Soldier's Pay

This was my first time reading Faulkner and at first I was pretty intrigued and excited to see how the story progressed. Unfortunately, as the page numbers grew, my interest waned. I kept feeling like I was missing something, and that I should go back and reread chapters to understand what was going on. Teresha mentioned Kate Chopin’s novel, At Fault. Soldier’s Pay was certainly not the painful read that Chopin’s novel turned out to be, but it did stir in me the same feelings-- like, when will this be over? mainly. There were times the descriptions Faulkner used were so vivid and beautiful, and I even wrote some lines down. He did repeat himself a few times as when describing women’s mouths as scars, and he seemed to favor saying that someone’s eyes darkened when that were angry -- which I liked.

Character-wise, I was kind of wanting more of a clearer picture of Donald before the war. I know there were details given, but I felt that there was something missing that made it less sad or tragic than it should have been. The most sad character, to me, was Emmy. She got the short end of the stick in so many ways. She loved Donald so much, he had sex with her and then forgot her, even still, she cared for him when the woman he was to marry hardly visited, and Emmy’s hesitance/silence when asked if she would marry Donald ended up being so sadly decisive. Emmy was so different than Cecily, and Cecily, as reckless and unsure of everything as she was, ended up, pretty much, getting what she wanted. I did not dislike her character, but she was hard to understand. She was young, and Faulkner did a really good job of capturing her confusion about the predicament she was in, and how she handled it was, I thought, very immature but honest, nonetheless.

George Farr was my favorite of all of the characters. I really liked the chapter where he was drunk out in public at a drugstore and got a call from Cecily and immediately tried to sober up by drinking water. I liked him a lot-- he was so devoted even when he should not have been and even when he knew better. I was glad he ended up with Cecily, even though she was flaky.

Januarius Jones’ character was one that I kept asking myself why was even included in the book. I did not and still do not really understand the significance of him in Soldier’s Pay. He was annoying and reminded me of the character Ignatius from John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. Not just because he was fat, but because he was so arrogant and there did not seem to be a real reason for him to be so.

This book, overall, was not the best. It started out with so much promise (to me) but ended up fizzling out by the middle. There were beautiful descriptors but overall I stopped caring about most of the characters and, really, what happened at all.

Many of us may be familiar with the term “looking glass self”. By definition it refers to the way a person see’s himself through others perceptions in society and in turn gains identity. We imagine how we appear to others, we imagine the judgment of that appearance, and we develop ourselves through the judgments of others. Faulkner however, spins this; he formulates his identity using this process, yet is focused on how he thinks others should judge him, not how they actually do.

In many ways this is applies to Solders’ Pay. Faulkner’s first novel mirrors his own life and the book plays the role of the other, allowing Faulkner to gain identity: whether intentional or not, whether recognized or not. This novel is young, as are the characters, and in relation to the external circumstances particularly those descending from the war, in a sense it is small and naive. It was not accepted and received substantial criticism. The book itself mirrors Faulkner’s experience enlisting into the war. He was criticized as well; he did not fit the standards because of his height. He came home in a well-crafted façade, a injured soldier; that was the way in which he wished to be perceived by society; even more so, as a war hero. This character he becomes reappears in his first novel as Lieutenant Donald Mahon. He is our means of transportation throughout the context of Soldiers’ Pay. Donald is actually an injured vet, something Faulkner obviously wanted to be. Within this character, Faulkner’s fabricated looking glass self is deeply rooted. In other words, the way he wanted society to view him is projected in his own life as well as through this character. Other instances in which Faulkner’s life is visible appear by means of Margaret Powers. She resembles Faulkner’s fiancée Estelle, both unfaithful, though circumstantially; they rely heavily on their explanations for breaking off their engagements. There is a theme in the novel that gives insight into Faulkner’s personality: silence. We have the soldier, who can barely communicate; his experience in the war is quieted because of this. Similarly, the culture at this time is unaware of the circumstances of war. The people at home have no clue of the trauma these soldiers endured, and a majority of the survivors who are able to speak of their experience are unable to do so; mostly because of posttraumatic stress or injury—something along those lines. Thus, it remains rather quieted, silenced, a secret, blank as the world is to a blind man. Faulkner also, silenced his true experience and kept that from people by forging a new identity after the war. These examples of silence all contribute to the irony that arises given that silence is set inside the novel’s dizzying and elongated dialogue. However, if we pay close attention to the discourse it is evident that the silence I am speaking of is of emotional. The true feelings harbored in these characters are suppressed yet are inevitably exposed unintentionally. Particularly by focusing on what isn’t spoken.

Women in the War

The three major female characters in William Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay are extremely significant. In fact, one could make the case that the novel revolves around these women and their relationships and interactions with the men in the book and not the other way around. The women, Cecily Saunders, Margret Powers, and Emmy, though all females, are each unique in both her character and role in the novel. They each play distinct parts in the life of Donald Mahon, and they also each represent different things. Despite their differences, I found myself disliking all three of the women in the novel.

Margret Powers in the first women we are introduced to in Soldier’s Pay and the one with the largest impact on the reader. She is a smart, independent, aloof woman who engenders affection in almost every man she encounters. Julian Lowe immediately became infatuated with her, Joe Gilligan developed a deep love for her, and Donald Mahon, though he never really knew her, ends up marrying her. Mrs. Powers, though, is a mysterious and distant character. I got the feeling that I never knew exactly what her thoughts, feelings, or motives are. I could never decide if she intended all along to marry Mahon—if she loved him—or if she was simply being a kind and generous soul. Mrs. Powers is even mysterious in appearance. Faulkner constantly describes her as “black,” but he never calls her “negro,” so the reader cannot tell of Mrs. Powers is African-American of just black in ambiance. What Mrs. Powers represents is an ideal. She is the perfect post-war woman, so to speak. She marries Mahon and takes care of him, and is with him even as he dies.

Cecily Saunders is perhaps the second most important female character in Solider Pay. She is the young society girl Donald Mahon was engaged to before the war. Cecily, like Mrs. Powers, attracts the affection of many of the men she meets. She is a young, flirtatious women who believed she had not attachments, only to be shocked at the return of her war-scarred fiancé. Cecily is, in my opinion, a brat. She is manipulative and selfish, toying with Jones’ and George Farr’s emotions simply because she can. I do not like her at all. She is flaky and young, caught up in herself. Cecily is the woman who, after seeing Donald Mahon’s war-scarred visage, faints and refuses to see him again. Mahon, who was her fiancé and is seemingly back from the dead, is too upsetting to her delicate sensibilities that she cannot even bare to look at him. Cecily Saunders, to me, represents the woman before the war; she is the girl who thought she would marry a war hero or be the girlfriend of a dead soldier, able to cry at her loss but free to be young while she could. Because of this, Cecily did not know how to act when her fiancé returned. She is a post-war woman.

The third and final female character in Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay, is Emmy. Emmy is the quiet, uneducated, simple maid who lives with Dr. Mahon. She does not say much, but she is strong and independent. Emmy, we find out as the novel progresses, was in love with Donald Mahon before the war. They had been intimate, and she had imagined a happy life with him. Mahon, it seemed, also cared for Emmy, at least before he went to war. When he returned, he did not even remember Emmy, let alone the times they had had. Emmy is the least offensive of the three women. I felt sorry for her. She was kind and simple, and she did not deserve the life she had. Nevertheless, Emmy never spoke up about how she felt. She kept her feelings hidden under her strong façade. Emmy represents the non-war woman. She is the girl Mahon should have been with had there never been a war; she was the one Donald actually loved and the one who loved Donald. If there had been no war, everything would have worked out in the end.

Faulkner's First

Faulkner’s first novel, Soldier’s Pay cleared the air for him, as most first novels do for aspiring writers. His love affair with exploring the narrow minds of small town folk, echo in this novel, no doubt Faulkner drew upon his own experience for the text, even though he wrote Soldier’s Pay in New Orleans. Although deemed a failure by the critics, I do no think that Soldier’s Pay was a waste of Faulkner’s time. Unlike Kate Chopin’s first novel At Fault, which in my opinion is a 150 page soap opera that could’ve been a cute short story, Faulkner’s first effort has more prominent building blocks; for example, the theme that Mahon is forever an outsider once he comes back home from the first World War. His physical and mental condition unable him to return to the life he knew. No one understands him, except Margret Powers.

French Symbolism as Both Inspiration and Downfall in Soldier's Pay

In reading Soldier’s Pay, I felt both moved and continually underwhelmed. Having read A Light in August and The Sound and the Fury, I know how incredible Faulkner’s writing can be, and Soldier’s Pay fell considerably short of these standards at times. As his first novel, this is quite understandable, and I do not hold Faulkner in any lesser regard: indeed, one of the things I find most fascinating about him is how appreciable the evolution of his craft is. Many authors seem to be regarded as born “geniuses” by critics and scholars, who find in every word of such masters evidence of an innate brilliance. Faulkner, on the other hand, actually began as a rather mediocre writer, and grew into a “capital-A” Author, in every sense of the word.

Our in-class discussion of Faulkner’s early attempts at poetry and his passion for the French Symbolists poets in particular provided a useful lens through which to view the first novel of Faulkner. In response to the stricture of classical French poetry, poets such as Rimbaud and Mallarme turned towards emotion and intuition to create their (sometimes illogical) conceits. Faulkner’s use of imagery, particularly in relation to the characters of the novel, follows the techniques of these poets quite conscientiously. His first description of Margaret Powers, for example, is actually quite striking: “She was dark…remarking her pallid distinction, her black hair, the red scar of her mouth, her slim dark dress.” These traits vividly and definitively acquaint us with the character of Margaret Powers, and as the novel progresses, she grows into her physical characteristics more and more. However, after the approximately fiftieth time her mouth is described as a “scar,” Margaret starts to become less and less real to us, and more like the figure of a portrait, forever trapped in her darkness, her black hair, and that red scar of a mouth. What first provided us with such a clear sense of who she was, where we were, and the atmosphere unfolding all around, begins to stand in the way of our understanding of Margaret as a character. The same is true for the “yellow, goat-eyed” Jones, the “big black rock” of a rector, and, of course, the forever fragile, bird-like Cecily. We know that these unique physical traits are supposed to act like a compass of the interior terrain of these characters, but instead they end up acting like roadblocks. What first makes them so exceptional only serves to trap the characters into a cardboard sameness by the end of the novel. I felt as if no time passed between first meeting Margaret on the train to Georgia, and seeing her leave on the train at the end.

However, Faulkner’s imaginativeness in first deriving these descriptions is very lovely, and no doubt these characters will remain imprinted rather deeply on my memory for quite some time. I see the seeds here of what would make him so great in his coming novels: his sense of place and atmosphere, both the regrettable and the heroic facets of human nature, and his knowledge of the past and its ever-presence.

Soldier's pay and a reader's pain.

Soldier’s pay is a fine example of a young, struggling author finding his voice, a distinct voice that eventually transformed Faulkner into a world-renowned writer. However, I was disillusioned with the poor quality of Soldier’s pay. Although we get hints of Faulknerian prose and his stream of consciousness style that he employed more liberally as he matured, Soldier’s Pay is difficult to digest. If it happens to be a reader’s first Faulkner novel, chances are that he will not be delighted, or willing to read anything else by Faulkner. In my case, this is my third Faulkner novel, and despite not enjoying Soldier’s Pay, I learned to appreciate Faulkner’s development. As readers, we forget that immortal writers were once amateurish, and sometimes awful. It was refreshing to find Faulkner in Soldier’s Pay as a helpless, young novelist trying to make sense and find purpose. Soldier’s pay is too much of a melodramatic novel highlighted by long, poetic discharges. Even though poetry was highly influential for Faulkner, he was rather poor at it but still insisted on applying it to Soldier’s Pay and for most of his early years.

 

The novel was definitely his craft. Ambition aside, Faulkner must have had no idea that someday he would be one of the greats. And fortunately, Faulkner certainly learned from his mistakes. Much like the poetry we read in class, the preface to the novel appears to be apologetic as to what we are about to read. The more I learn of Faulkner as a person, the more I enjoy him as a writer because I do not like what he represents as a person. Faulkner was essentially a spoiled bum in his youth that romanticized and fetishized war, soldiers, and the military in general. Despite no personal spoils of war other than the influence of the First World War, Faulkner made it a personal mission to role-play as a soldier. This is something I consider pathetic, and as morbid as his prose.

Once you become familiar with Faulkner, to admire him is to revere someone who behaved like a buffoon as a young adult. It is something to be a poor writer at first, but to also be a ridiculous character is stupefying. With Soldier’s pay, I feel that Faulkner is enamored by post-war tragedies. The man yearned for the battles he never got to experience. Instead, he opted to daydream and play dress-up, and the closest he got to being a soldier was to escape into his prose and remain in that haze for a period of time, Soldier’s Pay being a tragic product of that alter-ego.

Although this somehow falls under realism, it resembles the sensationalism of soap opera’s.  Soldier’s Pay would have found much more success with sinister war propaganda or tabloids for the forsaken wives of soldier’s who came home as different men, much like Donald Mahon (physically and emotionally), or arrived in a coffin. Cecily’s character is too hysterical to take seriously, and Donald was dead before he passed on. Much of the potential character development is lost in a awkward mix of flowery and dark prose. It is better to remember Faulkner for other novels, but I suppose all the greats had to start with a bad novel to develop talents that are definitely present in even the worst of works, but not quite tapped into.

Soldiers' Pay

One character I did not mention in my presentation (or, at least, that I do not plan on mentioning) is Julian Lowe. Lowe is an interesting character because he is introduced in the first sentence of the novel. Characters seem to be introduced in Soldiers’ Pay in a fairly linear fashion: Lowe leads us to Gilligan who leads us to Mahon who leads us to Powers, etc. In this sense, Lowe is merely one character in a long line of other characters, all affected by or contributing to the post-war atmosphere of the novel. However, Lowe is the one to start the chain and does continue to correspond with Mrs. Powers throughout the novel; therefore, he is very worthy of discussion.
My first impression of Lowe was that he would be the main focus of the novel and that he would make a good main character. Not only did he seem fairly level-headed compared to the other (drunk) soldiers on the train, he also possessed the conflict of having not achieved a higher rank while in the military: “They had stopped the war on him,” as Faulkner writes.
In light of the novel as a whole, it is clear that Lowe’s conflict at the beginning of the novel is mere pettiness and selfishness. It becomes obvious that though Lowe is a seasoned soldier in terms of battle experience, in truth he is nothing but a boy. Even his affection for Mrs. Powers is presented as something un-serious, as he is constantly running around with other girls while writing her love letters. And, after reading the whole novel, I revised my perception of his “level-headedness” at the beginning. I decided he was actually just naïve.
The reader comes to know Joe Gilligan as the more admirable character in the novel. In fact, according to Cleath Brooks, Gilligan represents a neutral territory between the conflicting elements of the post-war world: the previously uninhibited nature of Mahon versus the more calculating characters such as Jones. It is Gilligan who represents level ground. Like many other men, he is displaced by the war. He is a flawed character, certainly, but it is his role to bring the novel down to earth. He is not an outsider only in the abstract, post-war sense, but also in the literal sense of not being from Mahon’s hometown. Therefore, he is a character to whom the reader, also a stranger to this locale, can relate.
But, as I said, at the beginning of the novel Gilligan comes across as nothing more than a lowdown drunkard. Of course, now I realize that he is drunk because he understands a reality that the selfish, delusional, and young Julian Lowe cannot comprehend.
Gilligan to his fellow ex-soldiers: “Men, [the conductor] don’t want us here. And this is the reward we get for giving our flesh and blood to our country’s needs.”
Gilligan is aware of a soldier’s fate and role in the post-war society. Hence, the public display of inebriation. The scene in which he coaxes Lowe to drink from the same bottle of liquor as he does really seems to show the difference between the two. Lowe cannot stomach the strong, burning liquid. Gilligan says to him: “Why sure you can. Listen: think of flowers. Think of your poor gray-haired mother hanging on the front gate and sobbing her gray-haired heart out. Listen, think of having to go to work again when you get home.”
Clearly it is Gilligan who is the wiser. It may seem a stretch, or an exaggeration, but the liquor seemed like a metaphor for the post-war life. Lowe could not handle the reality of such a life. His “outraged stomach heaved at its muscular moorings like a captive balloon.” Instead of fully comprehending the tragedy, he is bemoaning the fact that he was not lucky enough to die a “hero,” or to end up like Donald Mahon, a living dead man, a complete devastation of life.