摘 要

威廉·福克纳是美国文学史上最有代表性的人物之一。他的作品思想丰富、深邃，存在主义思想是其中的特征之一，他也与存在主义的代表人物萨特时有来往，他们的思想相互影响。福克纳的小说《寓言》获得了美国国家图书奖和普利策奖。故事背景设立在第一次世界大战，一名下士领导了一场暴动，拒绝进攻敌方，引起了短暂的休战。但这威胁到了通过战争来谋权的领导者，于是盟军统帅下令处决了该下士，也就是他的私生子。战争双方的领导者相互勾结，重启战争。国内已有学者研究该小说，但是尚无人从存在主义的角度分析它。本文通过分析《寓言》中的两个主人公——盟军统帅及其儿子，探究了小说的存在主义主题：世界和战争的荒谬，人与人之间以及人与社会之间的异化，人的自由选择。本文分为五个部分：第一部分介绍福克纳及其作品、存在主义的主要观点；第二、三、四部分利用存在主义的荒谬、异化和自由观点来分析小说的主人公；第五部分总结全文，并指出其局限性。经过细致、深入的分析，本文得出如下结论：统帅和下士的家庭背景和经历都是荒谬的；他们与他人的关系是异化的，统帅通过战争来控制他人，而下士不断追寻着自我认同，竭力避免异化；统帅在追求自由时做出了一些不负责任的选择，并罔顾他人的自由，而下士选择用一生来复仇，最终选择牺牲来为自己理想中的和平事业负责。

关键词：《寓言》；存在主义；荒谬；异化；自由

Abstract

William Faulkner is a chief representative of American literature. His works are teeming with profound thoughts, with existentialism as one of the features. He keeps frequent contact with Sartre, the leading figure of existentialism, which helps them affect each other’s thoughts. Faulkner won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize by virtue of A Fable. It narrates that during World War I a Corporal leads a mutiny which results in a temporary ceasefire. But the mutiny threatens the leaders who try to gain power through the war; so the Generalissimo, the supreme leader, has the Corporal, his illegitimate son, executed. The leaders of both sides collaborate to restart the war. Some scholars in China have already studied this novel, but not from the existentialist perspective. Through analyzing the Generalissimo and the Corporal, the two protagonists in A Fable, this paper explores its existentialist theme: the absurdity of the world and the war, the alienation among people and between people and society, and people’s freedom of choice. It consists of five parts: the first part introduces Faulkner and his works, and main ideas of existentialism; the second to the fourth parts analyze the protagonists by means of the existentialist concepts of absurdity, alienation and freedom; the fifth part summarizes the paper and points out its limitations. Through the detailed and deep analysis, the paper draws the following conclusion: the family backgrounds and experiences of the Generalissimo and the Corporal are absurd; their relations with others are alienated, and the Generalissimo tries to control others through the war, while the Corporal has been seeking self-identity and trying to escape alienation; the Generalissimo has made some irresponsible choices and ignored others’ freedom while pursuing his own freedom, while the Corporal chooses to spend his life seeking revenge and finally chooses to die for his ideal cause of peace.

Key Words：A Fable; existentialism; absurdity; alienation; freedom

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 William Faulkner and his works 1

1.2 Literature review 2

1.3 Existentialism 3

2 Absurdity in A Fable 5

2.1 The mighty Generalissimo in the absurd world 5

2.1.1 Meaningless background and contingent experiences 5

2.1.2 Two people’s contingent meeting 6

2.2 The Christ-like Corporal in the absurd world 6

2.2.1 Contingent birth and meaningless life 7

2.2.2 Meaningless cause of peace in the absurd war 7

3 Alienation in A Fable 9

3.1 The alienated Generalissimo in others’ “look” 9

3.1.1 Objectification by “glory” 9

3.1.2 Alienation from others 10

3.2 The alienated Corporal in others’ “look” 11

3.2.1 Pursuit of recognition 11

3.2.2 Refusal of self-alienation 11

4 Freedom in A Fable 13

4.1 The Generalissimo’s irresponsible choices 13

4.1.1 Absent paternity 13

4.1.2 Surreptitious collaboration 14

4.2 The Corporal’s pursuit of freedom 15

4.2.1 Relentless vengeance 15

4.2.2 Rejection of living 16

5 Conclusion 18

5.1 Summary 18

5.2 Limitations and further study 19

References 20

Acknowledgements 22

An Existentialist Approach to William Faulkner’s A Fable

1. Introduction
   1. William Faulkner and his works

William Faulkner, an American novelist, is a leading literary artist of the 20^th century.

William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in 1897. He was the first of four sons of Murry and Maud Butler Falkner and the great-grandson of a near-legendary figure William Clark Falkner known as the “Old Colonel”. His original name was William Cuthbert Falkner, and he added the “u” to the family name later. In 1918, he tried to enlist as a pilot in the U.S. Army but was turned down because of his short stature. He went to Canada, where he pretended to be an Englishman and joined the RAF training program there. But the war ended before he completed the training.

Later he returned to Oxford and published at his own expense his first collection of poetry, The Marble Faun, in 1924. His first novel, Soldier’s Pay, was published in 1926. And since then he had published many novels and short stories among which the famous works included The Sound and Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and Go Down, Moses (1942). He creates an imaginary world, Yoknapatawpha, which exhibits almost all aspects in the southern American society, including its customs, rituals and people of all kinds except the Native Americans (Bleikasten, 2017). He seeks out the honor and courage of people balked by circumstance and the sum of his writings testifies to his faith that these virtues will prevail through the corruption of modern life (吴定柏, 2014). His bold experiments in the dislocation of narrative time and his use of stream-of-consciousness techniques place him in the forefront of the avant-garde; his verbal innovations and the labyrinthine organization of his novels make him difficult to read and understand, but his popularity continues to grow, and today he is considered by many to be the greatest writer of fiction that the United States has yet produced (吴伟仁, 2013). He was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.

William Faulkner died of a heart attack in 1962, in Oxford, Mississippi.