Louvinia
Let’s be straightforward: William Faulkner is not Ernest Hemingway. That is meant as a high compliment. If you read every word that Hemingway ever wrote, you would never come across a sentence this densely packed with metaphorically-rich description. On the other hand, if you read every word Faulkner ever wrote, you would come across many sentences even longer and more intricately elegant and richer in metaphorical imagery. For most writers, this would be a candidate for the best sentence they ever wrote. For Faulkner, it is just another day at work:
“She looked tall as a ghost, in one dimension like a bolster case, taller than a bolster case in her nightgown; silent as a ghost on her bare feet which were the same color as the shadow in which she stood so that she seemed to have no feet, the twin rows of her toenails lying weightless and faint and still as two rows of faintly soiled feathers on the floor about a foot below the hem of her nightgown as if they were not connected with her.”
The Master of Extending the Metaphor
As a reader makes their way through the stories that comprise this volume, it becomes clearer with each page that Faulkner is a writer who is in love with the power of language. He proves over and over that while any writer can sling a “like” or “as” between nouns to draw a comparison, it is the rare artist who makes that “like” or “as” only the beginning of an adventure in prose:
“It was like a meeting between two iron knights of the old time, not for material gain but for principle--honor denied with honor, courage denied with courage--the deed done not for the end but for the sake of the doing--put to the ultimate test and proving nothing save the finality of death and the vanity of all endeavor.”
Dialogue
Most of the really wonderfully long and extended examples of intricate metaphorical weaving arrives in the expository and descriptive prose rather from the mouths of characters. Mainly because most of the characters that Faulkner writes about are not gifted with his knowledge and mastery of the English language, although in their heads when he is following their thoughts through stream of consciousness they very often appear to be much more gifted than their verbal skills demonstrate. When he does give his characters a nice simile or metaphor, however, it is usually quite insightful for understanding their character:
"A dream is not a very safe thing to be near, Bayard. I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt.”
Metaphor as Critique of Character
One of the more entertaining and satisfying means by which Faulkner often goes for the quick and razor-shop metaphorical image is when he want to make a sly commentary on a character. A perfect example here is the efficient undercutting of a Lieutenant’s superiority:
“He didn't start to shout now, he just stood there, breathing slow and hard, looking at Granny; he talked now with a kind of furious patience, as if she were an idiot or an Indian”
Closing Lines
Like any maestro of the metaphor, Faulkner knows how to being a story to a close on a powerful image constructed out of a figurative comparison that readers can immediately “get” and so leave them emotionally fulfilled such as that which brings the curtain down on “Riposte in Tertio.”
“She had looked little alive, but now she looked like she had collapsed, like she had been made out of a lot of little thin dry light sticks notched together and braced with cord, and now the cord had broken and all the little sticks had collapsed in a quiet heap on the floor, and somebody had spread a clean and faded calico dress over them.”
