윌리엄 포크너 소설에 나타난 자연관 연구

Abstract

Nature in American literature is of special significance due to the fact that the history of America is closely connected to its natural environment. William Faulkner's awareness of nature began to manifest itself in the regional environment of the South, where he lived. After the Civil War, the old society of the South collapsed, and the primarily agrarian society was threatened by a machine-driven civilization. The ensuing development of the machine civilization was to have an irresistible, destructive impact on the lives of the characters whom the author created. Similarly, the nature depicted in Faulkner's novels is interrelated with complex factors, including the environment in which he lived. In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner experiences nature as a symbol whose objects are imbued with a human mind, rather than directly experiencing nature. His awareness of nature, as depicted in this work, is revealed mainly by its symbolic images and the hero's psychology and character. Accordingly, the author presents family ties by repeating a nature motif and image, and objectifying the inner world of the characters through the metaphors and symbolic images of nature. Light in August does not deal seriously with nature and the environment, but nature in the novel, which is revealed amid the varied interactions of human beings and the community, corresponds to the compromise and communication at which ecological literature is aimed. That is, the work shows that it is possible for human beings to accept differences and diversity, and live together with each other, when they are in harmony with nature. Thus, it can be said that the author intended to show that humans could find themselves shedding their individual prejudices and isolation and returning to a community, provided that they acquired the natural order of things and adapted themselves to it. Go Down, Moses, which depicts the harmful effects of industrialization on the environment and the South's reflection on nature, is a work that best shows the author's view of nature. The seven short stories in this work center on the story of Bear, which reveals the awareness of nature on the part of the author, who had observed the history of the South and developments in the region due to civilization. In these stories, the author warns about human beings' unmerciful deforestation and the resultant reality of the forests by contrasting the world of forests, which are symbolic of nature with plantations, which are in turn symbolic of a civilized society. However, he does not merely warn against the destruction of the environment, but leads human beings to atone for their past wrongdoings by living in harmony with nature and applying moral introspection on human nature in nature. In this study, an interconnected examination was made of Faulkner's awareness of nature and each character and nature in these works, and the following organic traits were identified. The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Go Down, Moses all reveal a series of changes in his view of nature, in that he deals with life and death and an issue of life, seeking to avoid a devastated life due to the machine civilization and instead harmonizing humans and nature, and that he eventually expands the world of compromise and coexistence between the two.