Faulkner & Flannery Notes – Week 3
Spring 2014 Books & Film Class Topic – Faulkner & Flannery: Exploring the Southern Gothic Held Wednesdays through February 26 at UL Lafayette Instructor: Dr. Mary Ann Wilson Notes will be updated each Friday through February 28; comment to join in the discussion. We moved on to the Faulkner portion in this week's class, with discussion on three of his short stories and a viewing of two films based on them. The stories included his most famous, "A Rose for Emily," "Barn Burning" and "That Evening Sun." Part of the reason I'm taking this class is to expand my reading and understanding of Faulkner. His short stories — and especially these three — are the perfect place to start. "A Rose For Emily" is probably the best for showing how O'Connor was influenced by Faulkner. Southern Gothic and macabre to the max, it reads like a classic horror movie. In fact, there is a short film version of the story from 1983, starring Angelica Huston. The earliest of Faulkner's stories and the first to be published in a national magazine, "A Rose for Emily" has all of his typical themes: the relationship between parents and children, class divisions and a timeframe based on perception rather than
