Saying Yes to Death: Mortality in William Faulkner's Fiction

This thesis examines representations of mortality in selected works by William Faulkner (1897-1962). It builds upon the scholarship of Robert W. Hamblin (1980), who indicates that the act of writing and storytelling was Faulkner’s authorial method of ‘saying No to death.’ Faulkner’s ambivalence towards death, Hamblin notes, began during his adolescence, and ‘it was not merely death which Faulkner feared, but death as obliteration.’ This thesis extends and challenges Hamblin’s argument, exploring how Faulkner’s characters respond to the trauma and ambivalence which death creates. Indeed, in certain instances, as the thesis will show, Faulkner’s characters are driven towards accepting and ‘saying Yes to death.’