Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 147

Humor in William Faulkner

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Mink, it is as if the entire hamlet and the reader had forgotten about
Mink.
Certainly the horses themselves are enough to take the
attention of the reader and the characters, but if there is any
attentive capacity left, it is ta ken by the Texan, an apparent
stereotype out of American popular culture but with a love of
gingersnaps. The Texan is filled with bravado and an ill-founded
optimism that the horses can be gentled. The Texan's bravado and
optimism is seen in his wonderful speeches in which he describes
what the readers have already perceived as the largely fictitious
good qualities of the horses.
The combination of Flem and the Texan as owners or as owner
and agent is incongruous. If the Texan represents one figure out of
popular culture, Flem may represent another, the silent, but scheming
financial trickster. The Texan is talkative, Flem is silent; the Texan
appears to have a sense of humanity, Flem lacks such a sense; the
Texan claims ownership of the horses, and Flem does not; yet, it is
Flem who probably owns them, but the question of ownership is left
unanswered. Flem's trial only emphasizes the lack of certainty; it
clarifies nothing.
Like the porter scene in Macbeth, the "Spotted Horses" story
conflicts in mood with the tragedy that surrounds it, but the "Spotted
Horses" episode, unlike the porter scene, combines the comic with the
pathetic. Most of the early parts of the story and most of the later
chase are comic, but the episodes that deal with Henry Armstid and
his wife are pathetic, as are some others, and the reader wonders
whether to laugh at the antics of the horses and their buyers or to
feel sorry for Armstid and his wife.
The "Spotted Horses" episode clearly acts to prevent
resolution in three ways. First, Faulkner refocuses the attention of his
reader from Mink to the horses, only returning to Mink as an
anticlimax. Second, the story itself is unresolved because of the
uncertainty regarding responsibility. Finally, even the mood of the
story is unclear.
In the version of "Barn-Burning" that appears in T he
Hamlet, Faulkner combines the comic story with the conflict between
observer and actor that he used in Light in August, As I Lay Dying,
and other novels. The original version of "Bam-Buming," by contrast,
is told by an onaniscient narrator, is not told as a primarily comic tale.