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.