William Faulkner speech analysis

Billy Cocomise

         William Faulkner is regarded as one of the great writers of all time. His Nobel Prize acceptance speech more than proves this in my opinion. The true humbleness that he displayed is enough to make me respect him and his opinions. But he then voices some great simple truths to cement his argument. All the while keeping a relatively optimistic tone that he really shows in the last two paragraphs of his speech. From these things, his idea of how important literature is for the human race is very well argued.
         This man is receiving a Nobel Peace prize for literature and his first sentence of his speech is as follows, “I feel this award is not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit”. In this, he is directing the award away from himself and towards what he feels should be receiving the praise: his work. While I do not think he intended for it to, which in part makes it so pleasing, his humbleness is in it’s own way a form of ethos.  By showing that he is not a pompous person and that he really only wants to create things based on and to better understand the human spirit, makes the audience understand that what he is saying is really in their best interest.
         Then Faulkner addresses his audience about what he really believes that they should take away from his speech. I feel I can partly condense the section through this quote, “There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when will I be blown up? …the young man or women in writing has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.” Here he is using his path of logic as to why writers of the time were not writing honest and enjoyable literature. He explains that literature is best when it is written and read in the pursuit of understanding the human spirit, and that writers can become too distracted by their fears to write about true human conditions. He then proposes a possible remedy for this problem, which is this: “He (the writers) must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and teaching himself this, forget it forever”. Identifying fear as a primitive instinct, he displays definite exigency in this section as he goes on saying that fear must be forgotten if we are to write about things that matter. By showing exigency here he is expressing to his audience how serious the matter is and that it is not something to feel indifferent about.
         Faulkner’s grand finale in the last two paragraphs is both informative and inspiring, and it is best summed up in his final sentence, which goes: “The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail”.  He ends on an optimistic note, using strong pathos to express to his audience that if perfected and applied, literature can be more of the reminder of who we are as a whole, then just a form of entertainment. The fact that Faulkner keeps a rather optimistic tone the entire speech and really shows it in the end, despite all the not-so positive topics he covers, helps his argument of how important literature is for the human race really sink in with the audience.
         This speech, which is coming from someone who is thought of as one of the great writers of all time, does not surprise me with its effectiveness. Faulkner does know how to apply a wide variety of well-placed strategies, but more importantly he knows how to keep a central topic and tone throughout the speech to make sure his message is received. That message of the important role literature plays in supporting the human race is more than well conveyed by William Faulkner.