The Indian-White Cultural Relationships in Faulkner's Four Indian Stories

• Main Authors: Sheng-hui Hung, 洪聖惠
• Other Authors: Wen-ching Ho
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1994
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/94117460737908475601

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.