The Phenomenon of Old Age in the William Faulkner's Works ("Sartoris", "Go Down, Moses") Anastasia Melnyk 12th Grade

The phenomenon of age has its special place in the literary texts, as the chosen scope mirrors writers’ view of the world, and provokes certain psychological aspects for consideration. For example, romantics preferred a young character, as they wrote about Dream and Love, which are the main attributes of Youth, beatniks and hippies offer us a young character - a rebellious one, a carrier of the ideology of protest. The characters of the novels of the "lost generation" authors - Remarque, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, are young, just as the authors themselves were in the 1920s. Against this background William Faulkner looks like an exception, who preferred to portray not youth, but old age - as a special state of a person.

Faulkner is a master of creating the blood relationship in his works, and he is incomparably good with older people, portraying them “coming out of the old times”. Most of the William Faulkner’s books are about the old people of different nations and communities. Indians, black people, and white are the central characters in his novels, but most of them are old. The major theme of Faulkner’s books though is the relation of the self to the past, and discovering one’s identity in the present.

And in the first novel...