Game Imagery and Game-Consciousness in Faulkner's Fiction

Abstract

This imagery largely takes form of metaphors, similes, patterns of behavour which are distinctly game-like, and descriptions of actual games. Poker, dice, hunting, checkers, and chess are games most frequently mentioned, but one also finds horse-racing, airplane-racing, football, wrestling, and duel. Although these games differ from one another in their physical structure, all of them share a common quality-they are all contests, situations in which men struggle against human and/or non-human forces in order to win some particular prize. It is element of contest which gives Faulkner's game imagery a uniform thematic significance in entire range of his fiction. In almost every instance in which one finds a game image in Faulkner's narrative, image illuminates fact that Faulkner's characters are confronting human experience as though it were merely a contest-they regard other human beings as opponents to be beaten or as pawns to be manipulated and used, and they pursue their private goals with guile and cunning, observing no ethic save that of game-world: to win is summum bonum, to lose is only evil. The consciousness of such characters may be described as a game-consciousness, a form of consciousness which operates on assumption that life is an imp rsonal game, to be played with caution, shrewdness, and utmost of strategy. In course of this study it will become increasingly evident that game-consciousness always has a dehumanizing effect upon human relationships. With his emphasis on rivalry and intrigue, game-conscious character has no place in his scheme of life for such basic values as love, pity, sympathy, and mutual trust-values wh ch Faulkner has designated as the verities of human heart: