Silence and sympathy: Race in the early short fiction of William Faulkner

Much critical debate has surrounded William Faulkner's treatment of race relations in the South; indeed, it is difficult to believe that a white Southern male could transcend the psychosocial realities that led to racial divisions in the post-Civil War South. However, Faulkner, as the "well-endowed" Aristotelian poet, was able to involve himself in the emotions he sought to imitate, and thus was able to transcend racial issues in the compact fictive space he established. Intent upon mastering the intricacies of the short story, Faulkner, the self-admitted "failed poet," utilizes this genre to construct a subtle yet powerful critique of hypocritical racial divisions common in the postbellum South. The silences and subversive sympathies that abound in such short stories as "Dry September" and "That Evening Sun" are caught up within the confines of this fictive space, provoking the reader to resolve the discrepancies that purposefully exist.