Choose one of the following topics:
FAULKNER
1. In his 1950 Nobel Prize Acceptance speech, Faulkner writes that the writer’s duty is to write about “the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths…love and …courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice.” Which of these qualities are prevalent in Ab Snopes and Miss Emily.
2. How do the characters in “A Rose for Emily” or “Barn Burning” relate to Faulkner’s prevalent theme: “what a human being can endure, what he can dare, and what he can accomplish” (Brooks 165)?
3. Choose one story and discuss its exemplification of one of the following themes: the toll on the human spirit of the modern world (world of the 1930s Depression era, racism, social/class inequality), the decline of the Old South, individualism, or the South?