The characters below, with maybe one exception, appear on the test in either an ID the speaker or an ID the situation question.
Moseley
MacGowan
Anse
Vardamon
Darl
Cash
Cora
Tull
Dewey Dell
Jewel
Addie
Whitfield
Know the characters well enough to recognize their words and their way of speaking.
You know I won’t ask you something obscure. Every passage on the test is distinctly connectable to the chosen character.
Review the words and actions that are typical of these characters.
If you’ve read carefully, you know the sort of person Anse is and the sort of things he says.
Anse is Anse. How do we know him? (Epistemological question.) We’ve got
- What he says about himself
- What others say about him—Peabody, Tull
Nobody but Darl speaks in lyrical language.
Jewel barely speaks at all; we know him through his actions. Re-read his chapter. What seems to be his attitude towards the other characters?
Same with Cash. Man of action. Thoughts are expressed concisely.
Moseley and MacGowan are easy if you don’t get them mixed up.
Read Addie’s chapter again. Pay particular attention to what she says about words.
Read Whitfield’s chapter again.
If you read the book and paid attention at all, you should be okay with DD, Cash, and Darl. Vardaman might be more of a challenge. His narration is impressionistic. Watch it as the story progresses and think about whether his thinking seems to deteriorate.
1. What, beside the stream-of-consciousness style, is particularly unusual about Darl’s reflections?
2. How does Tull characterize Cora? Cite two passages (specific examples) to support your answer.
3. What conclusion might we draw about Cash based on pp 82-83?
4. List at least three adjectives to describe Anse’s character, citing other characters’ remarks as examples.
POV Multiple perspectives; flashback
Interior monologue; unreliable narrator
Sacrifices authorial omniscience; retains sophisticated dialogue > poetry beyond vocabulary of the characters, but adds depth and scope to our understanding of them and the way they interact with each other
Themes: isolation, duty, honor, sibling rivalry, heroism
Irony
Faulkner: A writer will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. . . . If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies. (Lion in the Garden, 1968)