William Faulkner: A Writer with Ever-Conflicting Two Selves

William Faulkner, one of the most eminent writers in the world and America as well, is not an easy person to understand. As a famous southern writer, Faulkner wrote with his mighty pen a series of stories particularly existing in American Deep South. His fictional Yoknapatawpha County earned him universal reputation in the world literary history, however, for a long time, he was not willingly accepted as a great literary figure because of his bold description of violent scenes, morbid characters and sex. It is in 1950 when he delivered his famous Nobel Prize address that people began to read his novels in a completely new point of view and consider him an optimistic writer. In an attempt to give readers a comprehensive understanding of Faulkner, the author reveals in Faulkner his conflicting two selves: as a Modernist, he bitterly criticized the modern civilization that degenerated human beings; while as a Humanist, he held firm belief in humans' virtues. So here this paper explores Faulkner's conflicting two selves mainly through a brief analysis of some characters in his major works.