Faulkner's+Acceptance+Speech

I was just wondering what everyone thought about Faulkner's acceptance speech and how it relates to "As I Lay Dying." I know we wrote papers about this, but I wanted to give people a chance to give us an abridged version/summary of what they wrote. In that acceptance speech Faulkner set some pretty high standards for the writers of the day. Does his own novel live up to those standards, or is was he a changed man when he gave the speech? Personally I wrote that yes, his novel does live up to those standards. The majority of the book is about the human heart in conflict with itself, without even the distraction of 3rd person narration. Though the book still is pessimistic and not very uplifting. I said this was because the book was dominated by Anse's character, a lazy, selfish, and careless father. But I said that the novel still supported the arguments of the acceptance speech because Anse is analogous to the young writers of the day. Both were blinded by their own selfishness (Anse with his desire to find a new wife and to buy some teeth, and the writers by their fear for their own lives in a nuclearly active world), and brought life down around them because of it.

So just tell me what you guys wrote.1203959523

At first, when I read Faulkner's speech, I really didn't understand how he could hold such ideals and write a book about such pathetic people. When I reviewed the book, I found that the characters were faced with many profound human conflicts and had the opportunity to respond with love and honor and pity and all of those other things that Faulkner talked about, but they really didn't seem to know how. I think it is safe to say that Jewel could have truly loved his mother, but he really didn't know how to deal with that in her life and so the closest thing to an expression of love we see is his giving up his horse, but at that point his mother is already dead. The Bundrens were in the midst of some of the most profound human conflicts, yet they were incapable of responding with these human ideals that Faulkner holds up. Thus, the reader is left with a striking sense of absence and emptiness that provides an opportunity for reflection upon the importance all of these profound human emotions.

I think that the true presence of these ideals is in what the novel leaves with the readers after we have actually finished. Faulkner warns against writing that leaves no "scars," and I think that "As I Lay Dying," really leaves a scar, because it certainly has made me think alot. 1203984211

I have an issue with something lsi wrote. Jewel shows much more than a simple expression of love by giving up his horse. First of all, giving up his horse was HUGE. He toiled and labored at night for months for that horse. In addition, he saved his mother from the river and from the fire. Anse wanted to go to town to buy his teeth and Dewey Dell wanted to go to town to get an abortion, but Jewel seriously wanted to go to town to bury his mother. Unlike Darl who tried to burn his mother and Cash who liked the idea of this burden being lifted from his family, Jewel risked his own life to save his mother twice. I believe this is the love, honor, and duty Faulkner's speech mentions. Those are the old traditional values and qualities that Faulkner mentioned were essential to a story. Faulkner's speech says that he has hope that humankind will prevail, and I believe this is seen within Jewel. I don't know exactly. Does anyone else have an interpretation of the relation between the speech and the book? 1203987102

I had a slightly different take on Faulkner's acceptance speech. I viewed it more as him arguing that the focus in writing was too much centered on human reactions like fear instead of the truths of the human spirit like love and honor. It wasn't that the writing was too pessimistic, it was that the writing was focused too much on raw emotions, rather than the roots from which these emotions originated from. If you use this interpretation of Faulkner's speech, then his book becomes much less hypocritical: throughout his book, he examines the darker side of the human spirit. Just because the values he focused on in his speech were all positive doesn't that his pessimistic examination delves any less into roots of the human spirit. I guess what my point is that whether the novel appears to be hypocritical or not depends on how you interpret his speech, because, whereas most people found it hard to explain his apparent hypocrisy, I found no such hypocrisy to exist. 1203989181

Just to clarify: I am not denying that Jewel and his mother had a powerful connection, and in my opinion, there was a potential for love there. However, neither of them knew how to find that basic human truth while their hearts were in "conflict," while they were both alive. Therefore, I think Jewel realizes that he was missing something once his mother dies, and all of those risks and sacrifices are his way of grasping for some truth and meaning in his life. 1203999332

I thought that overall the two were contradictory because really the lack of human triumph in the end with just a completely dysfunctional, broken family. However, I did see signs of the other things he talks about in the speech. For example, it was rather easy to find good examples of the human heart in conflict with itself and also human endurance. These similarities made me hesitant to believe the two were completely contradictory. I thought that because I found some connections between the two, than it is entirely possible that I missed some and the two could be in complete agreement. Basically, in the end I said that based on my own, most likely erring, reading of the novel the speech and novel were not on the same page, literally and metaphorically.1204164268

You all have very valid points, but I also found the speech and novel to be a bit contradictory. My main focus is on the last line of the speech. "The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail." To me, the book fails to be one of the props. I'm just wondering if anyone finished this book and felt like it would help him/her to endure life? Really it just felt like overall the novel lacked heart. That is not to say that one can't write a dark book and still have heart. I use Night by Elie Wiesel as my example. The story is terribly depressing, but in the end you are left feeling like humanity is still possible despite the crap. I didn't get that same feeling with As I Lay Dying. Maybe, I just missed it. I don't know. 1204182961

It is possible that the novel can be stretched to be supporting the "universal truths" mentioned in the speech, and it certainly focuses on the conflicts of the human heart. But it fails to "uplift" the human spirit, as Faulkner states at a couple points in his speech. So, I'm with PMi on this one. Who would be left feeling uplifted after such a novel? You might feel grateful that your last name is not Bundran.. but that's about it. 1204255638

Well, I saw the contradictions between the two. I admit, //As I Lay Dying// is not a crazy uplifting book, like i wouldnt read it on my mellow days. But, Faulkner's speech was partly about how we, as humans, live in such a fear that it can affect our writing and our attitudes. At the beginning, he states "our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it." I think he is saying that we are so consumed with fear that we make irrational decisions, like we cant get away from that fear. I think that directly ties in with the book, especially in the case of Dewey Dell. She goes down to that cellar because she is at a point where her fear of others finding out her secret is leading her to acts of desperation. I thought that whole situation was ironic actually. But, yes it is true that I do not see the "uplifting" abilities of the book. However, I do not think that Faulkner was going for that in //As I Lay Dying//. He says at the beginning of his speech: "this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work...to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before." and I think that is exactly what Faulkner has accomplished. As I read, I read a style of writing a novel that I had never read before. It was a new to my mind and it was new at Faulkner's time... 1204257772