| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立師範大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 82 === In Collected Stories of William Faulkner, the four stories in
the section entitled "The Wilderness" display the early
cultural relationships between Faulkner's Chickasaw/Choctaw
Indians and the white people. Partly because of the
inevitability of cultural misunderstanding, and partly because
of the Indians' and the white people's incorrect attitudes
toward each other's cultures, the cultural encounters are
mostly viewed in a negative light. By and large, the cultural
relationships are one-sided relationships in the four stories,
with the sole exception of "A Courtship," where mutual
acceptance and tolerance has makde cultural interplay between
the two races possible. The Indians' attitudes toward white
culture are revealed in "A Justice" and "Red Leaves." Both
stories demonstrate how the Indians, after blindly adopting
more and more of white men's way of living, receive the harmful
influences of white culture. "A Justice" focuses on the
harmful influences of white culture on the Indian chief
Ikkemotubbe, who introduces slavery into the Indian societies.
"Red Leaves" centers on the difficulties the Indians have in
coping with slavery which also has a close relation with the
Indians' degeneration. On the other hand, as is shown in "Lo!,"
the white people adopt superior attitudes toward the Indians
and their culture. The Indians are therefore victims in their
cultural encounters with the white people. Thus, the failure of
cultural interplay between the Indians and the white people
certainly has a close correlation with the degeneration of the
supposedly inferior Indian people.
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