William Faulkner (1897-1962)

• associate with names Quentin Compson or Snopes or Yoknapatwapha County

The Sound and the Fury

• the four parts of the novel relate many of the same episodes, each from a different point of view and therefore with emphasis on different themes and events
• the general outline of the story is the decline of the Compson family, a once noble southern family descended from civil war hero General Compson
• the family falls victim to vices such as racism, greed, selfishness and ultimately, psychological impotence.
• the title of the novel is taken from Macbeth's soliloquy in act 5, scene 5 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth

Famous passage narrated by Quentin:

"When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight o'clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it."

A Light in August

• the narrative structure consists of 3 connected plot strands
• Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman, is trying to find the father, Lucas Burch, of her unborn child. She walks several hundred miles to Jefferson, a town in Yoknapatawpha county, and is suppurted there by Byron Bunch, an employee in the planing mill who falls in love with Lena and hopes to marry her. Bunch keeps it secret that Lucas Burch is hiding in town under the alias of Joe Brown.
• Joe Christmas comes to the planing mill in Jefferson and asks for a job as a coverup for his illegal alcohol business. He has a sexual relationship with Joanna Burden, descendant from a formerly powerful abolitionist family. Her brother and grandfather were both gunned down during daylight and Joanna continues her ancestors's struggle for Black emancipation, which makes her an outsider in the society of Jefferson. At the climax of her relation to Christmas she tries to force him to publicly reveal his black ancestry and join a black law firm. Christmas gets away and Joanna Burden is murdered soon thereafter, and her body is carried outside and her house is set on fire. During an unsuccessful escape attempt, Christmas is shot and castrated by a national Guardsman named Percy Grimm.
• Reverend Gail Hightower is obsessed by the past adventurers of his Confederate grandfather. Hightower's community dislikes him for his obsession and the scandal surround his personal life - his wife had committed adultery and then killed herself. Byron Bunch visits Hightower from time to time. When Christmas escapes from police custody, he runs to Hightower's house where he tries to hide. At the end of the novel, the Reverend helps Lena to deliver her baby.

"A Rose for Emily"

• unnamed narrator tells the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson, and her odd relationships with her father who controlled and manipulated her, her lover Homer Barron, and the townspeople of Jefferson who gossip about her
• In Emily's upstairs room she  hides Barron's corpse, which explains the horrid stench emitting from her house.
• although the townspeople don't have direct contact with Emily, their views on her and her family greatly affect her life
• their praises and admiration influence her father to keep her sheltered longer than she needs to be, and she feels released when her father is dead
• consequently she dives into love with Homer and when she realizes Homer intends to leave her, she makes sure he will always be with her, whether he is alive or not

Quote about Emily and her father:

"We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of the framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized."