Creative and Critical Analysis of William Faulkner & Toni Morrison’s works [Beloved and The Sound and the Fury]

Question on William Faulkner & Toni Morrison

Writers: William Faulkner & Toni Morrison’s Works

Write two short creative pieces (2-3 pages each), emulating the styles of two writers we have read in the course.  Both pieces should describe the same scene or event, of your own creation—any scene or event of your choosing, with each story striving to render that scene or event in the manner of one particular writer. Try to include as many formal aspects of the writers’ styles as you can (e.g., narrative point-of-view; tone; imagery; voice(s), etc.).

The aim is to try to see the world as the writers see it; the more completely you can do that, the better. In the second part of the project, write a short critical essay (4–5 pages) comparing the two stories you have written.  The essay should explain which writers you have imitated and which formal aspects of their work you have emphasized, and should suggest how differences in literary form can impact effects of literary meaning.
Total: 1 paper (8-10 pages)

Creative One: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved has a simple but complex and visceral style. Toni Morrison’s literary style significantly shapes the reader’s emotional reaction to the story’s characters and plot developments. Morrison employs various techniques, including but not limited to narrative point of view, voice, tone, and imagery, as well as establishing a setting and the story’s central conflict. 

The story shifts in time and place, beginning in Ohio in 1873. The narrative’s main events occur mainly after the Civil War and end primarily in the Old American South, somewhat before and after the abolition of slavery. This novel is set in the volatile and stressful years after the end of the Civil War, a period known as “Reconstruction” (Van Leeuwen 379). Given the significant conflict, Beloved gives weight to the novel’s central conflict: whether or not Sethe will break free of the shackles of her slave past.

In Beloved, the narrative is told using an anonymous voice, with the omniscient narrator recounting the story through the third-person point of view. Thus, the narrator can convey various characters’ inner thoughts and feelings in the third person, judging them neither favorably nor unfavorably. The narrator regularly switches between Sethe’s, Paul D’s, Stamp Paid’s, and Denver’s viewpoints. By often switching viewpoints, the author encourages the reader to approach the challenging subject matter with an open mind and examine events and individuals from various perspectives.

For example, the narrator relays Sethe’s justifications for killing her kid, as well as the responses of her family and even the city of Cincinnati, to have the reader reflect on Sethe’s moral problem rather than criticize her (Morrison 228). The narrator maintains an objective stance throughout the narrative, giving equal weight to the novel’s actions and scenes. In the first utterance, for instance, the narrator states, “124 is spiteful,” (Morrison 3). However, the narrator makes no judgments on whether or not this animosity is merited.

Consequently, the tone of unbiased impartiality in Beloved allows the events to determine the story’s mood. As an illustration, the narrative is at its most upbeat on the day when Paul D brings Sethe and Denver to the exposition (76). Sethe is hopeful for the first time that she may find fulfillment in her life (76). Though, when Paul D accuses Sethe of killing Beloved, the tone becomes somber and dismal. 

In Beloved, the narrator uses imagery to convey the release of Baby Suggs from slavery. The day Baby Suggs is freed is a scene of celebration in the narrative, despite the horrible circumstances surrounding it. Morrison uses Baby Suggs’ bodily sensations to show the pivotal moment she finally becomes a free woman. Baby Suggs seems to be staring at her fingers in awe because of how “dazzling” they seem to her (Morrison 249). Following this, Baby Suggs “feels a knocking in her chest” while she learns “something else new: her heartbeat” (Morrison 250).

Bringing up the fact that Baby Suggs eventually learned to identify her heart demonstrates that prior to that moment, she had thought that her existence and the heartbeat that propelled it belonged to the “Garners” rather than herself. Baby Suggs’s internal dialogue echoes the question, “Had it been there all along? This pounding thing?” These instances illustrate the vivid imagery Morrison uses to make the reader sense what it must be like for Baby Suggs to get her independence and embrace her body and freedom for the first time.

Creative Two: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Faulkner employs various techniques, including but not limited to narrative point of view, voice, tone, and imagery, as well as establishing a setting. Using a stream-of-consciousness style, concentrating on what is currently happening and constantly drifting back to recollections from the past, Faulkner tells a narrative about the disintegration of a Southern American family. Utilizing this style invites the readers in on every character’s innermost thoughts by bouncing about in time and switching narrators and syntactic structures. Post-Civil War and early-to-mid Reconstruction-era American South, beginning 1865-1877, provides the backdrop context and setting for The Sound and the Fury (Van Leeuwen 382). In the wake of the abolition of slavery, American South was through a period of profound self-reflection and cultural redefinition. 

The story is recounted via first-person and third-person points of view. As active characters, Benjy first, then Quentin, and afterward Jason uses first-person narration and their voices to tell the story from their point of view. Their narration is free-flowing, in-the-moment way, paying close attention to what is happening around them but constantly shifting gears to reflect on experiences from the past. For instance, the third chapter is recounted from the point of view of Jason Compson, the new family patriarch, following the suicide of his brother Quentin and the desertion of her little daughter by her mother, Caddy, who is also named Quentin (Faulkner 178).

Third-person omniscient narration is used toward the story’s conclusion using Faulkner’s voice, which is at the center of the novel’s dynamic intensity. Since the story is recounted from the perspectives of three characters, events, timelines, and recollections are often tangled and tossed together to heighten the story’s inherent depth. William Faulkner created a work of absolute grandeur in his masterpiece by focusing on and narrating the story via the characters’ words.

Benjy has an inquisitive tone throughout the narrative. The tone of Benjy’s segment reflects his mental disability; he is very perceptive. Faulkner goes to great lengths to portray Benjy’s interior world. For instance, nowhere in the story do readers learn that Benjy enjoys a bowl of porridge. Instead, what is portrayed is how he imagines a bowl emptying: “It got down below the mark,” and he adds, claiming further that “Look how much he is eaten” (Faulkner 74). Faulkner adopts a caustic, cynical, and nasty tone when he explores Jason’s consciousness. For instance, Jason says, “Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say?” (Faulkner 183). It is almost as if Faulkner attempts to make readers detest the character.

As Jason’s cynicism about the possibility of goodness in other people grows, readers cannot help but share his pessimism. Unfortunately, it implies that readers cannot see any goodness in Jason. However, in Quentin’s segment, Faulkner adopts a more intellectual, often pompous, and sometimes neurotic tone. For instance, when giving his opinion regarding the Civil War, Quentin remarks, “Because no battle is ever won. They are not even fought” (Faulkner 83). Thus, given the hopelessness of the situation, it seems pointless to even wage war.

Quentin is indeed the family’s intellectual center, but he also keeps everyone in stitches with his hilarious antics. However, Faulkner still manages to make Quentin a challenging character to follow by peppering his dialogue with a lot of specialized vocabulary and literary and biblical allusions. Introspection has made his tone less erudite and much more sentimental. The novel’s concluding chapters are written in Faulkner’s voice, striking a calm tone while maintaining control of the narrative.

Imagery is crucial to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Quentin’s description of the coinage invokes blood visuals and feelings as “damp and warm” and his ability to “smell it, faintly metallic” (Faulkner 126). This may relate to the blood linking a pregnant woman to her developing fetus, a sensuous mystery of becoming a woman, or the lifeblood people share as family members. Further, Quentin writes, “Oh her blood or my blood Oh” (135). She wraps “her fingers tight over them, moist and hot like worms” as he gives her the “two coppers” in recompense after his transaction (127).

Another interpretation of the imagery at the paragraph’s conclusion is that the references to moisture and heat symbolize death and decay rather than the womb. In death, there is birth. The brother and the sister named Quentin tragically pass away, and a daughter named Quentin is delivered. These interpretations materialize in Quentin’s world in real-time, transmitting to the reader so that they can participate in making sense of the story’s complexities and gaps. By having characters think to create meaning from images and having the reader do the same, Faulkner produces a rich and intriguing literary experience.

Part Two Critical Analysis William Faulkner & Toni Morrison‘s Works

Comparing Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Beloved and The Sound and the Fury give different perspectives and methodologies for understanding historical events, yet both use the mythological narrative technique. The interpretation, nonetheless, still rests on the superiority of their style and the brilliance of their literary techniques. Faulkner and Morrison’s conception of narration places time as one of its primary influences; they see the two working together as literature’s fundamental aspects. This essay segment uses in-depth analyses of Faulkner’s Quentin Compson and Morrison’s Sethe, leading characters to compare the authors’ treatment of time and narrative via narration, point of view, allegory, and dialect.

In its entirety, The Sound and the Fury may be considered as an examination of point of view since each of the novel’s four sections is narrated from the viewpoint of a different individual, each of whom has a vastly unique and opinionated viewpoint on the events depicted. Because Faulkner never emphasizes whether any single character’s perception of the household is more legitimate than all the others, this may imply that it is counterproductive to lay too much importance on the perspective of any single character. Quentin, the oldest Compson lad, is the focal point of Faulkner’s central ideas; therefore, it logically follows that he is accorded special status in the author’s canon (Hardin 5).

One such interpretation is that texts and individuals assume an allegorical role whenever they depict a picture of history in which the tension between the old days and, thus, the future is so extreme that it confronts the dramatic duality of class struggle and actual revolution (Faulkner 266). According to Leeuwen (400), the whole of Quentin’s persona may be viewed as an allegory because he personifies this conflict between the past and the future. Moreover, fictional characters from developing countries often serve as metaphors for their countries. The American South is not a developing nation but has historically been treated as a separate entity from the rest of the country (401).

Thus, Leeuwen’s reasoning implies that it is legitimate to expand Quentin’s sense of temporality and narrative into a broader framework, even if much of Faulkner’s literature is undoubtedly a reflection of the diversity of viewpoints. Comparatively, In Beloved, Sethe’s ability to tell narratives and her understanding of the past grow in tandem. Based on Morrison (83), “the brain was not interested in the future” for Sethe. “One more step was the most she could see of the future” (83). Since she was saturated with both the past and eager for even more, it gave her little place to envisage, let alone prepare for the following day (84). This renders the chasm into which her narration is progressing even more sinister.

According to Paul D., suggesting more may drive them again to a location from which they would never go back” (86), but notwithstanding this rising feeling of fear, the occupants of 124 continue to piece together their history. Sometimes even Denver has the confidence to tell Belovedthe tale of her birth: “to create out of the strings she had heard throughout her existence” (90). With the power of narration and historical perception intensifying, the characters are heading together toward a threshold of homogeneity. Sethe even starts to feel comfortable regarding her history, stating their tale was palatable since it was also fair to present, polish, and tell more (116). 

Notably, Sethe lacks Quentin’s mastery of storytelling; Quentin carefully builds stories to benefit his future. Sethe’s position throughout the story changes regarding time and story, but it is her first dilemma. After reading about Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury, it is evident that he is utterly at odds with Sethe. While Sethe has a hard time coming up with even fragments of stories about her past, Quentin is so terrified of the current moment’s potential to drag him far away from his community’s past that he might openly describe people knows to seem to be untrue to stop time’s progression. Time and storytelling are inherently skewed perceptions of the two characters and the communities they symbolize.

Consequently, like Faulkner, Morrison adores poetic and fascinating dialect that transmits love among community members and provides optimism in a chaotic world saturated with racial thinking and the evil of misogyny. Morrison’s fictional universe is mythological and legendary, rife with intricate tales of ordinary people who have thrived against the odds amid the racial and gendered violence that permeates modern America.

Morrison’s language recalls a history steeped in the subjective of remembrance, which is beautiful, profound, and challenging (Hardin 15). Like Faulkner, she uses creativity to bring the past to reality, creating a universe that can be explored indefinitely and where history serves as absorbed mythology, which is communicated into the contemporary not so much for the goal of understanding the heritage as it is to bring Black culture to the forefront. Morrisonfuses modern literary style with the pursuit of personal enlightenment, a desire for individuality, and a finding of identity at the core of her writing, racial and gender-sensitive language (27). Her narrative balances community themes with explorations of personal knowledge and insight.

Intuitively, Quentin’s perspective of the South in The Sound and the Fury culminates in his narrator’s aimless wandering through a distant world. His ability to ruminate on a carefree mentality that no longer exists is something the Beloved characters were always afforded. Morrison is at the novel’s epicenter, providing a resounding voice marginally discernible in Faulkner’s narrative. At the same time, the conventional Modernist devastation sprang from an empty core and produced a peripheral around which Quentin may wander and observe. Conversely, although Quentin is obviously only a single person, Faulkner portrays him as being personally plagued by the deeds of individuals who lived generations preceding him, much like how Morrison mulls over the ever-present influence of flashbacks in Beloved.

The language of Faulkner and Morrison denies the commonly held belief that the present reality is the only one that matters and that all that came before is gone forever. Leeuwen (383) argues that just as individuals do so in retrospect, so are societies. Beloved’s Sethe explains that the past is existentially present beside and inside the chronological present, just as each person’s experiences are “out there outside my mind” (Morrison 43). Though people may grasp this concept conceptually with ease, it is imperative to face the fact that memory and perspective are always dynamic.

In contrast to the deconstruction of Faulkner’s literary techniques, which can be determined via reviewing the meta-narration that emerges inside the fundamental passages, Morrison’s importance can only be understood by studying the composition of the source itself. In other words, the way Beloved’s composition is interpreted is informed by Toni Morrison’s extra-textual decision to delve back into history and narrativize the existence of Margaret Garner (Hardin 33). This method of storytelling, developed by Morrison herself, compensates for her characters’ lack of meta-narration and suggests an alternative approach to writing about the past.

In contradiction to the universalistic aspirations of the historical elements presented by Faulkner’s characters, the chronological investigation of Morrison argues for a much more realistic engagement to events, one that usurps. It utilizes specific experiences from the past to help individuals make sense of a situation and provide positive inspiration for the future. This unique connection to experience also propagates a contemporary awareness but sidesteps the negative consequences of totalizing meta-narratives.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. “The Sound and the Fury. 1929.” New York: Vintage (1990).

Hardin, Luke. “Lost Voices: William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and the Nature of History.” (2020).

Morrison, Toni. “Beloved. 1987.” New York: Plume 252 (1988).

Van Leeuwen, Richard. “The Traumas of History: William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and André Brink.” The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction. Brill, 2018. 375-406.