Hello and welcome back, everyone! This past month, I’ve had the privilege of revisiting two of my favorite authors, William Faulkner and David Foster Wallace. In doing so, I stumbled across an old paper of mine comparing two of their short stories. I’ve made some heavy revisions and thrown out some of my old ideas for new ones, but the central theme of both author addressing a type of lost generation is still intact. The lost generation is commonly known as the generation of Americans post-World War I and pre-World War II. Many writers including T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and William Faulkner responded to the anxieties of America at the time through their short stories, poems, and novels. Faulkner’s short story, “Barn Burning,” directly addresses this generation through his characterization of Sarty, and the reader’s relatability to him. Decades later, however, David Foster Wallace also responded to the lost generation and argued that the American mindset still coincides with the same mindset Faulkner and his contemporaries displayed. In “Forever Overhead,” Wallace displays this argument in an improved-upon aspect of relatability by using the second person, forcing the reader to become the lost main character. Both stories attempt to answer the question; when does one decide to be their own person?
A crucial aspect in how both pieces address the lost generation is perspective. Faulkner’s story tells us of Sarty and his family through a third-person point of view. This story isn’t a conversation with Sarty as much as it is a conversation about Sarty. What this allows for is relatability, which American literature has always relied on. To speak for a generation, you have to allow your audience to see themselves as your main character. Having Sarty as a full character that one can almost look at, instead of one who is telling the story, allows for this seamless flow of characterization. By reading along with his actions as he’s performing them, readers are allowed to infer how he really feels. The use of physical sensory language contributes to this relatability. When Sarty is in the courtroom at the beginning of the story, he “…felt no floor under his bare feet; he seemed to walk beneath the palpable weight of the grim turning faces” (Faulkner 2). The reader can infer that what Sarty feels here is nervousness, but without Faulkner directly telling us he is, we’re able to relate our own experiences and sympathize with Sarty. This contrasts with the way Faulkner directly tells us the emotions of the other characters, before pleading with Abner, the mother’s expression is “…not anxious…but very like despair,” giving the reader no room to truly step into her shoes (7). This is because the other characters in the story don’t represent the lost generation. While yes, Abner represents what America ought not to be, he also represents a past generation. What makes Sarty lost is his uncertainty, a feeling which still overwhelms Americans today. If World War I created Eliot’s “Wasteland,” Faulkner uses Sarty to express that the world still has no idea what to do or where to go from here.
Wallace’s story is also carried by the use of perspective. From the very first line, the reader is being spoken to directly in the second person; “Happy Birthday. Your thirteenth is important” (Wallace 1). The reader, in this sense, is no longer the reader at all. Wallace completely cuts out the middlemen of projection and interpretation and makes the reader the main character. Because of this, you have to relate to the story. No matter who you are as a reader, you are now instead a 13-year-old boy at a swimming pool. This of course impacts different readers in different ways. If you’re male, you’re instantly brought back to your pre-pubescent year, while if you’re female, you’re likely made uncomfortable, but again, you have to relate. What this ultimately serves to do, is not to have one sympathize with any character, but sympathize with all those around them. Logically, by making everyone who reads this story the main character, Wallace sets out to connect all his readers through the text. This is crucial in addressing that the lost generation’s mindset is still prevalent among Americans. What the reader desires most, Wallace displays, is to be seen and understood by the world. Wallace gives the reader this validation by healing the reader’s inner child who felt as lost as the character in the story. Any reader has been confused about major life changes, and puberty is certainly the first of many hurdles. By making readers relive these experiences, Wallace addresses every generation and lets the reader know that their confusion is completely understood, not just by him, but by everybody.
Sarty has no control over the narrative of “Barn Burning” in the same way Americans feel as if they have no control over their world. Faulkner clues the reader into this mindset of the masses at the time by using Sarty’s uncertain nature to reflect our own. While at the start of the story, he is very set in his ways and what he believes, by the end he knows that most of what he’s learned from his father has ultimately led him and his family to decline. The comparisons between Sarty and the American citizen go on; his young age reflects the fact that America is still a budding country, his involvement as a child among adult issues signifies the infantile mindset that comes with this youth, and his reliance on his family reflects the traditional values our country was founded on. All of this ties together when you consider the lost generation. Faulkner’s response through “Barn Burning” can be described as a sympathetic one in which he lends Sarty to the reader, letting them know that ultimately, they aren’t alone. We know Sarty has no control over the implementation of inner dialogue. The reader is directly told Sarty’s thoughts at different points in the story, displaying how Sarty wishes the plot would develop. When he’s running to the stable to bring Abner the oil, we’re told Sarty’s thoughts are “I could keep on…I could run on and on and never look back,” Sarty shares this abandoning sentiment with the lost generation (11). Faulkner displays this desire to start over in the same way the Beats did following him. Sarty serves as the middle ground between pre and post-Great War America, but also as the ground between Faulkner and the reader, and the reader and America. To be lost, Faulkner displays isn’t a lack of spatial awareness but rather a desire to separate yourself from what you once called home. Faulkner leaves Sarty’s fate completely open-ended to display that one chooses to be their own person the moment one feels this sense of loss.
The boy in “Forever Overhead” shares this lack of control. To encapsulate this anxiety, Wallace relies on inner monologue. Aside from the narrator talking to the reader, there isn’t a single spoken line of dialogue in the story. When the boy is hesitating on the ladder, the repetition of “Hey kid…hey kid are you okay” is delivered by the narrator (9). What this displays is the reader’s disconnection from the rest of the world in moments of extreme anxiety. Further, this displays how outside expectations influence these anxieties. The reader is shown that the boy thinks he doesn’t have a choice whether or not he can jump off the diving board, the reasoning behind this being that there are too many people on the ladder below him. This polarizes the reader as well as the character. The boy has no choice but to jump the same way the reader has no choice but to move through life. This responsibility can be overwhelming, and Wallace displays that this is something everyone sympathizes with. These universal implications of common anxieties address the lost generation directly. Another fear Wallace points out is the flow of time. When the character is just about to be on the board itself, he realizes the woman ahead of him is “Part of a rhythm that excludes thinking…the rhythm seems blind…like a machine,” referring to the passage of time and comparing the pace of the ladder to life as a whole (7). A common feeling, especially during puberty, is that your childhood is behind you. The boy realizes this, and the narrator tells the reader that beyond this point, adult life is calling, and while the boy used to have all the time in the world to be a child, what lies ahead is radical freedom and the responsibility that comes with it. Perhaps the most important anxiety touched on in the story is the anxiety of having this responsibility, or what Sartre calls anguish. Before approaching the ladder, the boy decides that “Being scared is caused mostly by thinking,” this addresses the anxiety behind the very act of thinking, and displays the fine line between thought and over-thought (6). Later in the story, when the boy is on the ladder, he decides thinking is sometimes required, but he still overthinks his own anxieties; “It may, after all, be all right to do something scary without thinking, but not when the scariness is the not thinking itself” (7). What Wallace displays here, through the sometimes overwhelming relatability to the boy’s anxiety is that at some point, everyone has felt lost. Therefore, what Wallace argues by addressing every reader, is that every generation is a lost generation. His response to the anxiety of deciding who to be is that nobody has a choice. One establishes who they are whether they’re aware of it or not and everyone must take action whether they like it or not.
Both short stories address the anxieties of forming an identity. Faulkner displays the idea that one does this by unlearning the lies one is told by their family as a child. By leaving “Barn Burning” open-ended, Faulkner displays that one has a choice in the matter. One could argue, it relies on the individual to develop their own sense of morality before they begin to shape who they are. Wallace, on the other hand, displays the idea that this is not a choice. He argues that time moves on whether we like it or not and that becoming a person is a combination of the physical and mental aspects of the human condition. These stories, and the expanse of time between their publications, display that every generation in America is a lost generation. Everyone feels the anxieties of growing up, and everyone wishes they had more time. This realization lets us break down the labeling of different generations, and ultimately allows us to better understand every American generation.
-Samuel McFerron, Blog Editor.
Samuel McFerron – Blog Editor, Prose Editor & Poetry Editor: Samuel is a Junior at Lewis University. They are double majoring in English Literature and Philosophy. They aspire to become a professor of U.S. Literature and spend most of their free time reading and writing. They hope to improve upon their writing and literary analysis skills during their time here at Lewis and are seeking publication within this time frame. Some authors they recommend are David Foster Wallace, Milan Kundera, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Emma Goldman.