The Brooch- William Faulkner

In The Brooch by William Faulkner I found it interesting in the beginning when the narrator was describing Howard Boyd and his wife Amy how very briefly he mentioned the death of their child. “‘Yes, she will. She’ll live forever, just to hate me.’ ‘No,’ Howard said. In the next year the child died. Again Amy tried to get him to move. ‘Anywhere. I won’t care how we have to live.’” The entire story and importance of which Faulkner was trying to reveal to his audience was focused on Mrs. Boyd (Howard’s mother) and how both Howard and Amy’s lives are affected by living with her. This same crudeness by Faulkner is seen when Amy mentions it Mrs. Boyd that drives her mad enough to start going out dancing on her own rather than the death of her child which would have left her completely distraught.

This attitude is not unlike Faulkner, actually it is very characteristic of him to not have much emotion for or focus on death. This is also seen in his works As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury. Through this very depressing and morose style of writing, Faulkner character take on this odd appeal to his readers, in which they cannot seem but eager to take the place of these strange characters and act differently. He offers characters that live in strange, boring, run-down areas of the South where they act upon life’s occurrences in different manners that leave his readers often disappointed in his never-ending battle to make all of his works’ outcomes seem hopeless.