William Faulkner’s Pierrot and His Shade as Personae in His Early Works and Novels

Abstract

The marriage of Estelle Oldham he had loved caused William Faulkner to desperately apply for a fighter pilot of RAF in Canada in 1918. The armistice of the World War I destroyed his dream of becoming an aviator but led him to the performance of a wounded pilot officer in Oxford, his hometown, as well as in his family. From this fake experience of shot down in the air battle, Faulkner's genius created characters of severely wounded pilots, first in verse and then in fiction. Estelle Franklin, who sometimes came back home from overseas and made a long stay, were origins of Faulkner's creative energy, objects of dedication of his poems, and models of nymphs and young girls in his work. In his play, The Marionettes, Faulkner created two types of characters, Pierrot and his Shade, who have their descendants in his early novels such as Soldiers' Pay, Mosquitoes, and Flags in the Dust / Sartoris. In Benjy (Benjamin Compson) in The Sound and the Fury, these two types successfully merge into one.