Additionally, Faulkner emphasizes Sarty’s psychological instability in this energized scene with descriptive terms that suggest Sarty’s increasing confusion. Even before Sarty hears gunshots, he is “wild” with grief as the “furious silhouette” of de Spain’s horse thunders by. When he hears the shots, he instinctively cries out to his father and then begins to run. Faulkner intensifies the scene by repeating the verb “run” and quickens the pace by including words that end in “ing”: “. . . running again before he knew he had begun to run, stumbling, tripping over something and scrabbling up again without ceasing to run, looking backward over his shoulder at the glare as he got up, running on among the invisible trees, panting, sobbing, ‘Father! Father!’ “ The sentence builds and builds, faster and faster, until it culminates in Sarty’s desperate cry to his father, who he fears has been killed. The increasing intensity of the sentence mirrors the young boy’s increasing concern for his father’s safety.
Another example of Faulkner’s complex sentence structure is in “Dry September,” in which a lynch mob led by John McLendon kills Will Mayes, a black man who they suspect raped Miss Minnie, a white woman. In part, the weather is to blame for the mob’s irrational behavior; it has not rained in 62 days. Faulkner creates sentences that, through a series of interrupting phrases, emphasize the weather’s effect on the townspeople. One example of this technique is the last sentence in the story’s opening paragraph. Rearranged so that the subject phrase and verb stand side by side, the sentence reads, “Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them knew exactly what had happened.” However, Faulkner hints that the dry weather has clouded the men’s logical thinking by interjecting between the subject phrase and the verb numerous descriptions about the stagnant air and the stagnant minds of the men. These phrases include “. . . the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odor . . .” Stylistically, these descriptions interrupt the sentence’s natural progression of subject-verb and emphasize the weather’s negative effect on the men gathered in the barbershop.
Part of Faulkner’s greatness lies in his style and the way he adjusts this style to fit the subject under narration. He can adapt a more traditional type of writing to his stories—as he does in “Spotted Horses,” in which he uses the Old Southwest humor formula of writing—as easily as he can invent new, complicated narrative techniques. Whichever he chooses, his style parallels the complexity of his characters and gives a unique flavor to his short stories.
