Parable thinking in W. Faulner's novel "A fable"

His approach also weds him to seeing Faulkner as always shifting between leftist and conservative viewpoints - meditating on class warfare and glimpsing the specter of revolution but also sharing in the “dominant-class anxiety” over social upheaval and the subsequent longing to re-impose order. As a result Atkinson seems reluctant, or unable, to consider a more overtly radical Faulkner who escapes his own class position. Atkinson maintains that Faulkner's work “displays chronic anxiety over dissident impulses that could produce civil unrest and, in turn, fundamental changes in the existing order” and that Faulkner uses art to enact “a process not unlike, but not simply reflective of, the monumental political effort to bring some semblance of order to a volatile mix of competing interests”. One is left suspecting that there might also be textual moments that resist this desire for order at any cost, but Atkinson doesn't acknowledge any.

Although Atkinson's subject is certainly vast, and his need to focus on a few of Faulkner's works is inevitable, one is also left wondering if some omissions such as Pylon, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, and the figure of Wash Jones both in the short story Wash Jones and Absalom, Absalom! might reveal not just a political Faulkner, but a Faulkner who did not always value order, especially if it came at the expense of class struggle and social justice.

PART II. FEATURES OF A PARABLE

2.1 Parables as a genre

A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human characters. It is a type of analogy.

Some scholars of the New Testament apply the term “parable” only to the parables of Jesus, though that is not a common restriction of the term. Parables such as “The Prodigal Son” are central to Jesus' teaching method in both the canonical narratives and the apocrypha. The word “parable” comes from the Greek "ðáñáâïëÞ" (parabolç), the name given by Greek rhetoricians to any fictive illustration in the form of a brief narrative. Later it came to mean a fictitious narrative, generally referring to something that might naturally occur, by which spiritual and moral matters might be conveyed.

A parable is a short tale that illustrates universal truth, one of the simplest of narratives. It sketches a setting, describes an action, and shows the results. It often involves a character facing a moral dilemma, or making a questionable decision and then suffering the consequences. As with a fable, a parable generally relates a single, simple, consistent action, without extraneous detail or distracting circumstances. Examples of parables are Ignacy Krasicki's Son and Father, The Farmer, Litigants and The Drunkard, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Spire and others [43].

Many folktales could be viewed as extended parables and many fairy tales also, except for their magical settings. The prototypical parable differs from the apologue in that it is a realistic story that seems inherently probable and takes place in a familiar setting of life.

A parable is like a metaphor that has been extended to form a brief, coherent fiction. Christian parables have recently been studied as extended metaphors, for example by a writer who finds that “parables are stories about ordinary men and women who find in the midst of their everyday lives surprising things happening. They are not about `giants of the faith' who have religious visions”. Needless to say, “extended metaphor” alone is not in itself a sufficient description of parable; the characteristics of an “extended metaphor” are shared by the fable and are the essential core of allegory [43, 140-156].

Unlike the situation with a simile, a parable's parallel meaning is unspoken and implicit, though not ordinarily secret.

The defining characteristic of the parable is the presence of a prescriptive subtext suggesting how a person should behave or believe. Aside from providing guidance and suggestions for proper action in life, parables frequently use metaphorical language which allows people to more easily discuss difficult or complex ideas. In Plato's Republic, parables like the “Parable of the Cave” (in which one's understanding of truth is presented as a story about being deceived by shadows on the wall of a cave) teach an abstract argument, using a concrete narrative which is more easily grasped [12].

In the preface to his translation of Aesop's Fables, George Fyler Townsend defined “parable” as “the designed use of language purposely intended to convey a hidden and secret meaning other than that contained in the words themselves, and which may or may not bear a special reference to the hearer or reader” [12, p.167-172].

Townsend may have been influenced by the contemporary expression, “to speak in parables”, connoting obscurity. In common modern uses of “parable”, though their significance is never explicitly stated, parables are not generally held to be hidden or secret but on the contrary are typically straightforward and obvious. It is the allegory that typically features hidden meanings.

As H.W. Fowler puts it in Modern English Usage, the object of both parable and allegory “is to enlighten the hearer by submitting to him a case in which he has apparently no direct concern, and upon which therefore a disinterested judgment may be elicited from him” [20]. The parable, though, is more condensed than the allegory: a single principle comes to bear, and a single moral is deduced as it dawns on the reader or listener that the conclusion applies equally well to his own concerns. Parables are favored in the expression of spiritual concepts. The best known source of parables in Christianity is the Bible, which contains numerous parables in the Gospels section of the New Testament. Jesus' parables, which are attested in many sources and are almost universally seen as being historical, are thought by scholars such as John P. Meier to have come from mashalim, a form of Hebrew comparison. Medieval interpreters of the Bible often treated Jesus' parables as detailed allegories, with symbolic correspondences found for every element in the brief narratives. Modern critics, beginning with Adolf Jülicher, regard these interpretations as inappropriate and untenable. Jülicher held that these parables usually are intended to make a single important point, and most recent scholarship agrees [12, 198-205].

In Sufi tradition, parables (“teaching stories”) are used for imparting lessons and values. Recent authors such as Idries Shah and Anthony de Mello have helped popularize these stories beyond Sufi circles.

Modern stories can be used as parables. A mid-19th-century parable, the “Parable of the Broken Window”, exposes a fallacy in economic thinking.

Heinz Politzer, the author of “Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox”, defined a parable as a paradox formed into a story. Speaking about Kafka's special gift for writing parables, he concluded, “He created symbols which through their paradoxical form expressed the inexpressible without betraying it”. Three distinctive elements of parable shine through this opening definition of the genre. First, a parable must contain a paradox or paradoxes - irreconcilable but equally plausible configurations of reality. Secondly, the parabolic form of discourse is not a gratuitous form, i.e. one among many forms that an author happens to choose, but rather one that the parabler must choose for a raid on the inexpressible. (The parable might choose its writer, if that doesn't make matters more obscure). In this sense the creator of a parable uses symbols the way a poet uses metaphorical language, not as ornament, but as the only way to speak. A third element concerns the duty of the artist to express the inexpressible without violating it. The idea of violation would include reductionism, making paradoxical elements of life seem simpler and more resolvable than they actually are. Or reaching closure in a story where psychic suspension would be the only honest denouement. This element of parables may be what leaves readers “hanging” [12].

Part of the difficulty in orienting parables among related literary genre - allegories, myths, fables, fairy tales, aphoristic or didactic stories - stems from the fact that parable study was once the exclusive province of Biblical scholars who considered all of the stories of the Old and New Testaments to be parables. While it is true that the Hebrew word covers all figurative language “from the riddle to the long and fully developed allegory”, modem scholars have imposed more refinement on the taxonomies. Some material from the Bible qualifies under modern definitions of parable, some does not.

The central element of parables is paradox, as Politzer noted. When a story has been completed there must be an irreducible paradox left. As Dominick Crossan puts it, “the original paradox should still be there at any and every level of reading” [12, p.55-63].

The aphorism “A stitch in time saves nine” does no more than extol the virtue of preventive maintenance or nipping trouble in the bud. This is true of all expressions or stories that can be reduced to an appeal: “Act like this and all will be well”. When a story can be translated into a direct message, and metaphorical expressions replaced by direct ones, the story cannot be considered a parable.

2.2 Form and content of parables

Marshall McLuhan in “Understanding Media” makes a number of arguments pertinent to the study of parables as a form. The first is that the form of communication has proliferate psychic consequences that are independent of content. To briefly illustrate, reading a play in the quiet of one's home and attending a live performance of the same play will be different psychic and social experiences. At home the ear is irrelevant, while at the live performance the ear must share the play with the eye. The home is private and individual whereas the live performance is public and socially shared. Only at the level of meaning might the alternative forins merge, but even there, different meanings may be derived from the “same” experience [23, p.115-124].

A culture may be at least partially defined as the sum of its communicative forms. Oral cultures, where speaking, listening and remembering predominate, differ from print cultures where writing, reading, and record keeping occur. Parables look like an old form since they still lend themselves to oral presentation. Being a form that has fallen into disuse outside religious circles, the parable looks alien, but being strange it also arrests attention, and excites curiosity. New forms facilitate certain social relationships while rendering others obsolete [12].

Parables as a form can be better understood against this background of illustrations. They are stories, of moderate length, amenable to repeated readings in one short sitting. They surprise the reader, arrest the regular “processing” of information and, in so doing, irritate the psyche. The reader cannot quite let go, because letting go is usually conditioned on closure which in the case of a true parable cannot be reached [13].

Thus when the parable is officially “ended”, the reader cannot serenely put the parable to rest. It sits in the psychic craw as a piece of unfinished business.

Parables are cool, inviting and participatory, unless sabotaged. For instance, Faulkner draws the reader into the story, but once in, the participation of the reader begins, rather than ends. The more powerful the parable, the more furious the involvement, the more sustained and profound the impact [36, p.56-59]. Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life.

Readers can feel their minds bend as they try to follow the above dialogue. A persistent immersion of students and teachers in parables would make them different as individuals and different in the ways they respond to each other. If this seems to be parabolic megalomania and absurd, perhaps the later material in the paper will make it seem less so.

Marshall McLuhan distinguishes several features of parables [31]:

1. The parable allows deep communication between the narrator and the reader. The parable begins “benignly”, disarming readers, drawing them in, and encouraging them to compare features of the story to their own experiences. They identify with a certain character or characters, and with the characters encounter dilemmas or unanticipated circumstances that call for choices. At this point the story teller departs and readers must tap their own resources, moving more deeply into self examination.

2. The parable involves indirect communication that provokes self discovery. Direct communication conveys information and, by reference to authorities, endorses certain lines of thought. By contrast, a parable presents a moral knot which the reader must untie by inward reflection and choice. Whereas direct communication creates observers and listeners, indirect communication creates participants and action. Those who prefer to “learn about the world” in a direct and controlled way, lose control of their responses when they encounter the parable. The parable carries them, willingly or unwillingly, inward toward undiscovered dimensions of self.

3. Experiences with indirect communication cultivate the capability for developing the self. Whereas direct learning does not change the capability of a person (learning simply adds to knowledge) indirect communication jolts the person out of mental routines once and for all. Rather than a simple change in information there is a change in consciousness. Like the seeds of the sower in the New Testament, the parable does not always fall on receptive ground, but even in such instances, the person is placed on notice that a world outside regular understanding exists.

5. And the last is that parables are memorable and amenable to oral tradition.

V.A. Harvey and H. Bergson distinguish some more features of parables [3, 20]:

1. Generalization of the meaning - the situations described in the parable can be applied in real life.

2. The structure of the parable reflects the world sensation of the people who started to learn about the world.

3. An action has a parable character only when it is said in it: act like this and all will be well.

To understand the parable correctly we should take into account the following points:

First, it is not necessary that everything described in the parable has really happened. Moreover not all the actions described are good. The purpose of the parable consists not in exact transmission of an action, but in revelation of highest spiritual powers.

Second, it is necessary to realize the purpose of the parable that can be understood from the preamble or from the circumstances that induced somebody to create it.

Third, it shows that not all the details of the parable can be understood on the spiritual level.

Fourth, notwithstanding this, except for the main idea, the parable can have the details that remind us about other truth or confirm it.

Our research is based on these classifications.

PART III. W. FAULKNER'S “A FABLE” AS AN EXAMPLE OF PARABLE THINKING

3.1 General characteristic of the novel

A Fable occupies a curious position among Faulkner's works. Written during the period of his greatest acclaim, the first major novel he produced after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1950, it appeared at a time when critics were undoubtedly most disposed to heap praise upon him for the slimmest of reasons. A Fable was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1955, but was considered a failure by practically all the reviewers and many of the influential critics; few commentators have since found reasons to alter their opinions. Not only did some reject it as art; they were actually angered by much of what they saw in it. The near unanimity of opinion regarding it is not curious in itself; the reluctance, with which many critics reject it, aside from Faulkner's reputation and obvious disappointment, points up one of the novel's peculiarities. If one were able to relegate it to the scrap heap of trivia, and if the negative critical opinion were widespread and consistent that it is trivial, A Fable would present few problems. But many, who rejected it, regardless of the extent of their rejection, have noted the novel's vast scope, its wide compass in the process of their analysis [35, p.45-58].

It is readily admitted that the novel was among Faulkner's most ambitious undertakings, as one dissenting critic called it, “a heroically ambitious failure”. No one has hinted that Faulkner wrote it to capitalize upon the wider recognition his Nobel Prize afforded him. A Fable was certainly not hastily conceived or written; it took nearly nine years for Faulkner to complete it. It was perhaps the most carefully planned of all his books; an examination of the wall of his study at Rowan Oaks corroborates this opinion. That a great writer may write an occasional bad novel is hardly news; the contention that A Fable is an aberration gets support from another widely held view regarding the total Faulkner canon. One tendency, to see Faulkner as the chronicler of Yoknapatawpha County, whether his work is viewed n general as all part of the loose “saga” of Yoknapatawpha or not, is bolstered by the interlocking of events and characters throughout many of the major novels and stories. Concomitant with this general attitude is the opinion that his best works have all been contained within the complex imaginary Yoknapatawpha world, a world grown out of close observation, introspection, and lived experience concerning the region and people he knew and loved best [11, p.115-146].

Although A Fable is among this less currently approved group of novels, it is not to be degraded merely for this reason. Opinion varies widely concerning the “form” of A Fable, whether it is an allegory or a thesis-novel or an attempt to construct a mythology. The functions of the characters are seen in multitudinous relations, and thematic interpretations transcribe an arc that is majestic in its scope. Although the variety of opinion in this regard may serve as testament to the novel's richness, the general opinion is that it attests to the confused form and substance of A Fable. The most pervasive attitude regarding the novel is that it is primarily an intellectual failure, ill-conceived and ill-made. Faulkner has been accused of many offenses against taste and tradition - the less-than-illustrious history of early Faulkner criticism in America bears eloquent testimony to this fact, but only very rarely has he ever been accused of carelessness in handling his materials. That Faulkner, whose proved ability to exercise exquisite control over extremely complex literary structures (Absalom! Absalom! or The Sound and the Fury to name only two) could be so blind, could commit so many obvious blunders in one novel without being sublimely careless, simply seemed absurd [13].

The “agony and sweat” he admittedly poured into writing A Fable rules out carelessness as a cause. Also, the very enormity of its apparent failures, the grand inconsistencies it seems to trumpet, according to critics, seemed somehow to demand a reexamination. The novel simply could not be as bad as some opinions would have it its very power to evoke such strong reactions as late as 1962 seemed to work perversely against the very criticism which railed against it. Witness the opening sentence of Irving Howe's critical appraisal. Only a writer of very great talent, and a writer with a sublime deafness to the cautions of his craft, could have brought together so striking an ensemble of mistakes as Faulkner has in A Fable. Howe's adjectives almost seem to belie the very claims he makes [17, p.289-300].

When William Faulkner's A Fable appeared on the literary scene in 1954, the immediate response from the book reviewers was intense and various, both in temper and interpretation of its meaning and worth. This variety in itself is not unique, but what is striking about the early criticism is the utter confusion engendered in minds that were presumably attuned to the many complexities of literary nuance. Nonetheless, the early reviewers were for the most part either disappointed or downright hostile, according to their commitment to their various literary or religious creeds. Whether hostile or merely disappointed, the early criticism actually posed more questions than it answered [23].

A Fable was for the most part condemned from both literary and religious viewpoints. The frustration which A Fable caused to certain book reviewers is perhaps best summed up by the reaction of Harold C. Gardiner in America: “... it is clearly a symbolic novel; it is just as clearly, save to those who dare not say boo to geese, a mystery, a riddle, an enigma, for which a key is sadly needed. Indeed, after a careful and laborious reading of 437 pages, I have begun to suspect that there is no key, it is hardly worth the search, for it would at best open only an empty box…” [23, p.67].

Vivian Mercier noted that “aside from implying that the Christ of today is the Unknown Soldier, the book seems to offer us a hodge podge of clichés” [23, p.22]. He then went on to speculate on Faulkner's social instincts. The delay in completion was owing to an instinct not to, because Faulkner was “an introvert trying to write an extrovert's novel [23, p.126].

J. Robert Barth read A Fable as an indication of Faulkner's shift forward from the “negative critique” of the Yoknapatawpha cycle to a more positive attitude toward man. Barth also offered some excellent insights, such as noting the necessity to see the novel's dynamism in terms of a “tension of opposites”. He also maintained that meaning emerged, not from the novel's resemblance to the Passion, but from the attitudes the two major characters represented. Unfortunately, Barth did not carry these insights as far as he might have, but he is nonetheless almost unique as an early reviewer in his reading. V. S. Pritchett also saw A Fable as an indication that Faulkner was emerging from “destructive despair to conscious affirmation”. Pritchett then dubbed A Fable a “fantasy to a past dispensation”, with Faulkner a poet - historian whose purpose in writing it was to “isolate and freeze each moment of the past”. A Fable at the last was “a blast at the impersonality of modern life” [23, p.123-154].

Carvel Collins saw A Fable as no marked departure at all, noting that Faulkner had used the Passion as early as 1929 to inform the structure of The Sound and the Fury. Collins saw the essential conflict as a clash between Old Testament and New Testament values. He offers some pertinent observations about Faulkner's works as a whole and A Fable in particular. Faulkner's works have always suffered from summaries of them, he noted, and A Fable would suffer most of all owing to the Biblical parallels. Time has proved Mr. Collins right in this observation, but his own review, though sympathetic and helpful in some respects, is actually an oversimplification of the complex structure of A Fable .The reviewer for Newsweek offered some helpful observations about the structure of A Fable, noticing that the novel was structured around a series of conflicts between opposing ideas and characters. But the review is actually more misleading than helpful at the last, since the reviewer sees no “intellectual center” in the novel. It is “a complicated allegory … in a complicated private idiom” [21, p.45-46], and the reviewer surrenders up some of his confusion when he notes that “the reader sometimes has the disconcerting feeling of standing in the middle of a tragic fun house with all the trick mirrors focusing on him at once” [10, p.13].

The central question A Fable asks is “What is man?” and the answer is that he is most foul. Taylor saw the theme of A Fable as the “helpless bestiality of man” [18, p.10-11], one ending where real Christianity begins, and ended by chastising Faulkner. Referring obliquely to the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he noted that “You do not lift the heart of man by grinding his face in the dirt. Amos Wilder, a year after Taylor's article, wrote that A Fable provided an example of an earlier “uncorrupted” Christianity”. Certain critics focused primarily upon structural features in A Fable. As a result their findings are generally more pertinent than those who reacted personally to the more obvious features of the novel. James Hafley noted the basic antagonism of the Corporal and the Marshall, but immediately reduced this antagonism to a conflict between the man of faith and the man of reason. A Fable presented the failure of democracy, the “rational end of the Western tradition”, and illustrated the necessity to “escape the crowd” either through martyrdom or the military [18].

Philip Edward Pastore believed A Fable to be a fable without a strict moral - it is more descriptive than prescriptive. It is essentially a description of two opposing sets of moralities shown in their complex interactions both ideally and historically. Failure to realize this point is what causes much of the confusion of many of the critics who demand a much more cogent argument by Faulkner to support their ethical view, whether it focuses on Christianity or pacifism. While this conclusion may seem less palatable for those requiring poetic justice or established morality in fiction, it is nonetheless testament to the high degree of sophistication of Faulkner's world view, a world view shaped considerably by the sophistication of Bergson's ideas on morality and religion, especially as they appear in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, to state that all the conflicts emanate from this basic opposition of intellect and intuition may seem overly simple as an explanation of the complex action of A Fable. It is simple in that it admits a resolution or “synthesis” which is less complex than Schendler's, since it merely describes a condition instead of forcing through to an ethic which must “transcend” (i.e., “deny”) the very ironies the novel spends so much time describing. It is less complex yet more dynamic than Straumann's eclectic, suspended, tripartite stasis. Its focus is also more precise than either of these two admirable critics allow [32].

The essential opposition of intuition and intellect as a means of ordering and giving meaning to the human condition penetrates to the heart of A Fable and encompasses every ramification of the conflicts which appear upon the surface.

Some clues to the broad intellectual basis and, in a larger sense, to the whole intellectual environment within which A Fable may be read, occur in a conversation between Faulkner and a young Frenchman, Loic Bouvard, at the Princeton Inn on November 30, 1952. Faulkner happened to be passing through the city, and a mutual friend arranged the interview for Bouvard, who was studying for his Ph.D. in Political Science at Princeton. The atmosphere was informal and conducive to candor, but Bouvard noted that Faulkner was always careful, in fact deliberate, in answering his questions. The conversation finally became centered upon Camus and Sartre, when Bouvard informed Faulkner that many of the young people in France were supplanting a faith in God with a faith in man, obviously a reference to the atheistic existentialism of these two writers. Faulkner's reply is more pertinent than is apparent at first [7].

“Probably you are wrong in doing away with God in that fashion. God is. It is He who created man. If you don't reckon with God, you won't wind up anywhere. You question God and then you begin to doubt, and you begin to ask Why? Why? Why? - and God fades away by the very act of your doubting him”. But he immediately qualified his statement. “Naturally, I'm not talking about a personified or a mechanical God, but a God who is the most complete expression of mankind, a God who rests in the eternity and in the now” [14, p.203].

One is perhaps not surprised that Bouvard was more interested in hearing Faulkner's ideas on man and art, since the interview did take place only after the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and that speech's apparent humanism, plus the vogue at that time of “existentialism”, would certainly have exercised their influence upon a young French intellectual. What is surprising is the ease with which Bouvard reduced Faulkner's statements about God to “Faulkner's deism” especially since Faulkner had immediately made it clear that he meant neither “a personified or a mechanical God” I shall attempt here to rectify an error in reaction to which Bouvard, as well as many later critics mentioned above, fell victim [7].

For what Bouvard thought were separate and distinct categories were much more closely joined than he realized, were in fact in some ways practically fused. Here are meant the categories “man” and “god”. Faulkner, like Bergson, is often speaking about one in terms of the other (“a god who is the most complete expression of mankind”), but only within the necessary limits of how they define each category. Faulkner is not as precise in A Fable as is Bergson in his Two Sources of Morality and Religion, but the resemblances are there. Faulkner's library does not yield a much-thumbed copy of the Two Sources of Morality and Religion; nevertheless the hypothesis that Bergson's work forms the intellectual basis of A Fable remains valid, since no other works of Bergson are recorded there either, and their availability to him need not be restricted to Faulkner's personal library [7, p.208-239].

Simply noting that Faulkner has never been reticent in acknowledging Bergson's influence upon him, I shall proceed upon the assumption that he was aware of Bergson's ideas on the “vital impetus”, and all the ramifications there of, even though he may not have come across them neatly compressed within the covers of the work to which I shall refer. A comparison of Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion with A Fable will show parallels both in subject matter and language which suggest more than mere coincidence.

Bergson's conception of the “dialectic” and Faulkner's dramatization of it lie below the “wars” in A Fable and the essential conflict is not New Testament Christianity against Old Testament orthodoxy, nor Christ against Caesar, nor the apostolic church against the institutionalized church, nor war against peace, nor a projected humanism against a traditional transcendent super-being. It is a simpler yet more profound opposition which may manifest itself in any of these more apparent conflicts. Indeed, most of the above-mentioned “conflicts” are not real conflicts at all, but would fall within one of these two basic oppositions, the intellect, since most would be subsumed under static religion.

3.2 Allegoric character of the novel

What A Fable “is” seems to be a central question for some critics in determining its structural features. Thomas H. Carter, for instance, felt that it was basically cleanly structured, but “the other sub-plots obscure the simple rightness of the Corporal's story”. Many see the essential failure occurring in the attempt to mix genres and tones which, in their view, it is impossible to mix. Most critics read A Fable as an allegory which has either been contaminated or enriched in a dreadful way by certain “realistic” features which clash with the main action, the Passion whether it is contaminated or enriched is apparently owing to whether the critic personally prefers the realistic or the symbolic mode.

One may easily contrast this opinion to that of Hyatt Howe Waggoner, who sees the novel's process as “almost the opposite of the symbolic”, one that emerges from “an interpretation of scripture based on the supposition that historic Christianity was founded upon a hoax”. Roma King feels that Faulkner's view is basically Christian, but that the book fails because he has “no systematic intellectual grounding or comprehensive theology”, and the allegory “gets lost among naturalistic irrelevancies and details”. But for Lawrance Thomson the “allegorical skeleton sticks through the flesh unpleasantly”. And Irving Howe considers the book to be “a splendidly written fable that is cluttered and fretted with structural complexities appropriate only to a novel”. And finally, we may go to Carter again, who delivers another critical edict. “Whatever its symbolic structure is A Fable must be judged by the standards of naturalistic fiction” [9, p. 147-148].

The parallel between the representative of the open society and dynamic religion, and the inherent antagonism that this new being must project upon the established institutions, is thus clearly drawn. Another facet of the “deep dialect” - one which is based on experience - is thus established and one may draw obvious implications from the parallel, fusion as it were, of dynamic religion with the open society. The Corporal is both the representative of the open society and that individual who has immersed himself in the elan vital, and, as his confrontation with the priest illustrated, has embodied within himself, as a “species composed of a single individual”, the power to overcome the casuistry of dialectic simply by “being”. The Corporal is one who, in the Bergsonian sense, has immersed himself into “real” time, which “if it is not God, is of God”, and the “religion” which emerges from this inundation is one which cannot be defined by ethical laws or theological argument. It is “a religion of men, not laws” [3, p.187].

One may still reasonably ask why Faulkner had to choose the obvious parallel to the Gospel stories, why he could not have demonstrated these ideas on their own merits rather than borrow from the Gospels. Bergson may again supply us with an explanation. But just as the new moral aspiration takes shape only by borrowing from the closed society its natural form, which is obligation, so dynamic religion is propagated only through images and symbols supplied by the myth-making function. A careful reading of the novel shows the reasons for the trappings of Christian allegory in A Fable.

The most striking “supernatural” incident parallels, in a rough way, the “multiple deaths” of the Corporal, it occurs in the scene describing the Groom's return to the town in Tennessee where they had first raced the horse. He had earlier appeared at the church, but now appears at the loft above the post office where the men are shooting dice. He suddenly appears there, no one speaks, he goes to the game, a coin mysteriously appears at his foot “where 10 seconds ago no coin had been”, he plays the coin, and immediately wins enough for food. The scene below describes his exit and return:

“ He went to the trap door and the ladder which led down into the store's dark interior and with no light descended and returned with a wedge of cheese and a handful of crackers, and interrupted the game again to hand the clerk one of the coins he had won and took his change and, squatting against the wall and with no sound save the steady one of his chewing, ate what the valley knew was his first food since he returned to it, reappeared in the church ten hours ago; and - suddenly - the first since he had vanished with the horse and the two Negroes ten months ago” [14, p.194].

The necessary response is a crude one, but it nonetheless resembles the Corporal's ability to cut past speech and force action. The Groom's mysterious abilities to create the fierce loyalties of those around him links him to the Corpoml also. It is this ability which carries over into the main action, and is the means by which he and the Runner are joined. But in the context of the main action, the Runner is a different person, a point which will be taken up below. His mysterious qualities are even highlighted in the near play on words Faulkner employs in Sutterfield's pronunciation of his name, “Mistairy” for Mr. Harry. The Groom is, in a sense, “resurrected” also. His mysterious reappearances are not the only point of resemblance in this sense. Faulkner describes him at the very beginning of the “horsethief” episode as having undergone a sort of rebirth as a result of his experiences with the horse. The rebirth is somewhat analogous to the Corporal's final interment in the tomb of the unknown soldier, since it suggests outwardly everything that he was not previously, and also points to the anonymity of the Corporal as far as the world is concerned.

“Three things happened to him which changed completely not only his life, but his character too, so that when late in 1914 he returned to England to enlist it was as though somewhere behind the Mississippi Valley hinterland ... a new man had been born, without past, without griefs, without recollection” [14, p.151].

What Faulkner has done in his treatment of the Corporal is to let the action around the Corporal speak for him rather than letting him speak for himself; often the action seems to run a contradictory course to what is being verbalized by cliaracters around the Corporal. This observation goes to the heart of the Corporal's character and the implications toward which his presence in the novel points. The Corporal, for all his taciturnity and seeming passivity, is the essence of action - meaningful action. He is the essence and embodiment of what Bergson considers the mystic, the representative of “dynamic religion”. The Corporal, if not exactly suspicious of ritual, at any rate has no need of ritual, for ritual is extraneous to the dynamic religion he represents. It is, as Bergson states, “a religion of men, not rules”, a religion in which “prayer is independent of its verbal expression; it is an elevation of the soul that can dispense with speech. Bergson, in attempting to define “dynamic religion”, equates it with mysticism, but not the Eastern type of mysticism we generally identify with the Hindu ascetics. These are not true mystics, according to Bergson.

What the Corporal attempts to do, and succeeds in doing for a while, is exactly this. All the action of A Fable is generated by his act of mutiny. This failure will be explained within that context, but for the moment we may see this characteristic, dynamism, operating in relation to the Corporal in the particular way Faulkner has chosen to portray it. The Corporal does not have the gift of rhetoric - he has no need of it; action, experience, is his primary method of expression. His monosyllabic answers to the casuistic arguments of the priest and the Marshall are not owing to stupidity or sullenness. An examination of his answers to most of the questions put to him shows that he does not answer the question directly so much as simply state a “fact” which ultimately has bearing upon the question. For example, in answering the priest's charges that he must bear the responsibility for Gragnon's execution, he simply repeats:

“Tell him [the Marshall] that” [14, p.364-366].

To the Marshall's long argument in the “Maundy Thursday” scene, he first answers simply, “there are still ten” (meaning his disciples), when the Marshall indicates the futility of his martyrdom [14, p.346]. To the last part of the Marshall's argument, when the Marshall expands at length upon the “narrative of the bird” to reinforce his offer of life, the Corporal simply answers:

“Don't be afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing worth it” [14, p.352].

The Corporal is equally taciturn in other scenes. He does not speak his first word until page 249; he speaks fewer words than any other major character in the novel, unless one considers the Groom to occupy equal stature, and even the Groom is referred to as constantly mouthing curses, even though Faulkner does not record them for the reader.

Actually, the Corporal's lack of speech is simply part of his makeup. He is exhibiting the mystic temperament as Bergson conceives of it. A calm exaltation of all its faculties makes it see things on a vast scale only, and in spite of its weakness, produce only what can be mightily wrought.

This passage, which goes far to explain the Corporal's peculiar actions also in relation to the other characters in the novel and the events which surround him, bears a resemblance to Faulkner's description of the Corporal as he calmly watches from his prison window above the rage and turbulence of the crowd below.

“He looked exactly like a stone-deaf man watching with interest but neither surprise nor alarm the pantomime of some cataclysm or even universal uproar which neither threatens nor even concerns him since to him it makes no sound at all” [14, p.227].

The Corporal is able to transcend much of the human passion that is normally aroused either in argument or in anxiety over one's future. Bergson may offer a reason for the Corporal's “odd” qualities of character when he writes of the difference between ordinary ideas of love and the mystical love of mankind.

The Corporal, as mystical, intuitive man, then, becomes the embodiment of the open society, which must emerge from the universal love of mankind, as well as the embodiment of the “dynamic religion” which is embodied in men, not rules.

It is the Corporal's “presence” which causes action more than any direct action he engages in. By this method his effect is felt throughout the entire novel. He has no personal eloquence, nor radiance, nor energy of the usual sort associated with action. The key to his effectiveness lies in his presence. He is dynamic in the deepest sense, not merely kinetic. He embodies in himself all of the facets and possibilities that the complex of attitudes arising from and involved in the refinement of the intuition posit. Just as the Marshall depends upon ritual, meeting, dialectic, and intelligence, so does the Corporal have no need for any of them. He is beyond the . neces sary rhetoric of the preacher, the casuistry of the plotter, or the energy of the builder. He is effective nonetheless, because his presence alone suffices to cause meaningful action. As the old man at the ammunition dump, who first informs the Runner of the Corporal's mission, tells him:

“- Go and listen to them, the old porter said, - you can speak foreign; you can understand them.

- I thought you said that the nine who should have spoken French didn't, and that the other four couldn't speak anything at all.

- They don't need to talk, the old porter said. - You don' need to understand. Just go and look at him” [14, p.67].

Events which occur as a result of the Corporal's “presence” are the action of A Fable. Although he is not described energetically, the Corporal embodies dynamism in everything he does, as opposed to the essentially static character of his antagonist, the Marshall, who engenders much kinetic activity in the novel. Images of movement and stasis surround these two antagonists constantly and reinforce their essential characteristics.

The Corporal and the Marshall are brought together at the beginning of A Fable in a confrontation scene which foreshadows the later, climactic “Maundy Thursday” scene above the city of Chaulnesmont. More important than fore- shadowing is the way in which each is described in relation to the other in this scene.

“The Corporal is riding in a lorry earring the 13 “ringleaders” of the mutiny to the stockade. It passes the Hotel de Villa where the three generals still stood like a posed camera group [the Corporal and the Marshall] stared full at each other across the moment which could not last because of the vehicle's speed - the peasant's face above the corporal's chevrons and the shackled wrists in the speeding lorry, and the grey, inscrutable face above the stars of supreme rank and the bright ribbons of honor and glory on the Hotel steps, looking at each other across the fleeting instant” [14, p.17].

The setting of this first encounter clearly puts the two in opposition in more than mere foreshadowing; they are immediately seen in terms of motion and stasis. The “deep dialectic” of the human condition is thus very early joined, with each antagonist's essential qualities pointed up by the setting in which each appears. The Corporal is dynamic, moving, even though manacled. The Marshall is static, posed, though apparently free. The two are seen in paradoxical relationship at the very outset, also, since the apparently “free” omnipotent man, the Marshall, is fixed; and the apparently shackled man, the Corporal, is moving. This paradoxical relationship will widen and encompass all of the action of the novel as it progresses, for paradox is the main method by which action is resolved in A Fable.

“-Fear implies ignorance. Where ignorance is not, you do not need to fear: only respect. I don't fear man's capacities, I merely respect them. "

-And use them, - the Quartermaster General said.

-Beware of them, - the old general said” [14, p.329].

Here is an adequate explanation for the seemingly indifferent mannerisms of the Corporal. He is not indifferent he has, in a sense, won the world by going beyond the world. He has attained this state before the opening action of the novel, and Faulkner's initial presentation of him, “the face showing a comprehension, understanding, utterly free of compassion” [14, p.17] can, in this light, be seen as far more than mere indifference to his fate.

Events which occur as a result of the Corporal's “presence” are the action of A Fable. Although he is not described energetically, the Corporal embodies dynamism in everything he does, as opposed to the essentially static character of his antagonist, the Marshall, who engenders much kinetic activity in the novel. Images of movement and stasis surround these two antagonists constantly and reinforce their essential characteristics.

The “capacities” referred to become more precisely defined moments later when the Quartermaster repeats the charge that the Marshall is afraid of man. The Marshall's respon.se is set clearly in terms of stasis and dynamism.

“I respected him [man] as an articulated creature capable of locomotion and vulnerable to self-interest” [14, p.331]

Although the Marshall refers here only to the dynamic quality of man, one must conclude that he is speaking from his opposite viewpoint in “respecting” this quality in man. The action (locomotion) is referred to here in potential terms, also. The fact that self-interest is inimical to the Marshall's position would coincide neatly with Bergson's claim that the intelligence must counter the very bent of intelligence (the ego) by intellectual means, which the Marshall does.

Another character who resembles the Marshall closely in his intellectual apparatus and attitudes toward man is the lawyer who seeks, and fails, to spellbind the crowd with rhetoric (“Ladies, gentlemen Democrats”) in the courthouse in the “horsethief” episode. The crowd ignores him and as it brushes past him, he notes “my first mistake was moving” [14, p.185]. Real action is inimical to those who rely on intellect alone and who are the manipulators in the closed society. The lawyer's long internal monologue is couched in slightly different terms, but his views on man are essentially the same as the Marshall's.

Thinking (the lawyer) how only when he is mounted on something ... is man vulnerable and familiar; he is terrible; thinking with amazement and humility and pride too, how no mere immobile mass of him . . . mounted on something which, not he but it was locomotive, but the mass of him, moving of itself in one direction toward an objective by means of his own frail clumsily jointed legs . . . threatful only in locomotion and dangerous only in silence [14, pp.186-187].

It is important to note here that the lawyer, although contemptuous in part, still has the feeling of amazement and pride when thinking of this aspect of man, an attitude which parallels the Marshall's in the “Maundy Thursday” scene when he tells the Corporal “with pride” that man will prevail. The above passage tends to reach back to the introductory scene where the Corporal is introduced riding in the lorry, and to underscore the point that, although he is at that time vulnerable to the machinations of the military, the action which had precipitated all the later action (the mutiny) had already been accomplished . The Corporal has been able to set a mass of men in one direction simply through the power of his presence in better fashion than the military, which had consciously aimed at this end (witness the statement of l'Allemont, the corps commander, to Gragnon [14, p.52]) with its references to disciplinary training and rituals of honor and glory. One may also compare the actions of the civilian arm of the closed society, the crowd, in respect to meaningful action. Much has been written of how the crowd, mass man, is reduced to bestiality or complete passivity, as though Faulkner were attempting to demean man. As one negative critic put it, “You do not lift the heart of man by rubbing his face in the dirt”. But the crowd's action, which is not really action at ail, can best be seen in the context of the civil arm of the closed society.