William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and the Human Heart in Conflict Wiith Itself
Up until the creation of the atomic bomb, worldly devastation was solely the domain of either nature or God, depending upon one’s theology; following Hiroshima, it was obvious that the survival of the species was dependent upon something even more precarious than either: mankind. As such, the literature that sprang forth after World War II reflected the now everyday, perhaps even mundane, concern that at any moment everything could disappear in a mushroom cloud.
Faulkner’s call for great writing to reflect the human heart in conflict with itself was modernism’s last great cry for tragedy in human lives before giving way to the postmodern condition which has effectivelyt abandoned the very concept of tragedy, and both his “Barn Burning” and John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums are concerned with small events in the lives of ordinary people that are tinged with tragedy.
Neither Barn Burning nor The Chrysanthemums bear much relation to the stories most often associated with tragedy, such as the plays of Sophocles or Shakespeare, but that was part of the movement of modernism; to show that ordinary lives contain the significance of the lives of royalty. And while neither story seems to carry the weight that the aforementioned plays do, when broken down they really aren’t that much different.
After all, isn’t Oedipus really just the story of a human heart in conflict with itself? And while Barn Burning may appear to be nothing more than the story of white trash, is it not really the story of a young man coming to terms not only with conflicted feelings within his heart, but with the power of history and the exorable march of generations?
When Faulkner writes of Sarty: “Then he was moving, running, outside the house, toward the stable: this the old habit, the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which had run for so long” (227), he is describing both the conflict within Sarty and the overwhelming burden of generational resistance to change against which Sarty fights. Faulkner’s stories are rarely self-contained; they almost always fit within the larger historical panaroma of his fictional Mississippi County.
If written by a lesser writer, especially in contemporary times, it would be so very easy for these stories to be examples of what Faulkner spoke out against. It would be so easy for Sarty’s struggle to be a struggle against the oppression of the South, or else against a domineering, abusive father. In other words, this story could be nothing more than struggle to survive in an unfair world. But by placing this small story within the context of Sarty’s history and that history within the history of the United States, and so on, Faulkner succeeds in making the conflict that takes place within Sarty’s heart both personal and universal.
And it is the ability to translate the personal to the universal that creates tragedy. In the end, Starty makes a decision break free from domination, from family, from obligations not of his own choosing, and there is true tragedy in the final images of the story, those of a cold little boy walking stiffly into the dawn of a new day, refusing to look back (230). In the end, this isn’t a story of a little boy surviving the escape of a brutal father, it is deeper and more profound; it is a story of a little boy making the right decision in the battleground of his heart.
The heart is a lonely hunter, according to Carson McCullers, and while Sarty is alone with his heart, Elisa is lonely with her heart in Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums. While there doesn’t appear to be anything concretely wrong with Elisa’s marriage, it is clear she is unhappy and desires escape. While Sarty’s conflict is more tinged with the influence of outside forces, the conflict within Elisa’s heart is probably more universal. The grass isn’t always greener, nor are the chrysanthemums always more yellow. In the beginning, when Steinbeck writes “Elisa took off her gloves and stuffed them in the apron pocket with the scissors” the modern reader may wonder if this will be just a story about survival; survival of attempted rape.
It is about a rape, in a way, but a rape of spirit. By the end of the story, as Elisa notices the flowers carelessly thrown onto the road, the conflict she felt within her heart between running away and continuing with her unfulfilled life at home is rended negligable. For a woman of her time, in her class, neither option allows for much happiness or fulfillment. When Elisa says, “It will be enough if we can have wine. It will be plenty,” (296) and then begins sobbing, it isn’t the cry of a woman who has settled the conflict to her disadvantage. It is the cry of a woman who knows that the conflict is beyond her power to settle and who has turned over the reins of her future to destiny, and what could be more tragic than that, or more worth writing about.
Both the stories of Sarty and Elisa fulfill Faulkner’s singular requirement for subjects worthy of great literature. Both Sarty and Elisa are characters whose hearts are in conflict with the themselves. Sarty battles his interior demons while also battling the onslaught of history, while Elisa confronts the horrific realization that battle is unwinnable and is faced by millions of people every day. Postmodernism has attempted to turn everything into a comedy, and while tragedy is rare in literature today, it is sadly being played out countless times a day by people exactly like Sarty and Elisa.
