lost and found: literary criticism

Existential Time and the Faulknerian Novel

The American novel is largely concerned with actions, unlikely to provide an analysis of itself within the text (as was the mode with the British novels preceding the American novel as a form). Many of the French existentialist writers were fascinated by the American novel, notably Sartre. The existentialists were drawn to the dynamism of writers like Hemingway or Faulkner.

American literature was widely read and critiqued by the French existentialists. Writing on Faulkner's 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury, Sartre comments: “the novelist's technique is always a reference to his metaphysics.” (Bruneau 66). The technique that Sartre is referencing is Faulkner's approach to time within the narrative of The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner subverts and distorts clock time, structuring the first two sections of the novel around a time beyond the naturalistic. Juxtaposing past and present through varying forms of “stream of consciousness” narrative he presents time as a pooling of experience – a blur. Faulkner's technique presents life in terms of a unique, subjective experience.

Faulkner’s use of time has been considered revolutionary by many critics and theorists. I believe it is representative of the modernist desire to engage the reader in ways that are relevant to the modern experience. Faulkner recognized that this experience is rooted so deeply in historicity that a clear view of the present as it actually exists can be difficult. With this in mind, he presents us with time all-at-once – as it is experienced by the individual and as his characters experience it. Through these means he attempts to bring the total experience to life for the reader.

Absalom, Absalom!, like many of Faulkner's novels, can be read as an experiment in existential time. Faulkner abandons the traditional mode of narrative chronological progression in favor of a personal time (Heidegger's my time). “The ordinary view of time emphasizes an abstract movement from past through present to future. My time moves from the future to the past in order to assimilate what has made the present”.

However, Absalom, Absalom! is not the only instance of existential time. Anywhere in Faulkner's works where chronological narratives are abandoned or where no regard is shown for the distinctions between past, present and future demonstrate this existential time.

The character Quentin, in his section of The Sound and the Fury, expresses Faulkner’s desire to subvert chronological time: “[T]ime is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life” (The Sound the Fury 85). This subversion, or desire to subvert, suggests an existential project. Sartre demands that we abandon the “retrospective novel” wherein the events take place in the past as if they had already happened and were simply being recalled by the writer. This is precisely the project that Faulkner engages himself with. The traditional, chronological form of narrative provides the reader with a view of the lived life, not the living.

In many of Faulkner's novels, the reader's experience of time is not naturalistic but the time of the character's experience. This can be difficult to convey, but is accomplished through the use of a few literary techniques. Faulkner uses the interior monologue to communicate his character's temporality. These interior monologues are conveyed by Faulkner through free indirect discourse. Faulkner implements textual indicators (such as the use of italics) to mark interior monologues. Techniques such as this become a necessity when, as Faulkner frequently does, time is presented as an endlessly spiraling, omnipresent force.

Faulkner's novels have been criticisized by the existentialists as overly fatalist. Some of Faulkner's characters are paralyzed by concepts of fate, unable to deviate from a course that ensures their destruction. His characters toy with freedom but often reject it. Again, Quentin from The Sound and the Fury: “It's not when you realise that nothing can help you – religion, pride, anything- it's when you realise that you don't need any aid” (80). This realization perhaps led Quentin to suicide but it also led him to freedom. Freedom was possible, however, Quentin simply could not conceive of any other option but suicide. Sartre comments: “[N]ot for a second does Quentin envisage the possibility of not killing himself. This suicide is an immobile wall, a thing which he approaches backwards, and which he neither wants nor can conceive” (90).

The Sound and the Fury is not the sole example of fatalism in Faulkner. The 1932 novel Light in August presents the reader with the story of Joe Christmas, a man unable to come to terms with a lack of stable identity. Joe Christmas is also immobilized by ideas of fate: “he believed with calm paradox that he was the volitionless servant of the fatality in which he believed that he did not believe. He was saying to himself I had to do it already in the past tense; I had to do it.” (Light in August 280). This apparent fate led Christmas to commit murder and culminated in his eventual death at the hands of a mob.

Despite their apparent impotence to act, Faulkner's characters frequently reflect on time. As reflectively as Quentin, Joe Christmas contemplates the nature of time prior to his murderous act. He considers the future: “tomorrow night, all the tomorrows, to be a part of the flat pattern, going on. He thought of that with quiet astonishment: going on, myriad, familiar, since all that had ever been was the same as all that was to be, since tomorrow to-be and had-been would be the same” (Light in August 281).

This reflection on the part of numerous doomed characters suggests an engagement with the present not possible if the character's fates were, in fact, already determined. The events of the present, future (and past) should be of less relevance to a character that has resigned himself to his fate. The tragedy of Faulkner's characters is that they are capable of acting but often do not. As such, their myth of fate does not relieve them of culpability for their actions. Their decision not to act is a choice as dynamic as action, often with extremely negative results.

Through all of these trials the individual approaches the realization of existential freedom. However, few of Faulkner’s characters actually achieve it. They are, more often, consumed by the past; “they never look ahead. They face backwards as the car carries them along” (Sartre 90). This becomes Sartre's greatest criticism of the works of Faulkner. So few of his character's realize their freedom and so many fall to tragedy. They walk through life like ghosts, mourning the past by murdering their future.


Sartre, Jean Paul. “On The Sound and the Fury: Time in the Work of Faulkner.” Literary and Philosophical Essays. New York: Criterion, 1955.

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!. New York: Random House, 1964.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Random House, 1990.

Existentialism and the American Novel
Jean Bruneau
Yale French Studies, No. 1, Existentialism (1948), pp. 66-72

Bruneau, Jean. “Existentialism and the American Novel.” Yale French Studies.


Experiential and Existential Time
Gustav E. Mueller
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Mar., 1946), pp. 424-435