspector came to investigate, heagreed to resign. During this period, he also served as a scoutmaster for theOxford Boy Scout troop, but he was asked to resign for “moral reasons”(probably drinking).
In 1924, his friend Phil Stone secured the publicationof a volume of Faulkner’s poetry The Marble Faun by the Four SeasCompany. It was published in December 1924 in an edition of 1,000 copies,dedicated to his mother and with a preface by Stone [35].
In January 1925, Faulkner moved to New Orleans and fellin with a literary crowd which included Sherwood Anderson and centered aroundThe Double Dealer, a literary magazine whose credits include the firstpublished works of Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Penn Warren and EdmundWilson. Faulkner published several essays and sketches in The Double Dealer andin the New Orleans Times-Picayune; the latter would later be collected underthe title New Orleans Sketches. He wrote his first novel Soldiers’Pay, and on Anderson’s advice sent it to the publisher Horace Liveright. AfterLiveright accepted the novel, Faulkner sailed from New Orleans to Europe,arriving in Italy on August 2. His principal residence during the next severalmonths was near Paris, France, just around the corner from the LuxembourgGardens, where he spent much of his time; his written description of thegardens would later be revised for the closing of his novel Sanctuary. While inFrance, he would sometimes go to the café that James Joyce wouldfrequent, but the interminably shy Faulkner never dared speak to him. After visitingEngland he returned to the United States in December [42].
In February 1926, Soldiers’ Pay was published byBoni and Liveright in an edition of 2,500 copies. Again in New Orleans, hebegan working on his second novel Mosquitoes, a satirical novel withcharacters based closely upon his literary milieu in New Orleans; set aboard ayacht in Lake Pontchartrain, the novel is today considered one of Faulkner’sweakest. For his third novel, however, Faulkner considered some advice Andersonhad given him that he should write about his native region. In doing so, hedrew upon both regional geography and family history (particularly hisgreat-grandfather’s Civil War and post-war exploits) to create “Yocona” County,later renamed “Yoknapatawpha.” In a 1956 interview, Faulkner described theliberating effect the creation of his fictional county had for him as anartist: “Beginning with Sartoris I discovered that my own little postage stampof native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enoughto exhaust it, and by sublimating the actual into apocryphal I would havecomplete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute top” [37,p.165].
Faulkner may have been excited by his latestachievement, but his publisher was less thrilled: Liveright refused to publishthe novel, which Faulkner had titled Flags in the Dust. Dejected, hebegan to shop the novel around to other publishers, but with similar results.In the meantime, believing his career as a writer all but over, he began towrite a novel strictly for pleasure, with no regard, he said, for its eventualpublication. The purged novel, trimmed by about a third, was published inJanuary 1929 under the title Sartoris [40].
After The Sound and the Fury was published inOctober 1929, Faulkner had to turn his attention to making money. Earlier thatyear, he had written Sanctuary, a novel which Faulkner later claimed inan introduction he conceived “deliberately to make money”. The novel wasimmediately turned down by the publisher. Faulkner’s need for income stemmedlargely from his growing family. In April, Estelle Oldham had divorced CornellFranklin, and in June she and Faulkner were married at or near College HillPresbyterian Church. Estelle brought two children to the marriage. Faulkner,now working nights at a power plant, wrote As I Lay Dying, laterclaiming it was a “tour de force” and that he had written it “in six weeks,without changing a word” [41, p.310-316].
Though his hyperbolic claims about the novel were notentirely true, As I Lay Dying is nevertheless a masterfully writtensuccessor to The Sound and the Fury. As with the earlier work, the novelfocuses on a family and is told stream-of-conscious style by differentnarrators, but rather than an aristocratic family, the focus here is onlower-class farm laborers from southern Yoknapatawpha County, the Bundrens,whose matriarch, Addie, has died and had asked to be buried in Jefferson, “aday’s hard ride away” to the north. The novel would be published in October1930.
That same year, his publisher had a change of heartabout publishing Sanctuary and sent galley proofs to Faulkner forproofreading, but Faulkner decided, at considerable personal expense, todrastically revise the novel. The novel, which features the rape and kidnapingof an Ole Miss coed, Temple Drake, by a sinister bootlegger named Popeye,shocked and horrified readers, particularly in Oxford; published in February1931, Sanctuary would be Faulkner’s best-selling novel until The WildPalms was published in 1939 [42].
In January 1931, Estelle gave birth to a daughter,Alabama. The child, born prematurely, would live only a few days. Faulkner’sfirst collection of short stories, These 13, would be published in Septemberand dedicated to “Estelle and Alabama”.
Soon after Alabama’s death, Faulkner began writing anovel tentatively titled Dark House, which would feature a man ofuncertain racial lineage who, as an orphaned child, was named Joe Christmas. Inthis Faulkner’s first major exploration of race he examines the lives ofoutcasts in Yoknapatawpha County, including Joanna Burden, the granddaughterand sister of civil rights activists gunned down in the town square; GailHightower, so caught up in family pride and heritage that he ignores his ownwife’s decline into infidelity and eventual suicide; and Lena Grove, a(literally) barefoot and pregnant girl from Alabama whose journey to find thefather of her child both opens and closes the novel. At the center of the novelis the orphan, the enigmatic Joe Christmas, who defies easy categorization intoeither race, white or black [40].
The year 1932 would mark the beginning of a new sometimeprofession for Faulkner, as screenwriter in Hollywood. During an extended tripto New York City the previous year, he had made a number of important contactsin Hollywood, including actress Tallulah Bankhead. In April 1932, Faulknersigned a six-week contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and in May Faulknerinitiated what would be the first of many stints as screenwriter in Hollywood.In July, Faulkner met director Howard Hawks, with whom he shared a commonpassion for flying and hunting. Of the six screenplays for which Faulkner wouldreceive on-screen credit, five would be for films directed by Hawks, the firstof which was Today We Live (1933), based on Faulkner’s short story TurnAbout [35, p.47-52].
Faulkner returned to Oxford in August after the suddendeath of his father. With the addition of his mother to his growing number ofdependents, Faulkner needed money. He returned to Hollywood in October with hismother and younger brother Dean, and sold Paramount the rights to film Sanctuary.The film, retitled The Story of Temple Drake, opened in May 1933, onemonth after the Memphis premiere of Today We Live which Faulkner attended.That spring also saw the publication of A Green Bough, Faulkner’s secondand last collection of poetry.
In June, Estelle gave birth to Faulkner’s only survivingdaughter, Jill. The following winter, Faulkner wrote to his publisher that hewas working on a new novel whose working title, like Light in Augustbefore, was Dark House. “Roughly”, he wrote, “the theme is a man whooutraged the land, and the land then turned and destroyed the man’s family.Quentin Compson, of the “Sound & Fury”, tells it, or ties it together; heis the protagonist so that it is not complete apocrypha” [17, p.14-15].
In April 1934, Faulkner published a second collection ofstories, Doctor Martino and Other Stories. That spring, he began aseries of Civil War stories to be sold to The Saturday Evening Post. Faulknerwould later revise and collect them together to form the novel TheUnvanquished (1938). In March 1935, he published the non-Yoknapatawphanovel Pylon, which was inspired apparently by the death of Captain MerleNelson during an air show on February 14, 1934, at the inauguration of anairport in New Orleans. A few months later, in November, his brother Dean waskilled in a crash.
In December, Faulkner began another “tour of duty” inHollywood working with Hawks, this time at 20th Century-Fox, where he met MetaCarpenter, Hawks’ secretary and script girl, with whom Faulkner would have anaffair. Late that month, Faulkner and collaborator Joel Sayre completed ascreenplay for the film The Road to Glory, which would premiere in June1936 [42].
Today We Live (1933),starring Franchot Tone, Joan Crawford, and Robert Young, was Faulkner’s firstcredited screenplay and the only one he wrote for the big screen based on hisown published fiction.
Faulkner spent much of 1936 and the first eight monthsof 1937 in Hollywood, again working for 20th Century-Fox, receiving on-screenwriting credit for Slave Ship (1937) and contributing to the story for GungaDin (1939). In April, his mistress, Meta Carpenter, married Wolfgang Rebnerand went with him to Germany. Back at Rowan Oak in September, Faulkner beganworking on a new novel, which would consist of two short novellas with twocompletely separate casts of characters appearing alternately throughout thebook. Faulkner’s title for the book was If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem,consisting of the novellas The Wild Palms andOld Man.
In February 1938, Random House published TheUnvanquished, a novel consisting of seven stories, six of which hadoriginally appeared in an earlier form in The Saturday Evening Post. A kind of“prequel” to Faulkner’s first Yoknapatawpha novel, The Unvanquished tellsthe earlier history of the Sartoris family during and immediately after theCivil War, focusing especially on Bayard Sartoris, son of the legendary ColonelJohn Sartoris who, like Faulkner’s real-life great-grandfather, was gunned downin the street by a former business partner.
While in New York in the fall of 1938, Faulkner beganwriting a short story, Barn Burning, which would be published inHarper’s the following year. But Faulkner was not finished with the story. Hehad in mind a trilogy about the Snopes family, a lower-class rural laboringwhite family who, unlike the Compsons and Sartorises of other Faulkner novels,had little regard for southern tradition, heritage, or lineage. The Snopes,often regarded as Faulkner’s metaphor for the rising “redneck” middle class inthe South, more interested in avaricious commercial gain than honor or pride,were to be led in the trilogy by the enterprising Flem Snopes, who in theoriginal story Barn Burning had appeared only briefly as the eldest sonof Ab Snopes [41, p. 310-318].
In January 1939, Faulkner was elected to the NationalInstitute of Arts and Letters. That same month, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalemwas published under the title The Wild Palms. In April 1940, the firstbook of the Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet, was published by Random House.Featuring a reworked version of Barn Burning and other stories Faulknerhad published, including Spotted Horses, the novel follows Flem Snopesfrom being the poor son of a barn-burning sharecropper to his securing astorekeeper’s job, as “fire insurance”, in the hamlet of Frenchman’s Bend (insoutheastern Yoknapatawpha County).
Throughout 1941, Faulkner spent much of his time writingand reworking stories into an episodic novel about the McCaslin family, severalmembers of whom had appeared briefly in The Unvanquished. Though severalstories that would comprise Go Down, Moses had been publishedseparately, Faulkner revised extensively the parts that would comprise thenovel, which spans more than 100 years in the history of Yoknapatawpha County.
Barn Burning was madeinto a short film as part of the The American Short Story Collection. StarringTommy Lee Jones as Ab Snopes, Shawn Whittington as Sartie, and Jimmy Faulkner,William Faulkner’s nephew, as Major De Spain, the video is excellent forclassroom usage.
Sale of his novels, meanwhile, had slumped, so hereturned to California in July 1942 to begin another stint at screen writing,this time for Warner Brothers, who insisted he sign for seven years, which hewas told was “only a formality”.
The following year, he began to work intermittently on AFable, a novel whose plot would revolve around a reincarnation of Christduring the First World War. It would take him more than ten years to completeit [26]. Also in 1943, he was assigned to write the screenplay for Hemingway’snovel To Have and Have Not, but because of an extended vacation, he didnot begin work on it until February 1944. In August 1944, Faulkner beganwriting a screenplay adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s detective novel TheBig Sleep. It would premiere, also starring Bogart and Bacall, in August1946. During this period, Faulkner also collaborated with Jean Renoir on hisfilm The Southerner, but with no screen credit since it would violatehis Warner Brothers contract. It would premiere in August 1945. The three filmstogether would represent the pinnacle of Faulkner’s screen writing career.
In March 1947, while continuing to work on his Christfable, he wrote letters to the Oxford newspaper to support the preservation ofthe old courthouse on the town square, which some townspeople had proposeddemolishing to build a larger one. In April, he agreed to meet inquestion-and-answer sessions with English classes at the University ofMississippi, but he invited controversy when his candid statement aboutHemingway — “he has no courage, has never climbed out on a limb… has neverused a word where the reader might check his usage by a dictionary” [13, p.94] — was included in a press release about the sessions. When Hemingway read theremarks, he was hurt, moved even to write a letter answering the charge that helacked “courage”, but when it grew too long, he asked a friend, BrigadierGeneral C.T. Lanham to write and tell Faulkner only what he knew aboutHemingway’s heroism as a war correspondent. He wrote Hemingway apologizing andsaying, “I hope it won’t matter a damn to you.But if or whenever itdoes, please accept another squirm from yours truly” [13, p.95].
In January 1948, Faulkner put aside A Fable towrite a novel he considered a detective story. The central character is LucasBeauchamp, who had appeared as a key descendant of old Lucius Quintus CarothersMcCaslin in Go Down, Moses, upon whose name his own was based. In thenovel Beauchamp is accused of murdering a white man and must rely upon the witsof a teenage boy, Chick Mallison, to clear his name before the lynch mobarrives to do its job. In July, MGM purchased the film rights to the novel, andin October, Intruder in the Dust was published. In the spring of 1949,director Clarence Brown and a film crew descended upon Oxford, Mississippi, tofilm the novel on location, and while the townspeople eagerly welcomed thefilm-makers, even playing a number of extra and minor roles in the film,Faulkner was very reluctant to participate, though he may have helped to reworkthe final scene. In October 1949, the world premiere of Brown’s Intruder inthe Dust took place at the Lyric Theatre in Oxford. Faulkner attended atthe insistence of his Aunt Alabama McLean [7].
In November, Faulkner published Knight’s Gambit,a collection of detective stories including Tomorrow and Smoke.That same month, in Stockholm, fifteen of the eighteen members of the SwedishAcademy voted to award the Nobel Prize for literature to Faulkner, but since aunanimous vote was required, the awarding of the prize was delayed by a year.The world premiere of the film version of Intruder in the Dust occurredat the Lyric Theatre in Oxford in 1949 [10].
In the summer of 1949, Faulkner had met Joan Williams, ayoung student and author of a prize-winning story. In 1950, he begancollaboration with her on Requiem for a Nun, a part-prose, part-playsequel to Sanctuary. In narrative prose sections preceding each of theplay’s three acts, Faulkner details some of the early history of Jefferson,Yoknapatawpha County, and the state of Mississippi. His collaboration withWilliams would eventually grow into a love affair.
In June 1950, Faulkner was awarded the Howells Medal fordistinguished work in American fiction. In August, he published CollectedStories, the third and last collection of stories published by Faulkner. Itincludes forty-two of the forty-six stories published in magazines since 1930,excluding those which he had published or incorporated into The Unvanquished,The Hamlet, Go Down, Moses, and Knight’s Gambit. Two monthslater, Faulkner received word that the Swedish Academy had voted to award himand Bertrand Russell as corecipients of the Nobel Prize for literature, Russellfor 1950 and Faulkner for the previous year. At first he refused to go toStockholm to receive the award, but pressured by the U.S. State Department, theSwedish Ambassador to the United States, and finally by his own family, heagreed to go [13, p.101-115].
On December 10, he delivered his acceptance speech tothe academy in a voice so low and rapid that few could make out what he wassaying, but when his words were published in the newspaper the following day,it was recognized for its brilliance; in later years, Faulkner’s speech wouldbe lauded as the best speech ever given at a Nobel ceremony. In it, Faulkneralluded to the impending Cold War and the constant fear, “a general anduniversal physical fear”, whose consequence was to make “the young man or womanwriting today forgets the problems of the human heart in conflict with itselfwhich alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about,worth the agony and the sweat”. The artist, Faulkner said, must re-learn “theold verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking whichany story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride andcompassion and sacrifice” [7, p.363]. He concludes on an optimistic note: “Idecline to accept the end of man… I believe that man will not merely endure:he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has aninexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassionand sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write aboutthese things… The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it canbe one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail” [7, p.364].
At Howard Hawks’ request, Faulkner returned to Hollywoodone last time in February 1951 to rework a script titled The Left Hand ofGod for 20th Century-Fox. The following month, he was awarded the NationalBook Award for Collected Stories, and in May, shortly after having deliveredthe commencement address at his daughter’s high school graduation ceremony,French President Vincent Auriol bestowed the award of Legion of Honor uponFaulkner [9].
While in New York in January 1953, he adapted his story TheBrooch for television while also working on A Fable and sufferingbouts of back pain and alcoholism that required hospitalization. In March hewas again hospitalized. The following month, Estelle suffered a hemorrhage andheart attack, so Faulkner returned to Oxford. He returned to New York in May,where he met Dylan Thomas. In June, he delivered an address to Jill’sgraduating class at Pine Manor Junior College. Following anotherhospitalization in September, Faulkner was horrified to find his sacrosanctprivacy invaded by the publication of a two-part biographical article by RobertCoughlan in September and October’s issues of Life magazine [11].
In November, Albert Camus’ agent wrote Faulknerrequesting permission to adapt Requiem for a Nun for the stage, to whichFaulkner agreed. At the end of the month, he traveled to Egypt to assist HowardHawks in the filming of Land of the Pharaohs, their last collaboration.For the next several months, he traveled throughout Europe. He returned toOxford at the end of April 1954, after a six-month absence. That same month sawthe publication of Mississippi, a mostly nonfiction article minglinghistory, his childhood, and his own work against the backdrop of his nativestate, in Holiday magazine; and The Faulkner Reader, an anthology whichincludes the complete text of The Sound and the Fury, three additionallong stories (or “novellas”) — The Bear from Go Down, Moses, OldMan from The Wild Palms, and Spotted Horses from TheHamlet — as well as several other stories and novel excerpts. The threenovellas would in 1958 be published together under the title Three Famous ShortNovels. In August, after more than ten years of work, Faulkner finallypublished A Fable, dedicating it to Jill and Estelle. Later that month,Jill and Paul Summers were married in Oxford [23].
To keep track of the complex plot in A Fable,Faulkner wrote outlines of the novel’s seven days on the wall in his office atRowan Oak.
At the end of June 1954, Faulkner had accepted aninvitation from the U.S. State Department to attend an international writersconference in San Paulo in August. Now an internationally known public figure,Faulkner no longer refused to appear in public in his own nation, and heusually accepted the increasing requests by the State Department to attendcultural events abroad. In addition, he also began to take a public stand as amoderate, if not liberal, southerner in the growing debate over schoolintegration.
Though A Fable is generally considered one ofFaulkner’s weakest novels, in January 1955, it earned the National Book Awardfor Fiction and in May a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. In August, Faulkner began athree-month, seven-nation goodwill tour at the request of the State Department,traveling first to Japan, where at Nagano he participated in a seminar whoseproceedings, along with two speeches he had delivered, were published asFaulkner at Nagano. Finally he returned to the United States in October, duringwhich month Random House published Big Woods: The Hunting Stories, acollection of four previously published stories about hunting with five“interchapters” at the beginning and end of the book and between chapters toset or change the mood. He dedicated the book to his editor at Random House,Saxe Commins [13, p.22-29].
In November, Faulkner condemned segregation in anaddress before the Southern Historical Association in the Peabody Hotel inMemphis, where because of segregation much effort was needed for blacks to beadmitted. The speech was published in the Memphis Commercial Appeal under theheadline “A mixed audience hears Faulkner condemn the ‘shame’ of segregation”.Though Faulkner opposed segregation, however, he opposed federal involvement inthe issue, which resulted in his being understood by neither southernconservatives nor northern liberals. Faulkner’s increasingly vocal stand on theissues of race drew fire from his fellow southerners, including anonymousthreats and rejection by his own brother, John. Misunderstanding overFaulkner’s views increased when in a February 1956 interview with a LondonSunday Times correspondent he was quoted as saying that he would “fight forMississippi against the United States, even if it meant going out into thestreet and shooting Negroes” [13].
In April 1956, black civil rights legend W.E.B. Du Boischallenged Faulkner to a debate on integration on the steps of the courthousein Sumner, Mississippi, where the accused in the Emmett Till murder trial hadbeen acquitted by an all-white jury. Faulkner declined in a telegram, stating“I do not believe there is a debatable point between us. We both agree inadvance that the position you will take is right morally, legally, andethically. If it is not evident to you that the position I take in asking formoderation and patience is right practically then we will both waste our breathin debate” [7, p.362].
In September, Camus’ adaptation of Requiem for a Nunpremiered at the Théâtre des Mathurins. That same month, Faulknerbecame involved in the Eisenhower administration’s “People-to-People Program”,the aim of which was to promote American culture behind the Iron Curtain. Atthe end of September a steering committee consisting of Faulkner, JohnSteinbeck, and Donald Hall drew up several “resolutions”, including onesupporting the liberation of Ezra Pound, but Faulkner would withdraw from thecommittee three months later.
From February to June 1957, Faulkner was writer-in-residenceat the University of Virginia and agreed to a number of question-and-answersessions with the students, faculty, and faculty spouses. Highlights of thetaped sessions would be published in 1959 by Professors Joseph Blotner andFrederick Gwynn under the title “Faulkner in the University” [22].
In May 1957 Faulkner published The Town, thesecond volume of the “Snopes” trilogy. Picking up where The Hamlet left off, itdepicts Flem Snopes’ ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson. Nowdividing his time between Oxford and Charlottesville, from February to May 1958he fulfilled his second term as writer-in-residence at Virginia. Also whileliving in Virginia, he began to relish fox-hunting, and he was invited to jointhe Farmington Hunt Club, an achievement he displayed proudly by posing forphotographs and portraits in his pink membership coat. In December, Jill’ssecond son, William, was born, and the following month saw the premiere of Requiemfor a Nun on stage at the John Golden Theater in New York, making theUnited States the thirteenth nation in which the play had been produced [23].
Throughout 1960, Faulkner continued to divide his timebetween Oxford and Charlottesville. On October 16, Faulkner’s mother, MaudButler Falkner, died at the age of 88. A talented painter who had completednearly 600 paintings after 1941, she had remained close to her eldest sonthroughout her life.
In January 1961, Faulkner willed all his manuscripts tothe William Faulkner Foundation at the University of Virginia. In February, heaccepted an invitation from General William Westmoreland to visit the militaryacademy at West Point. In April, Faulkner went on a final trip abroad for theState Department, this time to Venezuela, where he was the guest of PresidentRómulo Betancourt. He spent the summer in Oxford, where in August hecompleted the manuscript for his nineteenth and final novel. Titled TheReivers, an archaic Scottish spelling of an old term for “thieves”, thenovel is a light-hearted romp set at the turn of the century in which BoonHogganbeck takes eleven-year-old Lucius “Loosh” Priest and a stowaway, NedMcCaslin, the Priest family’s black coachman, on a joyride to a Memphis brothelin Loosh’s grandfather’s Winton Flyer automobile while “Boss” Priest is away ata funeral. Beginning the novel, subtitled A Reminiscence, with thephrase “Grandfather said…” Faulkner dedicated it to “Victoria, Mark, Paul,William, Burks”, his grandchildren by his two step-children and biologicaldaughter. The novel, published in June 1962, would posthumously earn forFaulkner his second Pulitzer Prize for fiction [21, p.30-48].
In January of that year, Faulkner suffered another fallfrom a horse, forcing yet another hospital stay. In April, he again visited WestPoint with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law, and the following month in NewYork, fellow Mississippi writer Eudora Welty presented Faulkner with the GoldMedal for Fiction awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
On June 17, Faulkner was again injured by a fall from ahorse. In constant pain now, he signaled something was wrong when he asked onJuly 5 to be taken to Wright’s Sanatorium in Byhalia. Though he had been apatient there many times, he had always been taken there before against hiswill. His nephew, Jimmy, and Estelle accompanied him on the 65-mile trip toByhalia, where he was admitted at 6 p.m. Less than eight hours later, at about1:30 a.m. on July 6, 1962 — the Old Colonel’s birthday — his heart stopped, andthough the doctor on duty applied external heart massage for forty-fiveminutes, he could not resuscitate him. William Faulkner died of a heart attackat the age of 64. He was buried on July 7 at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford. Ascalls of condolence came upon the family from around the world and the press — including novelist William Styron, who covered the funeral for Life magazine — clamored for answers to their questions from family members, a familyrepresentative relayed to them a message from the family: “Until he’s buried hebelongs to the family. After that he belongs to the world”.
1.2 W.Faulkner’s aesthetic views
Martin A. Bertman said that there is something he wouldcall the metaphysical function of literature. It is often overlooked bycritics, since, as an interpretive dimension, its importance relates only togreat literature. Critical accessibility to great literature, however, is incompletewithout its inclusion.
The great literary work’s metaphysical function is tobring the reader to the periphery of his existence. The reader can contemplatethe work, have a liberating emotion which puts a distance between himself andother emotions generated by the work. This emotion is the prerational basis forrational discrimination. It is the existential condition that provides thefocus for all levels of such discriminations. It suggests the continuedrelevance of the great work, for those who have the capacity for appropriatediscrimination.
Faulkner’s writings by their greatness exemplify this.These writings, especially some of the novels, present an added characteristic,which Martin Bertman called William Faulkner’s Thucydidean aesthetic.
Faulkner thinks to find the individual through history.Like Thucydides, he believes that an examination of the past conflicts of menwill uncover for each man the “old verities”. Faulkner’s literary pursuit ofthe meaning of the Civil War searches for the old verities and truths lackingwhich any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride andcompassion and sacrifice”, as he said in his acceptance of the Noble Prize in1946. His approach assumes the eternality of human nature; and, further, itelevates character, in transaction with chance, as the essential explanatoryform of human meaning.
It is understandable that the modern mentality, heirboth to evolutionary models and to relativistic theories, can easilymisunderstand Faulkner’s historical project cum literature. It may beseen as mere quaint moral mastication or, yet worse, be misunderstood assubject matter rather than as the method or vehicle of the subject matter [5,p.99-105].
William Faulkner in his speech at the Nobel Banquet atthe City Hall in Stockholm in December 1950 said: “I feel that this award wasnot made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweatof the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to createout of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find adedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose andsignificance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaimtoo, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to bythe young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail,among whom is already that one who will someday stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physicalfear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longerproblems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten theproblems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make goodwriting because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and thesweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that thebasest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget itforever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities andtruths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story isephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion andsacrifice.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as thoughhe 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:that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the lastworthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that eventhen there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice,still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merelyendure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatureshas an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable ofcompassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is towrite about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting hisheart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride andcompassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. Thepoet’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” [3, p.203-205].
In his novel A Fable Faulkner shows that hisaesthetic views are closely connected with the politics. One instance is the momentwhen ethics trespasses on politics and the marshal incorporates ethics into hispolitics. The marshal’s profound anguish, coming from the conflict between hisardent desire to save his son’s life and his sense of obligation to executehim, proves that it originates exactly from the ethics that Marthe represents.On the night after meeting with Marthe, he even tries to persuade the Corporalto escape abroad, saying, “there is the earth. You will have half of it now”[14, p.291], and “I will take Polchek tomorrow, execute him with rote andfanfare” [14, p.292] as “the lamb which saved Isaac” [14, p.292], by the nameof which he means his son.
Against the marshal’s wishes, the Corporal chooses to beexecuted in order to show the adherents that he has not distorted his belief inhis action. Therefore, even if prior to the talk with his son the marshal hadbragged, “by destroying his life tomorrow morning, I will establish foreverthat he didn’t even live in vain, let alone die so” [14, p.280], the marshal’sfailure to save his son’s life means that he loses to him as much as Martheloses to him in their confrontation concerning the Corporal’s life. Besidesthat, Marthe’s idea that the Corporal loses by death, which is predicated byher ethics, is eventually relativized by the Corporal’s idea that he wins bydeath, while the Marshal, who understands that death means victory for his son,cannot realize his wish to save his son’s life. All these above suggest that,despite the ultimate political utilization of the Corporal’s mutiny and itsfailure, Marthe, the marshal and the Corporal all lose and win at the sametime, with the political/ethical struggle over the execution suspended inundecidability.
Thus, the Corporal’s temporary success in the completesuspension of warfare is the realization of Marthe’s ethics in the form ofpolitics; more exactly, it is the fulfillment of his design to obtaining thehegemony of ethics in a marshal-like forcible way. This is because, inactuality, the Corporal risks three thousand privates’ lives to raise a mutinyfor suspension of warfare, and this makes us acknowledge that in his mutinousaction there does exist the element of the politics the marshal stands for. Inother words, the Corporal’s anti-war action rests in the chiasma of Marthe’sethics and the marshal’s politics. That is to say, Marthe’s ethics is certainlynot represented as belonging to the women’s exclusive sphere.
Ted Atkinson in his book “Faulkner and the GreatDepression: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Cultural Politics” makesinterdisciplinary analysis of Faulkner’s aesthetic and ideological response tothe anxieties that characterized the South and the nation during hard times,Atkinson makes a convincing argument for re-evaluating Faulkner’s fictionbetween 1927 and 1941 in the context of dominant social and political debatesgoing on at the time. Atkinson makes logical connections between history,biography, cultural theory, and close textual analysis of individual works tohighlight Faulkner’s insightful engagement with the cultural politics thatdefined the thirties [12].
While the particular focus of this book is the GreatDepression, Atkinson’s persuasive refutation of the claim that Faulkner’sexperimental fiction is detached from social, political, and economic realitiesinvites others to further examine Faulkner’s work as reflective andconstitutive of the social milieu in which he lived and wrote. In charting thehistory of political debates over literary aesthetics, Atkinson investigatesthe reasons behind Faulkner’s longstanding reputation as apolitical and“regionally challenged”. He provides a thorough overview both of the perceivedschism between proponents of formalism and those of social realism, and of therecent theory illustrating the complex negotiation between them.
Atkinson presents interesting material showing thepositive reception of Faulkner in the thirties by advocates of proletarianism,such as publications like New Masses, before launching into a careful analysisthat effectively demonstrates how some of Faulkner’s most modernist works defythe simplistic polarity between formalism and realism that according toAtkinson has blinded critics to the political Faulkner and prevented them fromsufficiently seeing Faulkner “as a writer with his finger on the pulse ofAmerican cultural politics” [12, p.105-114].
By situating Faulkner in the context of the relationshipbetween art and politics, Atkinson provides acute and lucid readings ofFaulkner’s fiction. He sees Mosquitoes as Faulkner’s effort to deal withthe changing role of the artist amidst a new rise in social consciousness inthe thirties, and The Sound and the Fury as a representation of theinevitable relationship between literary and capitalist modes of production.Other texts, according to Atkinson, mediate some of the central economic andpolitical concerns of the Depression era; he reads representations of rape,lynching, and mob violence in Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom,Absalom!, and Dry September in the context of fascism and thepopularity of Hollywood gangster movies during the thirties, and examinesdepictions of revolutionary sentiments in As I Lay Dying, BarnBurning, The Hamlet, and The Tall Men in the context of ruraldissent, federal relief, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, and thesocial activism of groups like the STFU (Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union) andthe SCU (Share Cropper’s Union) [34].
Finally Atkinson understands The Unvanquished aspart of a broader trend in American popular culture in the thirties to view theGreat Depression through the Civil War, and considers the figure of Granny bothas a Southern matriarch and as a gangster figure. Constantly scrutinizing therelationship between text and context, Atkinson reads Faulkner’s texts both asworks of art and as cultural artifacts produced by and engaged with themultiple and often contradictory socio-cultural forces of the time.
While Atkinson offers interpretations of specificcharacters and texts, he resists decisive readings of what Faulkner’s textsreveal about politics, ideology, and the nature of capitalism; rather, heclaims to approach Faulkner’s fiction and life “by accepting, rather thantrying to resolve, the dialectical forces of contradiction” and “thus readinghis texts in context as sites of intense ideological negotiation and politicalstruggle” that give aesthetic expression to the Depression-era desire tonavigate and order multiple voices. In my opinion, this methodology isparadoxically both strength and limitation. On the one hand, as Atkinson drawsattention to the many competing visions of the American experience embedded inthe interplay of ideas within and between Faulkner’s texts, he is able topresent Faulkner’s “nuanced” and “complex” treatments of social relations thatproduce “a kind of realism cast aside in the utopian endeavors of socialrealism”. Such an approach allows Atkinson to grapple with modernism’ssimultaneous escape from and attachment to ideology, Faulkner’s “ambivalentagrarianism”, and the conflict in Faulkner’s work between the critique of asocioeconomic order rooted in capitalism and the defense of classicalliberalism. On the other hand, Atkinson’s approach leads him to tease out somany divergent voices from Faulkner’s work that it comes somewhat at theexpense of interrogating any one at great length.
His approach also weds him to seeing Faulkner as alwaysshifting between leftist and conservative viewpoints — meditating on classwarfare and glimpsing the specter of revolution but also sharing in the“dominant-class anxiety” over social upheaval and the subsequent longing tore-impose order. As a result Atkinson seems reluctant, or unable, to consider amore overtly radical Faulkner who escapes his own class position. Atkinsonmaintains that Faulkner’s work “displays chronic anxiety over dissidentimpulses that could produce civil unrest and, in turn, fundamental changes inthe existing order” and that Faulkner uses art to enact “a process not unlike,but not simply reflective of, the monumental political effort to bring somesemblance of order to a volatile mix of competing interests”. One is leftsuspecting that there might also be textual moments that resist this desire fororder at any cost, but Atkinson doesn’t acknowledge any.
Although Atkinson’s subject is certainly vast, and hisneed to focus on a few of Faulkner’s works is inevitable, one is also leftwondering if some omissions such as Pylon, If I Forget Thee,Jerusalem, and the figure of Wash Jones both in the short story WashJones and Absalom, Absalom! might reveal not just a politicalFaulkner, but a Faulkner who did not always value order, especially if it cameat the expense of class struggle and social justice.

PART II. FEATURES OF APARABLE
2.1 Parables as a genre
A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or versethat illustrates a moral or religious lesson. It differs from a fable in thatfables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature ascharacters, while parables generally feature human characters. It is a type ofanalogy.
Some scholars of the New Testament apply the term“parable” only to the parables of Jesus, though that is not a commonrestriction of the term. Parables such as “The Prodigal Son” are central toJesus’ teaching method in both the canonical narratives and the apocrypha. Theword “parable” comes from the Greek”παραβολή” (parabolē),the name given by Greek rhetoricians to any fictive illustration in the form ofa brief narrative. Later it came to mean a fictitious narrative, generally referringto something that might naturally occur, by which spiritual and moral mattersmight be conveyed.
A parable is a short tale that illustrates universaltruth, one of the simplest of narratives. It sketches a setting, describes anaction, and shows the results. It often involves a character facing a moraldilemma, or making a questionable decision and then suffering the consequences.As with a fable, a parable generally relates a single, simple, consistentaction, without extraneous detail or distracting circumstances. Examples ofparables are Ignacy Krasicki’s Son and Father, The Farmer, Litigantsand The Drunkard, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Spireandothers [43].
Many folktales could be viewed as extended parables andmany fairy tales also, except for their magical settings. The prototypicalparable differs from the apologue in that it is a realistic story that seemsinherently probable and takes place in a familiar setting of life.
A parable is like a metaphor that has been extended toform a brief, coherent fiction. Christian parables have recently been studiedas extended metaphors, for example by a writer who finds that “parables arestories about ordinary men and women who find in the midst of their everydaylives surprising things happening. They are not about ‘giants of the faith’ whohave religious visions”. Needless to say, “extended metaphor” alone is not initself a sufficient description of parable; the characteristics of an “extendedmetaphor” are shared by the fable and are the essential core of allegory [43,140-156].
Unlike the situation with a simile, a parable’s parallelmeaning is unspoken and implicit, though not ordinarily secret.
The defining characteristic of the parable is thepresence of a prescriptive subtext suggesting how a person should behave orbelieve. Aside from providing guidance and suggestions for proper action inlife, parables frequently use metaphorical language which allows people to moreeasily discuss difficult or complex ideas. In Plato’s Republic, parables likethe “Parable of the Cave” (in which one’s understanding of truth is presentedas a story about being deceived by shadows on the wall of a cave) teach anabstract argument, using a concrete narrative which is more easily grasped[12].
In the preface to his translation of Aesop’s Fables,George Fyler Townsend defined “parable” as “the designed use of languagepurposely intended to convey a hidden and secret meaning other than thatcontained in the words themselves, and which may or may not bear a specialreference to the hearer or reader” [12, p.167-172].
Townsend may have been influenced by the contemporaryexpression, “to speak in parables”, connoting obscurity. In common modern usesof “parable”, though their significance is never explicitly stated, parablesare not generally held to be hidden or secret but on the contrary are typicallystraightforward and obvious. It is the allegory that typically features hiddenmeanings.
As H.W. Fowler puts it in Modern English Usage, theobject of both parable and allegory “is to enlighten the hearer by submittingto him a case in which he has apparently no direct concern, and upon whichtherefore a disinterested judgment may be elicited from him” [20]. The parable,though, is more condensed than the allegory: a single principle comes to bear,and a single moral is deduced as it dawns on the reader or listener that theconclusion applies equally well to his own concerns. Parables are favored inthe expression of spiritual concepts. The best known source of parables inChristianity is the Bible, which contains numerous parables in the Gospelssection of the New Testament. Jesus’ parables, which are attested in manysources and are almost universally seen as being historical, are thought byscholars such as John P. Meier to have come from mashalim, a form of Hebrewcomparison. Medieval interpreters of the Bible often treated Jesus’ parables asdetailed allegories, with symbolic correspondences found for every element inthe brief narratives. Modern critics, beginning with Adolf Jülicher,regard these interpretations as inappropriate and untenable. Jülicher heldthat these parables usually are intended to make a single important point, and mostrecent scholarship agrees [12, 198-205].
In Sufi tradition, parables (“teaching stories”) areused for imparting lessons and values. Recent authors such as Idries Shah andAnthony de Mello have helped popularize these stories beyond Sufi circles.
Modern stories can be used as parables. Amid-19th-century parable, the “Parable of the Broken Window”, exposes a fallacyin economic thinking.
Heinz Politzer, the author of “Franz Kafka: Parable andParadox”, defined a parable as a paradox formed into a story. Speaking aboutKafka’s special gift for writing parables, he concluded, “He created symbolswhich through their paradoxical form expressed the inexpressible withoutbetraying it”. Three distinctive elements of parable shine through this openingdefinition of the genre. First, a parable must contain a paradox or paradoxes — irreconcilable but equally plausible configurations of reality. Secondly, theparabolic form of discourse is not a gratuitous form, i.e. one among many formsthat an author happens to choose, but rather one that the parabler must choosefor a raid on the inexpressible. (The parable might choose its writer, if thatdoesn’t make matters more obscure). In this sense the creator of a parable usessymbols the way a poet uses metaphorical language, not as ornament, but as theonly way to speak. A third element concerns the duty of the artist to expressthe inexpressible without violating it. The idea of violation would includereductionism, making paradoxical elements of life seem simpler and moreresolvable than they actually are. Or reaching closure in a story where psychicsuspension would be the only honest denouement. This element of parables may bewhat leaves readers “hanging” [12].
Part of the difficulty in orienting parables among relatedliterary genre — allegories, myths, fables, fairy tales, aphoristic or didacticstories — stems from the fact that parable study was once the exclusiveprovince of Biblical scholars who considered all of the stories of the Old andNew Testaments to be parables. While it is true that the Hebrew word covers allfigurative language “from the riddle to the long and fully developed allegory”,modem scholars have imposed more refinement on the taxonomies. Some materialfrom the Bible qualifies under modern definitions of parable, some does not.
The central element of parables is paradox, as Politzernoted. When a story has been completed there must be an irreducible paradoxleft. As Dominick Crossan puts it, “the original paradox should still be thereat any and every level of reading” [12, p.55-63].
The aphorism “A stitch in time saves nine” does no morethan extol the virtue of preventive maintenance or nipping trouble in the bud.This is true of all expressions or stories that can be reduced to an appeal: “Actlike this and all will be well”. When a story can be translated into a directmessage, and metaphorical expressions replaced by direct ones, the story cannotbe considered a parable.
2.2 Form and content of parables
Marshall McLuhan in “Understanding Media” makes a numberof arguments pertinent to the study of parables as a form. The first is thatthe form of communication has proliferate psychic consequences that areindependent of content. To briefly illustrate, reading a play in the quiet ofone’s home and attending a live performance of the same play will be differentpsychic and social experiences. At home the ear is irrelevant, while at thelive performance the ear must share the play with the eye. The home is privateand individual whereas the live performance is public and socially shared. Onlyat the level of meaning might the alternative forins merge, but even there,different meanings may be derived from the “same” experience [23, p.115-124].
A culture may be at least partially defined as the sumof its communicative forms. Oral cultures, where speaking, listening andremembering predominate, differ from print cultures where writing, reading, andrecord keeping occur. Parables look like an old form since they still lendthemselves to oral presentation. Being a form that has fallen into disuseoutside religious circles, the parable looks alien, but being strange it alsoarrests attention, and excites curiosity. New forms facilitate certain socialrelationships while rendering others obsolete [12].
Parables as a form can be better understood against thisbackground of illustrations. They are stories, of moderate length, amenable torepeated readings in one short sitting. They surprise the reader, arrest theregular “processing” of information and, in so doing, irritate the psyche. Thereader cannot quite let go, because letting go is usually conditioned onclosure which in the case of a true parable cannot be reached [13].
Thus when the parable is officially “ended”, the readercannot serenely put the parable to rest. It sits in the psychic craw as a pieceof unfinished business.
Parables are cool, inviting and participatory, unlesssabotaged. For instance, Faulkner draws the reader into the story, but once in,the participation of the reader begins, rather than ends. The more powerful theparable, the more furious the involvement, the more sustained and profound theimpact [36, p.56-59]. Many complain that the words of the wise are alwaysmerely parables and of no use in daily life.
Readers can feel their minds bend as they try to followthe above dialogue. A persistent immersion of students and teachers in parableswould make them different as individuals and different in the ways they respondto each other. If this seems to be parabolic megalomania and absurd, perhapsthe later material in the paper will make it seem less so.
Marshall McLuhan distinguishes several features ofparables [31]:
1. The parable allows deep communication between thenarrator and the reader. The parable begins “benignly”, disarming readers,drawing them in, and encouraging them to compare features of the story to theirown experiences. They identify with a certain character or characters, and withthe characters encounter dilemmas or unanticipated circumstances that call forchoices. At this point the story teller departs and readers must tap their ownresources, moving more deeply into self examination.
2. The parable involves indirect communication thatprovokes self discovery. Direct communication conveys information and, byreference to authorities, endorses certain lines of thought. By contrast, aparable presents a moral knot which the reader must untie by inward reflectionand choice. Whereas direct communication creates observers and listeners, indirectcommunication creates participants and action. Those who prefer to “learn aboutthe world” in a direct and controlled way, lose control of their responses whenthey encounter the parable. The parable carries them, willingly or unwillingly,inward toward undiscovered dimensions of self.
3. Experiences with indirect communication cultivate thecapability for developing the self. Whereas direct learning does not change thecapability of a person (learning simply adds to knowledge) indirectcommunication jolts the person out of mental routines once and for all. Ratherthan a simple change in information there is a change in consciousness. Likethe seeds of the sower in the New Testament, the parable does not always fallon receptive ground, but even in such instances, the person is placed on noticethat a world outside regular understanding exists.
5. And the last is that parables are memorable andamenable to oral tradition.
V.A. Harvey and H. Bergson distinguish some morefeatures of parables [3, 20]:
1. Generalization of the meaning — the situations described in the parable can be applied in real life.
2. The structure of the parable reflects the worldsensation of the people who started to learn about the world.
3. An action has a parable character only when it issaid in it: act like this and all will be well.
Tounderstand the parable correctly we should take into account the followingpoints:
First,it is not necessary that everything described in the parable has reallyhappened. Moreover not all the actions described are good. The purpose of theparable consists not in exact transmission of an action, but in revelation ofhighest spiritual powers.
Second,it is necessary to realize the purpose of the parable that can be understoodfrom the preamble or from the circumstances that induced somebody to create it.
Third,it shows that not all the details of the parable can be understood on thespiritual level.
Fourth,notwithstanding this, except for the main idea, the parable can have thedetails that remind us about other truth or confirm it.
Ourresearch is based on these classifications.

PART III. W. FAULKNER’S “A FABLE” AS AN EXAMPLE OFPARABLE THINKING
3.1 General characteristic of the novel
A Fable occupies acurious position among Faulkner’s works. Written during the period of hisgreatest acclaim, the first major novel he produced after receiving the NobelPrize in 1950, it appeared at a time when critics were undoubtedly mostdisposed to heap praise upon him for the slimmest of reasons. A Fablewas awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1955, but wasconsidered a failure by practically all the reviewers and many of theinfluential critics; few commentators have since found reasons to alter theiropinions. Not only did some reject it as art; they were actually angered bymuch of what they saw in it. The near unanimity of opinion regarding it is notcurious in itself; the reluctance, with which many critics reject it, asidefrom Faulkner’s reputation and obvious disappointment, points up one of thenovel’s peculiarities. If one were able to relegate it to the scrap heap oftrivia, and if the negative critical opinion were widespread and consistentthat it is trivial, A Fable would present few problems. But many, whorejected it, regardless of the extent of their rejection, have noted thenovel’s vast scope, its wide compass in the process of their analysis [35,p.45-58].
It is readily admitted that the novel was amongFaulkner’s most ambitious undertakings, as one dissenting critic called it, “aheroically ambitious failure”. No one has hinted that Faulkner wrote it tocapitalize upon the wider recognition his Nobel Prize afforded him. A Fablewas certainly not hastily conceived or written; it took nearly nine years forFaulkner to complete it. It was perhaps the most carefully planned of all hisbooks; an examination of the wall of his study at Rowan Oaks corroborates thisopinion. That a great writer may write an occasional bad novel is hardly news;the contention that A Fable is an aberration gets support from anotherwidely held view regarding the total Faulkner canon. One tendency, to seeFaulkner as the chronicler of Yoknapatawpha County, whether his work is viewedn general as all part of the loose “saga” of Yoknapatawpha or not, is bolsteredby the interlocking of events and characters throughout many of the majornovels and stories. Concomitant with this general attitude is the opinion thathis best works have all been contained within the complex imaginary Yoknapatawphaworld, a world grown out of close observation, introspection, and livedexperience concerning the region and people he knew and loved best [11,p.115-146].
Although A Fable is among this less currentlyapproved group of novels, it is not to be degraded merely for this reason.Opinion varies widely concerning the “form” of A Fable, whether it is anallegory or a thesis-novel or an attempt to construct a mythology. Thefunctions of the characters are seen in multitudinous relations, and thematicinterpretations transcribe an arc that is majestic in its scope. Although thevariety of opinion in this regard may serve as testament to the novel’srichness, the general opinion is that it attests to the confused form andsubstance of A Fable. The most pervasive attitude regarding the novel isthat it is primarily an intellectual failure, ill-conceived and ill-made.Faulkner has been accused of many offenses against taste and tradition — theless-than-illustrious history of early Faulkner criticism in America bears eloquenttestimony to this fact, but only very rarely has he ever been accused ofcarelessness in handling his materials. That Faulkner, whose proved ability toexercise exquisite control over extremely complex literary structures (Absalom!Absalom! or The Sound and the Fury to name only two) could be soblind, could commit so many obvious blunders in one novel without beingsublimely careless, simply seemed absurd [13].
The “agony and sweat” he admittedly poured into writing AFable rules out carelessness as a cause. Also, the very enormity of itsapparent failures, the grand inconsistencies it seems to trumpet, according tocritics, seemed somehow to demand a reexamination. The novel simply could notbe as bad as some opinions would have it its very power to evoke such strongreactions as late as 1962 seemed to work perversely against the very criticismwhich railed against it. Witness the opening sentence of Irving Howe’s criticalappraisal. Only a writer of very great talent, and a writer with a sublimedeafness to the cautions of his craft, could have brought together so strikingan ensemble of mistakes as Faulkner has in A Fable. Howe’s adjectivesalmost seem to belie the very claims he makes [17, p.289-300].
When William Faulkner’s A Fable appeared on theliterary scene in 1954, the immediate response from the book reviewers wasintense and various, both in temper and interpretation of its meaning andworth. This variety in itself is not unique, but what is striking about theearly criticism is the utter confusion engendered in minds that were presumablyattuned to the many complexities of literary nuance. Nonetheless, the earlyreviewers were for the most part either disappointed or downright hostile,according to their commitment to their various literary or religious creeds.Whether hostile or merely disappointed, the early criticism actually posed morequestions than it answered [23].
A Fable was for the mostpart condemned from both literary and religious viewpoints. The frustrationwhich A Fable caused to certain book reviewers is perhaps best summed upby the reaction of Harold C. Gardiner in America: “… it is clearly a symbolicnovel; it is just as clearly, save to those who dare not say boo to geese, amystery, a riddle, an enigma, for which a key is sadly needed. Indeed, after acareful and laborious reading of 437 pages, I have begun to suspect that thereis no key, it is hardly worth the search, for it would at best open only anempty box…” [23, p.67].
Vivian Mercier noted that “aside from implying that theChrist of today is the Unknown Soldier, the book seems to offer us a hodgepodge of clichés” [23, p.22]. He then went on to speculate on Faulkner’ssocial instincts. The delay in completion was owing to an instinct not to,because Faulkner was “an introvert trying to write an extrovert’s novel [23,p.126].
J. Robert Barth read A Fable as an indication ofFaulkner’s shift forward from the “negative critique” of the Yoknapatawphacycle to a more positive attitude toward man. Barth also offered some excellentinsights, such as noting the necessity to see the novel’s dynamism in terms ofa “tension of opposites”. He also maintained that meaning emerged, not from thenovel’s resemblance to the Passion, but from the attitudes the two major charactersrepresented. Unfortunately, Barth did not carry these insights as far as hemight have, but he is nonetheless almost unique as an early reviewer in hisreading. V. S. Pritchett also saw A Fable as an indication that Faulknerwas emerging from “destructive despair to conscious affirmation”. Pritchettthen dubbed A Fable a “fantasy to a past dispensation”, with Faulkner apoet — historian whose purpose in writing it was to “isolate and freeze eachmoment of the past”. A Fable at the last was “a blast at theimpersonality of modern life” [23, p.123-154].
Carvel Collins saw A Fable as no marked departureat all, noting that Faulkner had used the Passion as early as 1929 to informthe structure of The Sound and the Fury. Collins saw the essentialconflict as a clash between Old Testament and New Testament values. He offerssome pertinent observations about Faulkner’s works as a whole and A Fablein particular. Faulkner’s works have always suffered from summaries of them, henoted, and A Fable would suffer most of all owing to the Biblical parallels.Time has proved Mr. Collins right in this observation, but his own review,though sympathetic and helpful in some respects, is actually anoversimplification of the complex structure of A Fable .The reviewer forNewsweek offered some helpful observations about the structure of A Fable,noticing that the novel was structured around a series of conflicts betweenopposing ideas and characters. But the review is actually more misleading thanhelpful at the last, since the reviewer sees no “intellectual center” in thenovel. It is “a complicated allegory … in a complicated private idiom” [21,p.45-46], and the reviewer surrenders up some of his confusion when he notesthat “the reader sometimes has the disconcerting feeling of standing in themiddle of a tragic fun house with all the trick mirrors focusing on him atonce” [10, p.13].
The central question A Fable asks is “What isman?” and the answer is that he is most foul. Taylor saw the theme of AFable as the “helpless bestiality of man” [18, p.10-11], one ending wherereal Christianity begins, and ended by chastising Faulkner. Referring obliquelyto the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he noted that “You do not lift the heartof man by grinding his face in the dirt. Amos Wilder, a year after Taylor’sarticle, wrote that A Fable provided an example of an earlier“uncorrupted” Christianity”. Certain critics focused primarily upon structuralfeatures in A Fable. As a result their findings are generally morepertinent than those who reacted personally to the more obvious features of thenovel. James Hafley noted the basic antagonism of the Corporal and theMarshall, but immediately reduced this antagonism to a conflict between the manof faith and the man of reason. A Fable presented the failure ofdemocracy, the “rational end of the Western tradition”, and illustrated thenecessity to “escape the crowd” either through martyrdom or the military [18].
Philip Edward Pastore believed A Fable to be afable without a strict moral — it is more descriptive than prescriptive. It isessentially a description of two opposing sets of moralities shown in theircomplex interactions both ideally and historically. Failure to realize thispoint is what causes much of the confusion of many of the critics who demand amuch more cogent argument by Faulkner to support their ethical view, whether itfocuses on Christianity or pacifism. While this conclusion may seem lesspalatable for those requiring poetic justice or established morality in fiction,it is nonetheless testament to the high degree of sophistication of Faulkner’sworld view, a world view shaped considerably by the sophistication of Bergson’sideas on morality and religion, especially as they appear in The Two Sourcesof Morality and Religion, to state that all the conflicts emanate from thisbasic opposition of intellect and intuition may seem overly simple as anexplanation of the complex action of A Fable. It is simple in that itadmits a resolution or “synthesis” which is less complex than Schendler’s,since it merely describes a condition instead of forcing through to an ethicwhich must “transcend” (i.e., “deny”) the very ironies the novel spends so muchtime describing. It is less complex yet more dynamic than Straumann’s eclectic,suspended, tripartite stasis. Its focus is also more precise than either ofthese two admirable critics allow [32].
The essential opposition of intuition and intellect as ameans of ordering and giving meaning to the human condition penetrates to the heartof A Fable and encompasses every ramification of the conflicts whichappear upon the surface.
Some clues to the broad intellectual basis and, in alarger sense, to the whole intellectual environment within which A Fable may beread, occur in a conversation between Faulkner and a young Frenchman, LoicBouvard, at the Princeton Inn on November 30, 1952. Faulkner happened to bepassing through the city, and a mutual friend arranged the interview forBouvard, who was studying for his Ph.D. in Political Science at Princeton. Theatmosphere was informal and conducive to candor, but Bouvard noted thatFaulkner was always careful, in fact deliberate, in answering his questions.The conversation finally became centered upon Camus and Sartre, when Bouvardinformed Faulkner that many of the young people in France were supplanting afaith in God with a faith in man, obviously a reference to the atheisticexistentialism of these two writers. Faulkner’s reply is more pertinent than isapparent at first [7].
“Probably you are wrong in doing away with God inthat fashion. God is. It is He who created man. If you don’t reckon with God,you won’t wind up anywhere. You question God and then you begin to doubt, andyou begin to ask Why? Why? Why? — and God fades away by the very act of yourdoubting him”. But he immediately qualified his statement. “Naturally, I’m nottalking about a personified or a mechanical God, but a God who is the mostcomplete expression of mankind, a God who rests in the eternity and in the now” [14, p.203].
One is perhaps not surprised that Bouvard was moreinterested in hearing Faulkner’s ideas on man and art, since the interview didtake place only after the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and that speech’sapparent humanism, plus the vogue at that time of “existentialism”, wouldcertainly have exercised their influence upon a young French intellectual. Whatis surprising is the ease with which Bouvard reduced Faulkner’s statementsabout God to “Faulkner’s deism” especially since Faulkner had immediately madeit clear that he meant neither “a personified or a mechanical God” I shallattempt here to rectify an error in reaction to which Bouvard, as well as manylater critics mentioned above, fell victim [7].
For what Bouvard thought were separate and distinctcategories were much more closely joined than he realized, were in fact in someways practically fused. Here are meant the categories “man” and “god”.Faulkner, like Bergson, is often speaking about one in terms of the other (“agod who is the most complete expression of mankind”), but only within thenecessary limits of how they define each category. Faulkner is not as precisein A Fable as is Bergson in his Two Sources of Morality and Religion,but the resemblances are there. Faulkner’s library does not yield amuch-thumbed copy of the Two Sources of Morality and Religion;nevertheless the hypothesis that Bergson’s work forms the intellectual basis ofA Fable remains valid, since no other works of Bergson are recordedthere either, and their availability to him need not be restricted toFaulkner’s personal library [7, p.208-239].
Simply noting that Faulkner has never been reticent inacknowledging Bergson’s influence upon him, I shall proceed upon the assumptionthat he was aware of Bergson’s ideas on the “vital impetus”, and all theramifications there of, even though he may not have come across them neatlycompressed within the covers of the work to which I shall refer. A comparisonof Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion with A Fable willshow parallels both in subject matter and language which suggest more than merecoincidence.
Bergson’s conception of the “dialectic” and Faulkner’sdramatization of it lie below the “wars” in A Fable and the essentialconflict is not New Testament Christianity against Old Testament orthodoxy, norChrist against Caesar, nor the apostolic church against the institutionalizedchurch, nor war against peace, nor a projected humanism against a traditionaltranscendent super-being. It is a simpler yet more profound opposition whichmay manifest itself in any of these more apparent conflicts. Indeed, most ofthe above-mentioned “conflicts” are not real conflicts at all, but would fallwithin one of these two basic oppositions, the intellect, since most would besubsumed under static religion.

3.2 Allegoric character of the novel
What A Fable “is” seems to be a central questionfor some critics in determining its structural features. Thomas H. Carter, forinstance, felt that it was basically cleanly structured, but “the othersub-plots obscure the simple rightness of the Corporal’s story”. Many see theessential failure occurring in the attempt to mix genres and tones which, intheir view, it is impossible to mix. Most critics read A Fable as anallegory which has either been contaminated or enriched in a dreadful way bycertain “realistic” features which clash with the main action, the Passionwhether it is contaminated or enriched is apparently owing to whether thecritic personally prefers the realistic or the symbolic mode.
One may easily contrast this opinion to that of HyattHowe Waggoner, who sees the novel’s process as “almost the opposite of thesymbolic”, one that emerges from “an interpretation of scripture based on thesupposition that historic Christianity was founded upon a hoax”. Roma Kingfeels that Faulkner’s view is basically Christian, but that the book failsbecause he has “no systematic intellectual grounding or comprehensivetheology”, and the allegory “gets lost among naturalistic irrelevancies anddetails”. But for Lawrance Thomson the “allegorical skeleton sticks through theflesh unpleasantly”. And Irving Howe considers the book to be “a splendidlywritten fable that is cluttered and fretted with structural complexitiesappropriate only to a novel”. And finally, we may go to Carter again, whodelivers another critical edict. “Whatever its symbolic structure is A Fablemust be judged by the standards of naturalistic fiction” [9, p. 147-148].
The parallel between the representative of the opensociety and dynamic religion, and the inherent antagonism that this new beingmust project upon the established institutions, is thus clearly drawn. Anotherfacet of the “deep dialect” — one which is based on experience — is thusestablished and one may draw obvious implications from the parallel, fusion asit were, of dynamic religion with the open society. The Corporal is both therepresentative of the open society and that individual who has immersed himselfin the elan vital, and, as his confrontation with the priest illustrated, hasembodied within himself, as a “species composed of a single individual”, thepower to overcome the casuistry of dialectic simply by “being”. The Corporal isone who, in the Bergsonian sense, has immersed himself into “real” time, which“if it is not God, is of God”, and the “religion” which emerges from this inundationis one which cannot be defined by ethical laws or theological argument. It is“a religion of men, not laws” [3, p.187].
One may still reasonably ask why Faulkner had to choosethe obvious parallel to the Gospel stories, why he could not have demonstratedthese ideas on their own merits rather than borrow from the Gospels. Bergsonmay again supply us with an explanation. But just as the new moral aspirationtakes shape only by borrowing from the closed society its natural form, whichis obligation, so dynamic religion is propagated only through images andsymbols supplied by the myth-making function. A careful reading of the novelshows the reasons for the trappings of Christian allegory in A Fable.
The most striking “supernatural” incident parallels, ina rough way, the “multiple deaths” of the Corporal, it occurs in the scenedescribing the Groom’s return to the town in Tennessee where they had firstraced the horse. He had earlier appeared at the church, but now appears at theloft above the post office where the men are shooting dice. He suddenly appearsthere, no one speaks, he goes to the game, a coin mysteriously appears at hisfoot “where 10 seconds ago no coin had been”, he plays the coin, andimmediately wins enough for food. The scene below describes his exit andreturn:
“ He went to the trap door and the ladder which leddown into the store’s dark interior and with no light descended and returnedwith a wedge of cheese and a handful of crackers, and interrupted the gameagain to hand the clerk one of the coins he had won and took his change and,squatting against the wall and with no sound save the steady one of hischewing, ate what the valley knew was his first food since he returned to it,reappeared in the church ten hours ago; and — suddenly — the first since he hadvanished with the horse and the two Negroes ten months ago” [14, p.194].
The necessary response is a crude one, but itnonetheless resembles the Corporal’s ability to cut past speech and forceaction. The Groom’s mysterious abilities to create the fierce loyalties ofthose around him links him to the Corpoml also. It is this ability whichcarries over into the main action, and is the means by which he and the Runnerare joined. But in the context of the main action, the Runner is a differentperson, a point which will be taken up below. His mysterious qualities are evenhighlighted in the near play on words Faulkner employs in Sutterfield’spronunciation of his name, “Mistairy” for Mr. Harry. The Groom is, in a sense,“resurrected” also. His mysterious reappearances are not the only point ofresemblance in this sense. Faulkner describes him at the very beginning of the“horsethief” episode as having undergone a sort of rebirth as a result of hisexperiences with the horse. The rebirth is somewhat analogous to the Corporal’sfinal interment in the tomb of the unknown soldier, since it suggests outwardlyeverything that he was not previously, and also points to the anonymity of theCorporal as far as the world is concerned.
“Three things happened to him which changedcompletely not only his life, but his character too, so that when late in 1914he returned to England to enlist it was as though somewhere behind theMississippi Valley hinterland… a new man had been born, without past,without griefs, without recollection” [14, p.151].
What Faulkner has done in his treatment of the Corporalis to let the action around the Corporal speak for him rather than letting himspeak for himself; often the action seems to run a contradictory course to whatis being verbalized by cliaracters around the Corporal. This observation goesto the heart of the Corporal’s character and the implications toward which hispresence in the novel points. The Corporal, for all his taciturnity and seemingpassivity, is the essence of action — meaningful action. He is the essence andembodiment of what Bergson considers the mystic, the representative of “dynamicreligion”. The Corporal, if not exactly suspicious of ritual, at any rate hasno need of ritual, for ritual is extraneous to the dynamic religion herepresents. It is, as Bergson states, “a religion of men, not rules”, areligion in which “prayer is independent of its verbal expression; it is anelevation of the soul that can dispense with speech. Bergson, in attempting todefine “dynamic religion”, equates it with mysticism, but not the Eastern typeof mysticism we generally identify with the Hindu ascetics. These are not truemystics, according to Bergson.
What the Corporal attempts to do, and succeeds in doingfor a while, is exactly this. All the action of A Fable is generated byhis act of mutiny. This failure will be explained within that context, but forthe moment we may see this characteristic, dynamism, operating in relation tothe Corporal in the particular way Faulkner has chosen to portray it. TheCorporal does not have the gift of rhetoric — he has no need of it; action,experience, is his primary method of expression. His monosyllabic answers tothe casuistic arguments of the priest and the Marshall are not owing tostupidity or sullenness. An examination of his answers to most of the questionsput to him shows that he does not answer the question directly so much assimply state a “fact” which ultimately has bearing upon the question. Forexample, in answering the priest’s charges that he must bear the responsibilityfor Gragnon’s execution, he simply repeats:
“Tell him [the Marshall] that” [14, p.364-366].
To the Marshall’s long argument in the “Maundy Thursday”scene, he first answers simply, “there are still ten” (meaning his disciples),when the Marshall indicates the futility of his martyrdom [14, p.346]. To thelast part of the Marshall’s argument, when the Marshall expands at length uponthe “narrative of the bird” to reinforce his offer of life, the Corporal simplyanswers:
“Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of.Nothing worth it” [14, p.352].
The Corporal is equally taciturn in other scenes. Hedoes not speak his first word until page 249; he speaks fewer words than anyother major character in the novel, unless one considers the Groom to occupyequal stature, and even the Groom is referred to as constantly mouthing curses,even though Faulkner does not record them for the reader.
Actually, the Corporal’s lack of speech is simply partof his makeup. He is exhibiting the mystic temperament as Bergson conceives ofit. A calm exaltation of all its faculties makes it see things on a vast scaleonly, and in spite of its weakness, produce only what can be mightily wrought.
This passage, which goes far to explain the Corporal’speculiar actions also in relation to the other characters in the novel and theevents which surround him, bears a resemblance to Faulkner’s description of theCorporal as he calmly watches from his prison window above the rage andturbulence of the crowd below.
“He looked exactly like a stone-deaf man watchingwith interest but neither surprise nor alarm the pantomime of some cataclysm oreven universal uproar which neither threatens nor even concerns him since tohim it makes no sound at all” [14, p.227].
The Corporal is able to transcend much of the humanpassion that is normally aroused either in argument or in anxiety over one’sfuture. Bergson may offer a reason for the Corporal’s “odd” qualities ofcharacter when he writes of the difference between ordinary ideas of love andthe mystical love of mankind.
The Corporal, as mystical, intuitive man, then, becomesthe embodiment of the open society, which must emerge from the universal loveof mankind, as well as the embodiment of the “dynamic religion” which isembodied in men, not rules.
It is the Corporal’s “presence” which causes action morethan any direct action he engages in. By this method his effect is feltthroughout the entire novel. He has no personal eloquence, nor radiance, norenergy of the usual sort associated with action. The key to his effectivenesslies in his presence. He is dynamic in the deepest sense, not merely kinetic.He embodies in himself all of the facets and possibilities that the complex ofattitudes arising from and involved in the refinement of the intuition posit.Just as the Marshall depends upon ritual, meeting, dialectic, and intelligence,so does the Corporal have no need for any of them. He is beyond the. necessary rhetoric of the preacher, the casuistry of the plotter, or the energy ofthe builder. He is effective nonetheless, because his presence alone sufficesto cause meaningful action. As the old man at the ammunition dump, who firstinforms the Runner of the Corporal’s mission, tells him:
“- Go and listen to them, the old porter said, — youcan speak foreign; you can understand them.
— I thought you said that the nine who should havespoken French didn’t, and that the other four couldn’t speak anything at all.
— They don’t need to talk, the old porter said. — Youdon’ need to understand. Just go and look at him”[14, p.67].
Events which occur as a result of the Corporal’s“presence” are the action of A Fable. Although he is not describedenergetically, the Corporal embodies dynamism in everything he does, as opposedto the essentially static character of his antagonist, the Marshall, whoengenders much kinetic activity in the novel. Images of movement and stasissurround these two antagonists constantly and reinforce their essentialcharacteristics.
The Corporal and the Marshall are brought together atthe beginning of A Fable in a confrontation scene which foreshadows thelater, climactic “Maundy Thursday” scene above the city of Chaulnesmont. Moreimportant than fore- shadowing is the way in which each is described inrelation to the other in this scene.
“The Corporal is riding in a lorry earring the 13“ringleaders” of the mutiny to the stockade. It passes the Hotel de Villa wherethe three generals still stood like a posed camera group [the Corporal and theMarshall] stared full at each other across the moment which could not lastbecause of the vehicle’s speed — the peasant’s face above the corporal’schevrons and the shackled wrists in the speeding lorry, and the grey,inscrutable face above the stars of supreme rank and the bright ribbons ofhonor and glory on the Hotel steps, looking at each other across the fleetinginstant” [14, p.17].
The setting of this first encounter clearly puts the twoin opposition in more than mere foreshadowing; they are immediately seen interms of motion and stasis. The “deep dialectic” of the human condition is thusvery early joined, with each antagonist’s essential qualities pointed up by thesetting in which each appears. The Corporal is dynamic, moving, even thoughmanacled. The Marshall is static, posed, though apparently free. The two areseen in paradoxical relationship at the very outset, also, since the apparently“free” omnipotent man, the Marshall, is fixed; and the apparently shackled man,the Corporal, is moving. This paradoxical relationship will widen and encompassall of the action of the novel as it progresses, for paradox is the main methodby which action is resolved in A Fable.
“-Fear implies ignorance. Where ignorance is not, youdo not need to fear: only respect. I don’t fear man’s capacities, I merelyrespect them. ”
-And use them, — the Quartermaster General said.
-Beware of them, — the old general said” [14, p.329].
Here is an adequate explanation for the seeminglyindifferent mannerisms of the Corporal. He is not indifferent he has, in asense, won the world by going beyond the world. He has attained this statebefore the opening action of the novel, and Faulkner’s initial presentation ofhim, “the face showing a comprehension, understanding, utterly free ofcompassion” [14, p.17] can, in this light, be seen as far more than mere indifferenceto his fate.
Events which occur as a result of the Corporal’s“presence” are the action of A Fable. Although he is not describedenergetically, the Corporal embodies dynamism in everything he does, as opposedto the essentially static character of his antagonist, the Marshall, whoengenders much kinetic activity in the novel. Images of movement and stasissurround these two antagonists constantly and reinforce their essentialcharacteristics.
The “capacities” referred to become more preciselydefined moments later when the Quartermaster repeats the charge that theMarshall is afraid of man. The Marshall’s respon.se is set clearly in terms ofstasis and dynamism.
“I respected him [man] as an articulated creaturecapable of locomotion and vulnerable to self-interest” [14, p.331]
Although the Marshall refers here only to the dynamicquality of man, one must conclude that he is speaking from his oppositeviewpoint in “respecting” this quality in man. The action (locomotion) isreferred to here in potential terms, also. The fact that self-interest isinimical to the Marshall’s position would coincide neatly with Bergson’s claimthat the intelligence must counter the very bent of intelligence (the ego) byintellectual means, which the Marshall does.
Another character who resembles the Marshall closely inhis intellectual apparatus and attitudes toward man is the lawyer who seeks,and fails, to spellbind the crowd with rhetoric (“Ladies, gentlemen Democrats”)in the courthouse in the “horsethief” episode. The crowd ignores him and as itbrushes past him, he notes “my first mistake was moving” [14, p.185].Real action is inimical to those who rely on intellect alone and who are themanipulators in the closed society. The lawyer’s long internal monologue iscouched in slightly different terms, but his views on man are essentially thesame as the Marshall’s.
Thinking (the lawyer) how only when he is mounted onsomething… is man vulnerable and familiar; he is terrible; thinking withamazement and humility and pride too, how no mere immobile mass of him….mounted on something which, not he but it was locomotive, but the mass of him,moving of itself in one direction toward an objective by means of his own frailclumsily jointed legs… threatful only in locomotion and dangerous only insilence [14, pp.186-187].
It is important to note here that the lawyer, althoughcontemptuous in part, still has the feeling of amazement and pride whenthinking of this aspect of man, an attitude which parallels the Marshall’s inthe “Maundy Thursday” scene when he tells the Corporal “with pride” that manwill prevail. The above passage tends to reach back to the introductory scenewhere the Corporal is introduced riding in the lorry, and to underscore thepoint that, although he is at that time vulnerable to the machinations of themilitary, the action which had precipitated all the later action (the mutiny)had already been accomplished. The Corporal has been able to set a mass of menin one direction simply through the power of his presence in better fashionthan the military, which had consciously aimed at this end (witness thestatement of l’Allemont, the corps commander, to Gragnon [14, p.52]) with itsreferences to disciplinary training and rituals of honor and glory. One mayalso compare the actions of the civilian arm of the closed society, the crowd,in respect to meaningful action. Much has been written of how the crowd, massman, is reduced to bestiality or complete passivity, as though Faulkner wereattempting to demean man. As one negative critic put it, “You do not lift theheart of man by rubbing his face in the dirt”. But the crowd’s action, which isnot really action at ail, can best be seen in the context of the civil arm ofthe closed society.
“…not that they had no plan when they came here, noreven that the motion which had served in lieu of plan, had been motion only solong as it had had room to move in, but that motion itself had betrayed them bybringing them here at all, not only in the measure of the time it had takenthem to cover the kilometer and a half between the city and the compound, butin that of the time it would take them to retrace back to the city and thePlace de Ville, which they comprehended now they should never have quitted inthe first place, so that, no matter what speed they might make getting back toit, they would be too late” [14, p.131].
Allegory, to function as allegory, as H. R. Warfel hasdemonstrated, must function on at least three of four possible levels. Thestory must be a literal story; it must establish parallel relationships betweenit and the original story upon which it is based (if it is based on a story);it must establish parallel relationships between it and the institution whichlies behind the original story; and it must establish a final universal ormetaphysical level on which it may be read. I believe that analogical qualitiesin A Fable which resemble the Passion work primarily on the first andsecond level, but that it denies much of the third level which is necessary forallegory.
A Fable denies theinstitution, both in the action that is outside those parts which resemble thePassion directly, and, more importantly, by internal differences between thoseportions that do parallel the original Gospel stories, owing mainly to itstreatment of those portions. In fact, the very parts that seem to offend mostof the critics, the character of the Corporal, the “degrading” last supperscene, the barbed wire crown, the ironic resurrection, the final interment inthe military monument and certain aspects of “character” of the Corporal, findtheir ethical and “theological” perspective, not in the codifications ofinstitutionalized Christianity, which in A Fable is equated with “staticreligion”, but in “dynamic religion” as Bergson describes it. And therefore, AFable is not a true allegory if one sees the Passion story in the sensethat an allegory is supposed to bring us into contact with the ethical andmoral teachings of an institution in order to further its teachings. Inrelation to the Passion one may say that A Fable merely utilizes a profound andmeaningful story as background to add force to its own meanings.
3.3 Christian symbolism in A Fable
A Fable has aroused manyunfavorable comments and only three searching attempts at an interpretation.None of the commentators saw a totally unified structure and consequently themeaning of the book has not been clarified by them. The title and thedecorative symbol of the Cross have led most critics to stray into paths whichFaulkner really did not enter. The novel is not a fable in the technical senseof that narrative form; rather it is a story, probably meant by the author tobe as meaningful as any of Aesop’s writings, but equally probably not to be assimple in outline or depth. One of the chronological frames through which thestory progresses is indeed Holy week, but only in a limited degree does thesequence of events relate to the final events in the earthly life of Jesus[21].
A sounder critic, Ursula Brumm, noted that A Fablewas constructed around slightly different antitheses. The division between themeek of the earth and the rapacious but creative ones “who participate in theworks of civilization” forms the essential conflict in the novel. Miss Brummcites the long apostrophe to rapacity by the Quartermaster [8] as the focalpoint of A Fable and maintains that this passage, which is a parody ofPaul’s message on “charity” in Corinthians 13:8, may be seen as the finalindictment of civilization and all its works.
Faulkner, by equating Christianity with Civilization,has written a novel that is absolute heresy in Christian terms. The Corporal isthe son of God or the founder of Christianity, but Christ the archetype of mansuffering, and of those who expiate the guilt of civilization by renunciationof the power and the privilege.
Another thoughtful early criticism is Philip BlairRice’s review. Rice offers provocative and penetrating insights into the novelwhich unfortunately lead to the usual cul de sac rather than to a unifiedvision, because he seeks that vision using the wrong index to meaning. Rice,seeing A Fable as the most monumental task Faulkner had yet assumed,responded to it in like manner. It demands he states “a comparison with suchawesomely mentionable names as Melville, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Mann”. AFable does not live up to expectations for Rice, and fails to even renderits explicit message, which to him is that message contained in the Nobel Prizeacceptance speech. Rice believes, as do most of the critics cited above, thatFaulkner’s failure is essentially an intellectual failure. He has failed tooffer a coherent theology which to Rice is the implicit message of A Fable.Rice’s real problem with A Fable is the apparent ambiguity of the“theological” elements. This basic ambiguity is what engenders his criticism ofthe novel, and he directs his criticism toward theological rather than artisticconsiderations. For Rice, Faulkner’s religious commitment is vague, notorthodox, most likely “a non super naturalistic rendering of the Christiansymbolism” which offers “no theodicy and no other-worldly beatitude”. Whatshocks Rice is that the words of the Nobel Prize acceptance speech “Man willprevail” are uttered by the Marshall instead of the Corporal. To Rice thisassignment is a “breathtaking reversal”, since the Marshall must be a figure ofevil (Caesar or Satan) according to the reading Rice imposes on the novel. Henotes also that the Corporal’s entombment in the monument of the UnknownSoldier, although a sort of victory, is too heavily ironic to constitute a realvictory for primitive Christianity, since the monument also glorifiesnationalism. These and other inconsistencies lead Rice to the conclusion thatthree thematic resolutions of the implicit message of A Fable lie opento the reader [40].
3.4 The figure of Christ in the novel
The limited vision of critics appears to parallel thosewho demanded that the Corporal correspond to certain attributes they held to benecessary in portraying a “Christ-figure”. Their preconceptions were focused oncharacterization while the above named critics demand certain formal structuralcharacteristics to be present (i.e., a fable should be allegorical andsymbolic, a novel should be realistic and naturalistic), yet both groupsresemble each other in their propensity to proscribe certain practices ratherthan analyze what these practices might attempt to accomplish in a given work.
One might well wonder, in the light of the conditionsthe “crucifixion” imposed upon the Runner, just what attitude he could assumein order to “prevail” in a manner pleasing to Mr. Stavrou, since to do otherthan what Faulkner has done would obviously be to falsify what the experienceof history has taught us (i.e., the mutiny did not end the war — in fact thewar itself did not end wars, nor have the ideals of Christianity prevailed orthe crucifixion itself, even though much of the world is Christian).
One may make point in reference to the use of the Gospelstories. A Fable does not clearly offer an allegorical presentation ofthe Passion. Allegory does not generally make specific references to theinstitution behind the action represented, but allows the parallels to make theconnection. Were this simply a modern allegory of the Passion, the obviousparallels of action would certainly have been sufficient to draw theresemblance, but Faulkner goes much beyond this. There are many references tothe original Christ throughout the novel. The Runner states at one point, inhis usual ironic fashion, that the Corporal’s job is more difficult thanChrist’s was.
“His prototype had only man’s natural propensity forevil to con tend with: this one faces all the scarlet and brazen impregnabilityof general staffs” [34, p. 56].
The old porter in admonishing the Runner to go and seethe mysterious 13 men who preach pacifism tells him:
“-Just go and look at him.
-Him? — the Runner said. -So it’s just one now?
-Wasn’t it just one before? — the old porter said” [14, p.67].
The priest, after having warned the Corporal to “bewarewhom you mock by reading your own mortal’s pride into Him” [14, p.363]reflects before his suicide upon the mercy of Christ.
“He was nailed there and he will forgive me” [14, p.370]. Even during the “last supper” scene one of theCorporal’s men refers to Christ, “Christ assoil us” [14, p.337], punningon the word, since the prisoners are talking about their becoming manure to enrichthe soil of France.
One can hardly be confused as to the Corporal’s rolewithin the frame of an allegory. He clearly is not Christ. Whatever symbolicreflections accrue to him by the actions he imitates is something else again.If the novel is read as an account of the Second Coming, the problem arises ofexplaining other relationships, such as the connection between the Corporal andthe Marshall. One might also easily concede that if A Fable is a novelabout the Second Coming of Christ, one hardly needs to employ all of thecumbersome machinery of the combined Gospel stories, plus the whole frameworkof the war. But in A Fable Faulkner has obviously gone out of his way toevoke similar patterns, even to the extent of wrapping a barbed wire crown ofthorns around the Corporal’s head and other such “excesses” of similarity.
Another point to consider is why the Second Coming, ifit is that, should be destined to end so far below the first, especially afterits author had made a speech in Stockholm four years earlier which waspractically a testament to man. Certainly one must concede to Faulkner that liewas aware of the differences as well as the resemblances between his novel andthe Passion story.
If we consider that the resemblance, even a close and obviousresemblance, between a new work and one which has already become established asa key, or even the core structure of an institution (be it a religious ornational or whatever institution) — does not of itself demand that the new workunder consideration adhere to the ethical, moral, or metaphysical beliefs ofthe institution which the original focused upon; our critical perspective neednot be hamstrung by these considerations. Allegory, to function as allegorymust function on at least three of four possible levels. The story must be aliteral story; it must establish parallel relationships between it and theoriginal story upon which it is based (if it is based on a story); it mustestablish parallel relationships between it and the institution which liesbehind the original story; and it must establish a final universal ormetaphysical level on which it may be read [11].
A Fable denies theinstitution, both in the action that is outside those parts which resemble thePassion directly, and, more importantly, by internal differences between thoseportions that do parallel the original Gospel stories, owing mainly to itstreatment of those portions. In fact, the very parts that seem to offend mostof the critics, the character of the Corporal, the “degrading” last supperscene, the barbed wire crown, the ironic resurrection, the final interment inthe military monument and certain aspects of “character” of the Corporal, findtheir ethical and “theological” perspective, not in the codifications of institutionalizedChristianity, which in A Fable is equated with “static religion”, but in“dynamic religion” as Bergson describes it. And therefore, A Fable isnot a true allegory if one sees the Passion story in the sense that an allegoryis supposed to bring us into contact with the ethical and moral teachings of aninstitution in order to further its teachings. In relation to the Passion onemay say that A Fable merely utilizes a profound and meaningful story asbackground to add force to its own meanings.
The parallels between certain obvious incidents in AFable and the Gospels, insofar as the purely imitative qualities go,may be read simply as part of the complex symbolic extension of the staticreligion of the closed society, much the same as the war is the symbolicextension of the military, and the city of civilized man. The allegoricaltrappings are simply part of the agglomeration of myth surrounding theinstitution, and the resemblance of the Corporal to the historical Christ issimply another manifestation of the mythmaking function of the intelligence.This action is obviously “earthed”. But the reduction of much of the agony ofChrist to the mute, impassivity of the Corporal, the grotesqueries of thebarbed wire crown, the irreverence and scatology in the last s upper scene, theironic resurrection, point to something beyond a mere retelling of the originalstory [11, p.67-83].
This impetus is thus carried forward through the mediumof certain men, each of whom thereby constitutes a species composed of a singleindividual. If the individual is fully conscious of this, if the fringe ofintuition surrounding his intelligence is capable of expanding sufficiently toenvelope its object, that is the mystic life. The dynamic religion which thussprings into being is the very opposite of the static religion born of themyth-making function, in the same way the open society is the opposite of theclosed society.
The Corporal can’t be supposed to be both a soldier anda pacifist. It’s impossible to believe in the palpable reality of the Corporalwhen everyone is conscious that he is Christ. The Corporal’s “palpable reality”is a strange one — he is essentially a mystic. Both Fiedler and Malin, like theother dissenting critics, offer a view which is tempered by theirpreconceptions of what a “Christ figure” ought to be, and they take umbrage atobvious deviations from the “norm” of presentations. A Christ figure may embodyparadoxes, but the contradictions the Corporal presents are seeminglyirresolvable ones. Humble, pleasant, meek, and mild, or even robust, he may be,but surly he must not be. The Corporal is obviously more in accord with thelast two attributes than he is in accord with the first group — at least thisis the way it appears on the surface, but Faulkner has used a rather singularmethod of presenting the Corporal [11, p.69-80].
The priest, after having warned the Corporal to “Bewarewhom you mock by reading your own mortal’s pride into Him” [14, p.363]reflects before his suicide upon the mercy of Christ.
“He was nailed there and he will forgive me” [14, p.370].
Even during the “last supper” scene one of theCorporal’s men refers to Christ, “Christ assoil us” [14, p.337], punning on theword, since the prisoners are talking about their becoming manure to enrich thesoil of France.
One can hardly be confused as to the Corporal’s rolewithin the frame of an allegory. He clearly is not Christ. Whatever symbolicreflections accrue to him by the actions he imitates is something else again.If the novel is read as an account of the Second Coming, the problem arises ofexplaining other relationships, such as the connection between the Corporal andthe Marshall. One might also easily concede that if A Fable is a novelabout the Second Coming of Christ, one hardly needs to employ all of thecumbersome machinery of the combined Gospel stories, plus the whole frameworkof the war. Novelists who depict modern parallels to the Passion generallyavoid following the lockstep pattern of imitation, and Faulkner himself is noexception to this rule in his previous novels. Carvel Collins points with prideto his being the first to discover the use of elements of the Passion in TheSound and the Fury.
A more reasonable explanation of the use of the Gospelstories is that Faulkner used them in relation to certain artistic andphilosophical considerations which he must have been well aware of, and that hefelt free to use them strictly in accordance with his art rather thansubjecting them to strict religious dicta. That the Passion is the mostprofound story in our immediate culture few would deny; but that all treatmentsof any part of it must reflect, or at least simply, in that part the wholerange of theological or ethical considerations surrounding the Passion is notnecessarily valid literary criticism. This idea is what most of those whoobject to Faulkner’s usage ultimately fall back on, although their objectionsare not stated so baldly as this. The Corporal’s “Christianity” offends thembecause it does not in some way “measure up” to what Christianity means tothem. Especially offensive are the ironic scenes and the final interment of theCorporal in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
These critics use as their focal point orthodoxdoctrinal or theological considerations. But Faulkner’s focus need not even beon Christianity as such. If we consider that the mere resemblance — even aclose and obvious resemblance, between a new work and one which has alreadybecome established as a key, or even the core structure of an institution (beit a religious or national or whatever institution) — does not of itself demandthat the new work under consideration adhere to the ethical, moral, ormetaphysical beliefs of the institution which the original focused upon; ourcritical perspective need not be hamstrung by these considerations.
If religion is the expression of the myth makingfunction which offers “counterfeit experiences” to allay the impulse ofintelligence toward a possibly egotistical path inimical to society, theinsistence in A Fable upon the experience of the acts as true humanexperience more than mythical experience, the delineation of the Corporal as aconcrete contrast to the “counterfeit” experiences of the Gospels, stands outas “fact”. In this context, the Corporal’s earthbound, “real” qualities, suchas his apparent lack of “spirituality” as we expect to see it manifested inhuman beings, becomes more reasonable and need not vitiate our conception of aunique individual who compels love and action, Bergson, in a rather lengthystate, which relates the two types of religions to the morality which theyassert, is specific upon these points, and his explanation may serve to clarifythe treatment of the Corporal and A Fable.

PART VI. Methodological reccomendations FOR TEACHINGW.FAULKNER’S CREATIVE WRITING
WilliamFaulkner’s creative writing is rather known for the readers, it is studied atuniversities as regards its style, plots and ideas. Faulkner’s creativeactivity is very interesting also because of parable thinking represented inhis writings. That’s why we think it’s important to study Faulkner’s creativeactivities during World literature seminars stressing on parable questions,reading, discussions and debates.
Severalnovels and short stories written by William Faulkner can be included in highschool reading lists and if taught would enhance student experiences ofAmerican literature. Malcolm Cowley in his classic introduction to The PortableFaulkner said, “Faulkner’s novels have the quality of being lived, absorbed,remembered rather than merely observed. And they have what is rare in thenovels of our time, a warmth of family affection, brother for brother andsister, the father for his children — a love so warm and proud that it tries toshut out the rest of the world” [11]. It is difficult to imagine someonereading the final scenes of “A Fable” and not being moved by the fate of theCorporal.
InFaulkner’s literature, he has used themes of a depth and magnitude seldom seenin other American writers. His experimentation with style, especially stream ofconsciousness, places him in a class of his own.
Hisgreatness lies in the development of a body of characters which surely rivalsthose created by Shakespeare and Dickens. And it is this masterful body ofcharacterization to which high school students should be exposed if they are totruly understand the human spirit as it is embodied in the study of Americanliterature.
In thispart we suggest several types of activities. They may be useful for thestudents to understand the novel better during the seminars.
So, thefollowing activities could be suggested:
1. LEAD-IN activitY
2. vocabulary work
3. Readingcomprehension activites
4. discussions
5. debates
1. LEAD-INactivitY
The teacher asks the students a set of questionsconnected with World War I to prepare them for further observations anddiscussions. The questions are:
· What do you know about World War I?
· When did it start? When did it finish?
· What countries took part in the First World War?
· How did people feel at the front?
· How did they feel when they returned?
Possible answers:
1. World War I was started by the people in powerwho wanted to rearrange the spheres of their influence and acquire new sourcesof money.
2. At the front people usually began to realize thetrue nature of that event. The idea of their being used as an instrument ofconducting a war came to their minds.
3. When people returned form the war they saw thatnobody cared either about them or about what they had done at the front.
2. VOCABULARY WORK
Thefollowing activities are suggested:
I. Please findthese phrases in the sentences in oneof the chapters and explain them in your own words:
· to peer across at something
· to be nailed
· to lay aground
· to squat against the wall
· futility of one’s martyrdom
· gaudy as a child’s toy
· to heap up
· to flick
· gaped faces
· to assoil smb.
· grieving sky
II. Here are some sentences fromthe text. Please explain what thewords in the bold types mean:
1. “You mock by reading your ownmortal’s pride into Him…”(p.363)
2. “He was nailed there and he willforgive me.” (p.370)
3. “Go on I” the rest of the cortege huddlingwithout order, protocol vanished for the moment too as they hurried after thecaisson almost with an air of pell mell, as though in actual flight from thewreckage of the disaster…” (p.436)
4. “It passes the Hotel de Villa where thethree generals still stood like a posed camera group stared full at each otheracross the moment which could not last because of the vehicle’s speed — thepeasant’s face above the corporal’s chevrons and the shackled wrists in thespeeding lorry, and the grey, inscrutable face above the stars ofsupreme rank and the bright ribbons of honor and glory on the Hotel steps,looking at each other across the fleeting instant.” (p.17)
5. “His face was showing a comprehension,understanding, utterly free of compassion.” ( p.17)
6. “It had merely arrested itself; not themen engaged in it, but the war itself. War, impervious and eveninattentive to the anguish, the torn flesh, the whole petty surge and resurgeof victories and defeats…” (pp. 124, 125)
7. “There is an immorality, an outrageousimmorality; you are not even contemptuous of glory; you are simply notinterested in it.” (p.305)
III. Pleasetranslate these sentences into English:
1. Командир дивізії завжди спостерігавза атаками з найближчогоспостережного пункту; це було його правилом і сприяло його репутації.
2. У той вівторок опівночі двоє англійських солдат розташувалисяна стрілецькій сходинці одного з окопів під руїнами Бетюна.
3. Спали вони на кам’яній підлозі у коридорі; сніданком їх нагодували ще допідйому.
4. Всі розійшлися, він продовжував сидіти, днювальнізакінчили прибирання, потім під’їхав автомобіль, алезупинився не біля їдальні, а біля канцелярії, крізь тонку перегородку вінпочув, як туди увійшли люди, потім голоси…
5. Залишаючи свої домівки, вони майже нічого не знали, всівони були зірвані з місця тим же жахом…
6. Натовп, здавалося, не міг розгледіти або помітитивантажівки.
7. Вирішувати було вже пізно; щоб неопинитися розтоптаним, він у натовпі пліч-о-пліч з полоненим рухався черезплощу до будівлі суду…
3. Reading comprehension activitY
Attention check. Please answer the following questions on the text:
· What time is depicted in the novel?
· In what country does the action take place?
· Who is the Corporal?
· What have you learnt about theMarshall?
· Pick out the lines, describing the relations between the Corporal and the Marshall.
· What was Marthe’s another name?
· What difference can you see between the Corporaland the Groom
· Describe the funeral scene.
4. discussion
I. The followingquestions and statements are suggested:
ü  Accountof the usage of the religious terms in the novel. Give the examples of it providing your reasons for its usage.
ü  Pick upstatements which show the Marshall’s attitude towardsthe Corporal. Give the reasons for your choice.
ü  Whythe novel is called “A Fable”?
II. Discuss the following phrases from the novel. Whatcan they mean? Explain in your own words.
1. Fear implies ignorance. (p.17)
2. They had no plan: only motion. (p.130)
3. Beware whom you mock by reading your own mortal’spride into Him… (p.363)
4. He was nailed there and he will forgive me. (p. 370)
5. The small perpetual flame burned above the eternalsleep of the nameless bones brought down five years ago from the Verdunbattlefield. (p.434)
5. debates
The sudentsare divided into two or threegroups, each of which is given a subject for debate: two of these groups are direct opposite of each other, and a third – should give a compromise. Some examples are as follows:
a) If you want to make a good thingyou can use every stick in the book.
Good thing can be done only by good deeds.
b) If a person has faith insomething, he will definitely make his dream come true.
The sound mind is more important than the faith.
c) Sometimes thinking that we aredoing good, we ruin everything.
Sometimes it is necessary to ruin something, in order tobuild something new.
Each group has to work out and write down all possible argumentsin favour of its subject,including defenses against the pointsthat might be brought up by the opposition. It also has to work out thepresentation of the material.
A time limits should be set for preparations – from 10 to 15 minutes. Formalities of theprocedure are outlined by the teacher before the debate begins. The points to be included are the following:
· what the speaker does;
· how participants show what they want to say;
· howlong their speeches are, etc.
Then the full debate follows. The final voting is ”genuine”. The announcement of the results of the vote is the end of theactivity.
Teachers who teach Faulkner and who are contemplatingteaching his fiction advise us such teaching guides as “A Reader’s Guide toWilliam Faulkner” (1964), “Reading Faulkner’s Best Short Stories” (1999), “TheCambridge Companion to William Faulkner” (1995), “Approaches to TeachingFaulkner’s The Sound and the Fury” (1996), “A William Faulkner Encyclopedia”(1999), and “Teaching Faulkner” (2001) [11].
The methods of teaching literature in today’s highschool and the issues which are at the center of that teaching have changedsince the death of Faulkner in 1962. Teachers are examining new and excitingways to engage students in the study of a complicated writer such as Faulkner.These guides are written in a clear, accessible, and scholarly style by some ofthe most important critics of Faulkner today. They enable teachers to betterunderstand the complexities of Faulkner’s writing style, his realistic subjectmatter, and his perception of the decline of the Old South and the rise of theNew.

CONCLUSION
 
The research conducted leads us to the followingconclusions:
1. There is a close connection between the life andcreative activities of William Faulkner. Throughout his entire life the famousAmerican writer devoted a great deal of time to literature. Moreover, writingbecame Faulkner’s greatest passion, beside which nothing else mattered. Almostall the events of his life were reflected in his writings. There are somedefined moments which influenced him deeply and were reflected in his works.When a young man Faulkner demonstrated artistic talent, writing poetry. Hisearliest literary efforts were romantic, conscientiously modeled on Englishpoets such as Burns, Thomson, Housman, and Swinburne, his first daughter’sdeath, the Nobel Prize etc.
2. During our research we singled out the main featuresof parables:
ü  Theparable allows deep communication between the narrator and the reader. Itbegins “benignly”, disarming readers, drawing them in, and encouraging them tocompare the story to their own experiences. The readers identify with a certaincharacter and encounter dilemmas that call for choices. At this point thereaders move more deeply into self examination.
ü  Theparable involves indirect communication that provokes self discovery. Whereasdirect communication creates observers and listeners, indirect communicationcreates participants and action.
ü  Experienceswith indirect communication cultivate the capability for developing the self.Rather than a change in information there is a change in consciousness.
ü  Thesituations described in the parable can be applied in real life.
ü  Anaction has a parable character only when it is said in it: act like this.
The research proved the existence of the parablethinking in Faulkner’s novel A Fable:
· The absence of the story-teller,Faulkner’s narrative and ethical position, his point of view concerning all theevents which occur in the novel. Faulkner only represents the events and thefeelings of the heroes without giving any comments from his side, so the readerhas to build the conclusions, associative comparisons and guesses himselfindependently.
· A Fableis a fable without a strict moral — it is more descriptive than prescriptive.It is essentially a description of two opposing sets of moralities shown intheir complex interactions both ideally and historically.
· The main hero of the novel the Corporalis put in a scale, valid situation of an ethical choice which has basic, majorimportance. This situation is also one of organic laws of a parable.
· All the events in the novel occur in thelimited place of the imaginary reality which serves as a laboratory platform onwhich the plot of the novel develops.
· All the events in the novel are shownthrough a prism of perception of the world by the main hero. So everythingwhich doesn’t enter in his field of view and consciousness is entirely absentin the novel.
· The source of the novel is the storyabout Christ. The plot of the novel revolves around a reincarnation of Christduring the First World War.
· In the novel there constantly can beseen a difficult struggle between an angel and a devil, light and darkness,beauty and ugliness, good and bad, passion and indifference, cleanliness andsinfulness of a person.
Thus, we considered Faulkner’s life and its connectionwith his creative activities, highlighted the main features of parable, itspeculiarities and the differencesbetween parable and novel, singled out the parable thinking in “A Fable”.
Our research contributed to more profound understandingof the novel that firstly was even rejected as art. It’s impossible not to seevast scope, its wide compass in the process of their analysis. And in spite ofthis disregard the novel became an integral part of the World literature of theXX century.

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