Soldiers’ Pay (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: William Faulkner
- First Published: 1926
- Type of Plot: Impressionistic realism
- Time of Work: April and May, 1919
- Setting: Charlestown, Georgia
- Principal Characters: Donald Mahon, Julian Lowe, Joe Gilligan, Margaret Powers, Joseph Mahon, Januarius Jones, Cecily Saunders, George Farr, Emmy
- Genres: Long fiction, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: Memory, Marriage, 1910’s, Georgia, Death or dying, World War I, Soldiers, Wounds or injuries
- Locales: Charlestown, GA
The Novel
A work of literary modernism influenced by T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), William Faulkner’s first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, brings “the lost generation” to Faulkner’s native ground. In describing the impact upon a small Southern town of the return and slow death of an aviator horribly wounded in World War I, the novel re-creates the mood of disillusionment, deflation, and spiritual malaise which was prevalent in postwar American society and art. Eliotic despair is substantially countered, however, by Faulkner’s insistence, often in rich,...
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