ABSTRACT
Practically all of Faulkner's novels are bathed in an atmosphere of, and culminate in, implacable tragedy. Though there are occasional touches of tenderness, there is no intrusion ofirony, no attempt at metaphysical or religious consolation and certainly none at justifying the actions of the characters, nearly all of whom are at the mercy of their biological impulses or caught in a web of circumstance from which they cannot possibly escape. Faulkner has never, so far as I know, sought to defend his uncompromising treatment by depending, as does Farrell for example, on the thought contained in the bitter lines of A. E. Housman:
And how am I to face the odds of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.
