Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Spotted Horses And Other Stories by William Faulkner Spotted Horses And Other Stories by William Faulkner. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Cloudflare Ray ID: 660fe6ae6abd4a6d • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Spotted Horses And Other Stories by William Faulkner. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 660fe6ae6a8a1f3d • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. SPOTTED HORSES by William Faulkner, 1931. Throughout much of his career after his first Yoknapatawpha novel, Flags in the Dust (first published as Sartoris in 1929), William Faulkner wrote of his fictional county in freestanding episodes that he would later combine into novels. "Spotted Horses," first published in Scribner's Magazine in June 1931, was later incorporated into The Hamlet (1940), the first volume in the trilogy of the Snopes family. Although this long story, or novella, continued to appear with "Old Man," the divorced half of another novel, The Wild Palms (1939), there is reason to believe that Faulkner finally saw both of these shorter works primarily as important if possibly discrete portions of the later novels. In either version "Spotted Horses" is the best example of Faulkner's tall tales, exercises in southern or southwestern humor that he first appreciated in the work of Thomas Banks Thorpe ("The Big Bear of Arkansas") or Mark Twain ("You Can't Pray a Lie" from Huckleberry Finn , for instance). At the same time the wild auction at the center of "Spotted Horses" reveals Flem Snopes's greed as menacing, since it victimizes both the dreams and the life savings of his fellow country people of northern Mississippi. But as it betrays them, the auction also allows them to betray themselves: the people of Frenchman's Bend are, without hesitation or encouragement, anxious to buy what they neither want nor can afford and what is of no use to them as well. In their instinctive reactions to ownership and status, most of the characters of "Spotted Horses" serve as embodiments of American capitalism at its most representative. The entrepreneur is Flem Snopes, himself the poverty-stricken backwoods son of a manipulative con artist who gains employment through intimidating landowners by threatening to burn their barns. Buying his way into a country store and then taking ownership of it, the dissatisfied, ambitious Flem decides to climb to the highest social status in Yoknapatawpha and to the greatest fortune. To aid his career, the impotent Flem elopes with an unmarried pregnant woman and, returning from his Texas honeymoon, takes the opportunity to bring with him wild Texas ponies that he can sell to credulous country people like Henry Armstid. The wild horses become symbols of the country folk, clattering over wooden bridges and running through houses and down moonlit roads, unrestrained (and untrainable) properties that, when they have escaped, can not be tied in any legal way to Flem. Flem is accompanied in his scam by a Texan who disappears with the horses after the auction and whom Flem holds accountable as the sharp trickster who robbed his customers and neighbors of their money and their pride. The situation of the Armstids is meant as metonymic. When Mrs. Armstid, gaunt in a shapeless garment and stained tennis shoes, comes to Flem for the five dollars that her husband gave for the horse he has lost, Flem unblinkingly tells her that the Texan has disappeared with all the money. When she stands there forlorn and unmoved, he adds that perhaps the Texan forgot to return the money. When she leaves, he offers her a small striped paper bag of candy for her children as an inappropriate and inadequate recompense. She retrieves her dignity by minding her manners, by thanking Flem for his thoughtfulness without a trace of irony, but Faulkner underscores Flem's crassness by having a store clerk, watching the scene, slap his thigh and see it as the clever joke of a clever salesman. At once more assured and foolishly confident, Vernon Tull's wife sues Flem Snopes for damages. One of the spotted ponies belonging to Eck Snopes upset Tull's team, and her husband was injured when his team ran away. The justice trying the case asks Eck if the horse is truly his, and Eck, one of the more honest of the Snopes clan, confesses that it is. When he begins to ask the judge how much he owes Mrs. Tull, Eck is interrupted by her; she is so relieved to triumph at last against those who would cheat her that she pronounces that "at least forty men heard that Texas murderer give that horse to Eck Snopes. Not sell it to him, mind; give it to him." Such a remark causes the judge to question whether or not Eck is the owner and to decide that Eck had no horse he could claim as his, since at best he had received it by word of mouth. Thus, he is innocent of any damages. Moreover, if ownership can be transferred by simple pronouncement, the judge continues, then Eck himself could have transferred possession of the wild pony to Vernon Tull when he lay unconscious under the bridge. Still, the legal statutes provide the responsibility for any claim. Since the owner of the horse—if it is the Texan—will not or cannot assume liability and since Eck never owned the horse at all, the Tulls must themselves bear the costs of any damages the wild horse has incurred or will incur. When Mrs. Tull, now thoroughly outraged, turns all her anger on the justice, he dismisses the hearing. Flem is unmoved by these complaints. In the first action against him, he is exonerated by the perjury of one of his own kin; while obvious, the perjury cannot be proven. In the second case the law itself comes to his rescue. The situation, then, is at once a tall tale and a story of victimization. In some ways it is the culture that is to blame; in other ways it is the ambition of Flem. But yet again it is the ambition of a Henry Armstid or a Vernon Tull. "The comedy of the situation," Cleanth Brooks writes, "and the gusto with which the whole episode is recounted provide the proper undercutting of any argument put too seriously or symbolism set forth too nakedly." Of Faulkner's broad, exaggerated, and indulgent humor there can be no doubt: "A little while before sundown the men lounging about the gallery of the store saw, coming up the road from the south, a covered wagon drawn by mules and followed by a considerable string of obviously alive objects which in the levelling sun resembled vari-sized and -colored tatters torn at random from large billboards—circus posters, say—attached to the rear of the wagon and inherent with its own separate and collective motion, like the tail of a kite. 'What in the hell is that?' one said." The suddenness, energy, and wildness of the untamed horses—which the Texan and Flem promise will be easy to train—capture the telling of the tall tale just as Faulkner's language embodies the oral tradition from which such preposterous tales are derived. These "transmogrified hallucinations of Job and Jezebel," as the stranger, the anonymous Texan, calls the spirited horses, emphasize their ghostly qualities and the improbability of the animals and what is to happen with them. At the same time such hilarious references to the Bible speak of suffering and treachery. Their phantom quality, like the rail fence that cannot contain them, argues the underlying unruliness of mercenary dreams, and their breaking loose, confronting Ratliff as he is dressing and Mrs. Littlejohn as she is bringing laundry back into her house, suggests their essential wildness. "The horse," goes Faulkner's account, "whirled around without breaking or pausing. It galloped to the end of the veranda and took the railing and soared outward, hobgoblin and floating, in the moon. It landed in the lot still running and crossed the lot and galloped through the wrecked gate and among the overturned wagons and the still intact one in which Henry's wife still sat, and on down the lane and into the road." "Spotted Horses" is one of Faulkner's most successful narratives in its ability tonally to combine the fantastic, the wildly comic, and the seriously consequential. While other stories sometimes combine these ingredients, for example, the Indian stories "Lo!" and "A Courtship" or the later story of Lucas Beauchamp and hunting for buried treasure, "The Fire and the Hearth," none of them quite reaches the exuberance or fantasy of "Spotted Horses." And with Flem always standing, brooding, over the tale, none has the same unsettling quality either. Summary and Analysis: “Spotted Horses” Introduction. “Spotted Horses” is one of Faulkner’s finest examples of his unique type of local color. Critics familiar with American Old Southwest humor will recognize his indebtedness to this brand of tall-tale humor, which relies almost entirely on a liberally exaggerated oral narration. In the short story, Faulkner utilizes a sewing machine agent as the oral narrator to create an informal, chatty, conversational tone. In addition to this narrative style, Faulkner uses other classical types and techniques of humor in his storytelling; here, he uses a traditional character known as the con man, someone who captures a person’s confidence — from which we get the word “con” — in order to take advantage of that person’s gullibility. There are many variations of the con man, but in all cases the con man’s success depends on the greed of his victim; a good con man will know intuitively which approach of deception will be the most successful. For example, in “Spotted Horses,” the Texan knows that Henry Armstid is not going to allow Eck Snopes to buy a horse for a mere two dollars, especially since the Texan has already given Eck a free horse. In this particular short story, we have three types of con men: the sewing machine agent, the Texan, and Flem Snopes, and each of these con men displays his con artistry differently. The sewing machine agent is unassuming; the Texan redeems himself; and Flem is a schemer who lies adeptly. The central narrator, a mild-mannered con man with something of a conscience, is a perfect narrator because, as an itinerant sewing machine agent, he himself knows the value of a con game. Because Flem Snopes once took advantage of him, he has a grudging admiration for anyone who is sharp enough to get the best of him. As a con artist himself, he recognizes and admires Flem’s superiority, although he despises Flem’s inhumanity. The Texan is a traditional con man. He plays the game of selling horses and enjoys his triumphs, but he is not as vicious as Flem. When he sees how disturbingly calm and defeated Mrs. Armstid is about her husband’s squandering their last five dollars, he attempts to restore the money. He responds to her human needs and tries to lessen the hardships and pain caused by her rashly impractical, abusive husband. Comparing Mrs. Armstid’s treatment by the Texan and how she is treated by Flem, the narrator reveals that Flem is a third type of con man, one who is mean, vicious, and unerringly inhumane. He does not soil his hands by directly involving himself in any dirty work. Instead, he sits apart from the entire transaction. His omnipotence and omnipresence, felt constantly throughout the story, are emphasized by the narrator’s often-reiterated phrases, “That Flem” and “Them Snopes.” A key ingredient in Old Southwest humor is incongruity, or the juxtaposition of contrasting elements. For example, the narrator describes the Texas ponies in these terms: “They was colored like parrots and they was quiet as doves, and ere a one of them would kill you quick as a rattlesnake.” The first two statements conjure a lovely, quiet image of beauty and peacefulness, but this idyllic image contrasts with the third statement-that the horses would kill a person as quickly as a rattlesnake would. To describe the animals as “ponies” is, in itself, absurdly incongruous because the word “pony” evokes a benign, sweet, lovable, and tame animal, which is the opposite of these wild, vicious, and untamable beasts. Another quality of Old Southwest humor is exaggeration, which Faulkner certainly uses when he describes the horses’ wild “cattymount” behavior. For example, our first glimpse of the animals involves the sewing machine agent’s unexpected run-in with them at the beginning of the story: “Here I was this morning pretty near half way to town, with the team ambling along and me, setting in the buckboard about half asleep when all of a sudden something come surging up outen the bushes and jumped the road clean, without touching hoof to it. It flew right over my team big as a billboard and flying through the air like a hawk.” Such observations create an unbelievability, which is characteristic of the tall tale. Certainly the agent’s taking “thirty minutes to stop my team” after the horses jump over him enhances the tale’s comic quality. “Spotted Horses” was first published in Scribner’s Magazine for June 1931. Faulkner included an expanded version of the story in his novel The Hamlet (1940). This expanded version includes as its last section a courtroom scene in which Mrs. Armstid sues Flem Snopes for five dollars, and Mrs. Tull sues Eck Snopes for damages sustained by her husband. Both suits are dismissed after neither woman can prove who owns the horses. The discussion in these Notes follows the text originally published in Scribner’s, which is anthologized more often than the longer text. Two Short Stories By William Faulkner Essay. Spotted Horses and Mule in the Yard are two short stories by William Faulkner that deal with comedic animal chases. Although both provide entertaining examples of Faulkners work in very similar settings, on the scale of literary value, Spotted Horses rises above Mule in the Yard in depth and insight. This superiority is result of both its narrative style and character development, which causes Spotted Horses to produce an overall more powerful effect than Mule in the Yard.. The most notable and important difference between the two stories is the contrasting narrative style. In Spotted Horses, the story is told in first person point of view by a narrator who observes the major events of the story but is involved in only a minor fashion. His narration provides the audience with a look at the town and its inhabitants through the eyes of someone living in the county of Mississippi. This adds a realistic dimension to the image of the story. It is also through this narrative style that Faulkner weaves humor into Spotted Horses.. We will write a custom essay on Two Short Stories By William Faulkner specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page. The narrator shows the story in a comic light simply through his words right from the introductory paragraph. For example, the audience is introduced immediately with a casual Yes, sir. Flem Snopes has filled that whole country full of spotted horses. You can hear folks running them all day and night, whooping and hollering, and the horses running back and forth across those little wooden bridges ever now and then kind of like thunder. (349) In contrast, Mule in the Yard is told in the objective viewpoint. With this type of information, the reader can only observe what is seen and heard. Therefore, it follows that the reader must infer everything about the characters and their motivations from only their actions and dialogue. Faulkner weaves humor into the story through the distinct dialogue and ironic situations that occur in Mule in the Yard.. For example, in the opening scene, Mrs. Hait and old Het are chasing a mule out of their yard. If the reader imagines the scene that Faulkner writes about with old Hetwaving a shopping bag. Hoo! Mrs. Hait whirled. Again she skidded savagely on the greasy planks as she and the mule rushed parallel with one another (364), there is definitely humor within it. Yet, the humor is not as effective as it is in Spotted Horses where it is a part of the entire tone of the story, not only in the situations but also with the interior involvement of the narrator and his interaction with the characters. Because the narrator in Spotted Horses is experiencing the scene where the action is taking place, the reader receives a richer understanding of the characters. It is almost as if the reader might know the characters personally. Importantly, Spotted Horses deals with several more characters than Mule in the Yard, which only has three significant characters. These characters are defined only by their actions through the objective narration. Mrs. Hait is described as an independent woman who wears a calico wrapper and a sweater coat, and a mans felt hat which they knew had belonged to her ten years dead husband (364) and brand new high mans shoes with buttons and toes like tulip bulbs. The audience can only infer that she does not fear the mule based on her several confrontations with him as well as the way in which she refers to it as Them sons of bitches.. (364) The author can not tell the audience why she wears what she does or why she has such a motivation to get rid of the mule besides that he is a nuisance, and there is not enough development in the story to infer definitely what Faulkner intends. This is also seen in the character of old Het, who is described as a tall gangly old black woman personified by a stereotypical southern black dialect. This is seen as she addresses Mr. Snopes in town one day. She says to him, Miz Mannie gimme dis to give you, I wuz just on de way to de sto whar you stay at. (370) The audience is left very little to draw upon concerning the characters and their motivations and overall purpose in the story. As a result, the few characters in Mule in the Yard are significantly lesser personages than those that exist in Spotted Horses.. This different character development can be seen in examination of the character that the two stories have in common, I. O. Snopes. In Mule in the Yard, the objective narrator shows us I. O. Snopes by describing him as a squat, pasty man perennially tieless and with a stained, harried expression (365) who buys unruly mules from Memphis and brings them to the town where Mrs. Hait and old Het live, where they constantly get loose. While this description serves its purpose of description and a small development of I. O. Snopes, the version through the eyes of the narrator in Spotted Horses is witness to a more subtle but more realistic I. O. Snopes. In Spotted Horses, the narrator places Snopes in Varners with his back against the wall, his hair parted, in conversation with his cousin and a few other townsmen. The narrator continues the story as I. O. cackled, like a hen, slapping his legs with both hands. You boys might just as well quit trying to get ahead of Flem. He said. (361) Direct observation of I. O. Snopes reveals a broader type of character than does the one detailed in Mule in the Yard.. The development is particularly effective in Spotted Horses because there are a great many characters for a short story, and through their characteristic role in the scheme of the narrator, certain characters become individuals more than others. This is because the reader views the story through the mind of someone who presumably is familiar with the situation and personages in the story, and the characters seem to be more realizable in certain memorable actions which define them in a subtle way. One example is Henry Armstid; a domineering selfish man who has no respect or regard it seems for his wife who he constantly tells to Git on back to that wagon like I told you. (352) He becomes more than a mere name. This is also true for Mrs. Littlejohn. She begins as a small observer of the events but becomes a major stabilizer as she takes a stand against a wild horse with a washboard, cares for the injured Mr. Armstid, comforts Mrs. Armstid, and then gives Mrs. Armstid advice on how to get her money back. The narrator of Spotted Horses brings an attitude of regularness to the story because he tends to look upon these characters as regular folks, yet finds the humor as well as the tragic within them. This is more than Mule in the Yard can accomplish with its more simplistic basis. Both Spotted Horses and Mule in the Yard are very entertaining stories by William Faulkner. Despite their common theme of animal chase, setting, and character, a more powerful story is found within Spotted Horses.. While Mule in the Yard is well written and full of comedy, it does not delve as deeply as Spotted Horses does. Spotted Horses proves broader in scope due to its in depth narration style which provides particularly effective humor and development of characters. In William Faulkner's " Barn Burning" one of the main characters, the antagonist, is Abner Snopes. He is rather static. He is faced with having to provide a life for his family as a sharecropper. This simple living is the cause of all the problems that have arisen. From staying out of jail, trying to teach his youngest son, and delivering his form of justice to those he feels have wronged him. Abner Snopes is not a bad or cruel person by his standards. He is simply a person of fortune, he also knows no other way to act. Abner. In "Barn Burning," Faulkner incorporates several instances of irony. Heutilizes this literary tool in order to help the development of his charactersand to express his ultimate message to the readers. Some examples of his use ofirony are the unintentional yet inevitable ending of the Snopes family timeafter time, the similarities and differences between Sarty Snopes and hisfather, and finally, the two distinct purposes for which Abner Snopes uses fire. Separately, each is able to contribute to the development of the two maincharacters in the short story. Collectively, they are also able to help Faulknerconvey his personal message that essentially, an. Reader Response Criticism: William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” “A Rose for Emily” was written in first person point of view. The narrator is never given a name, but it is apparent to the reader that the narrator is one of the townspeople. This is evident in the opening of the story when the narrator exposits that, “our whole town went to her funeral” (Faulkner, “Rose” 90). This story tells the tale of Miss Emily Grierson in psychological order, beginning with her funeral (as a flashback) and ending with the gruesome discovery of her lover’s remains in her bed (in. The story A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner in my opinion was a very interesting story. The story was about a old and troubled woman named Emily Grierson who because of her father's death had become one of the towns obligation's and also one of it's problems. Emily a very stubborn old lady who refused to pay her taxes because of a little tale that Colonel Sartoris who was the mayor at the time had told her. He told her that her father had lent the town some money and because of it in a way of paying her. William Trevor's short stories explore several themes; faded love, hopeless marriage, as well as alienation and loneliness. By focusing on two of these short stories, The Distant Past, and In Isfahan, these themes that usually set a mood of melancholy will be compared and contrasted within the coursework. It will be shown that the above themes are constantly lurking on the fringes of both these stories. Although, the context or setting for Trevor's stories differ as well as the characters, the ordinariness and often bleak or peculiar attributes are all combined to bring these themes to life. Finally, the essay. By avoiding the chronological order of events of Miss Emily"s life, Faulkner first gives the reader a finished puzzle, and then allows the reader to examine this puzzle piece by piece, step by step. By doing so, he enhances the plot and presents two different perspectives of time held by the characters. The first perspective the world of the present views time as a mechanical progression in which the past is a diminishing road. The second perspective the world of tradition and the past views the past as a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them. Biography on William Faulkner William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897 and then moved to Oxford, Mississippi with his family at the age of 5. Most of the novels written by William Faulkner take place in the area in which he himself was born and raised. He renames Oxford and calls this place Jefferson, Mississippi. Faulkner is a contemporary American author who has achieved greatness as an author. He is already considered to be one of the worlds greatest novelists and has been awarded with the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949. This is quite. Essay (Practice) By comparing the ending of Alice Walker’s story “The Flowers” with that of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, there have been some similarities in the stories. Such as for the main character of both stories had personally faced a dead body. For Myop in “The Flowers”, she innocently stumbles onto the remains of a man who had clearly been killed in a lynching. She discovers the body when she saw the man cracked or broken large white teeth in the woods. For Emily in “A rose for Emily” she had one love, Homer Barron, whom the town. In the short story A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner tells the sad story of a woman who has had an extremely sheltered life. It is a tragic story in which Miss Emily"s hopes and dreams for a normal life are hopelessly lost. William Faulkner was simply writing a sad story that can be related to anyone who has had hopes and aspirations, but has conflict within themselves and with others and who is unable to fulfill any of them. Miss Emily is kept at home by her father and is almost hidden from the world. It is not said. StoryHawthorne to Faulkner: The Evolution of the Short StoryNathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner's short stories "Young Goodman Brown" and "A Rose for Emily" use a moral to endorse particular ideals or values. Through their characters examination and evaluation of one another, the author's lesson is brought forth. The authors' style of preaching morals is reminiscent of the fables of Aesop and the religious parables of the Old and New Testament. The reader is faced with a life lesson after reading Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown:" you cannot judge other people. A similar moral is presented in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily.".