Endurance in the Faulknarian Martyr

Paper Summary:

A discussion about how characters of great endurance are found throughout William Faulkner's works, with illustrative examples from several of Faulkner's stories. Examines the short story "Idyll in the Desert" about one of man's most common heartbreaks, unrequited love. It also analyzes another short story called "Barn Burning", a tale of the infamous Snopes family where endurance involves a more explicit struggle of conscience.

From the Paper:

"Throughout William Faulkner's works are found characters of great endurance, possessors of intestinal fortitude that results from what Faulkner once called "the human heart in conflict with itself" (Oates 249). Faulkner' s characters endure in conjunction with absurdism, the belief that man exists in a meaningless, irrational universe with which he comes into conflict during his search for truth and order. Endurance is evidence of man's attempts to understand his place in the world and adapt readily to the world's irrationalities. Ideally, a peaceful introspection is the consequence of a life of endurance; however, Faulkner's characters rarely achieve
this inner peace of which he spoke. Instead, Faulkner's characters are martyrs in their efforts to endure the varied hardships they experience, both internal and external, yet their martyrdom is unrecognizable by the world, because the characters themselves are oblivious to the motivation behind therefore the possible outcome of their steadfast endurance. Such characters who remain at the end of his or her story without having reached peace with him- or herself, characters we will call Faulknarian martyrs of endurance, are seen in the short stories "Idyll in the Desert" and "Barn Burning." "

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