you must read intently until every last bit of information has been given to you in order to form the perfect image of the event in your mind. (Conrad Aiken, 205)Faulkner loved his hometown and people and did not want to offend them by writing out right about the gossipy and close minded way in which they viewed events. To escape doing this Faulkner often put a romantic or gothic tone to his writing to make protect his people. The important thing to remember about his novels is despite their apparent genius and often romantic viewpoints the events at which they centered around were primarily gothic. Many times in his writings Faulkner produced images that can be compared to Gothic castles such as “the Sartoris plantation house in Sartoris and Sanctuary; the ruins of the Old Frenchman's place in Sanctuary and The Hamlet; the Compson house, in a state of dilapidation, in Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury; Sutpen's Hundred in Absalom, Absalom! from creation to destruction; Miss Burden's house in Light in August; the McCaslin plantation, still a going concern, in Go Down, Moses and Intruder in the Dust; the Backus plantation in decline in The Town and as transformed by Mr. Harriss in "Knight's Gambit" and The Mansion; the old De Spain mansion as transformed by Flem in The Town and The Mansion. All of these are “castles” in state of decline. They also are frequently equipped with slave or servant quarters. Only the novel Intruder in the Dust lacks a “castle” instead it has a middle-class home where a family lives happily. There are also in his books the classic gothic character types in just about every novel. The Romantic, Byronic, or Faustian heroes, the courtly lovers, the tragic villain-heroes, the revenge villain-hero, the rational villains, and the villain seducer seem to take the key roles in Faulkner’s tales. Let us not forget about the grotesque. A huge part in all gothic nov...
