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Applying the Formalism Theory in Faulkner’s Dry September

Formalism theory looks at what the text or another form of literature means by paying attention to the structure that the work is operating on, and the specific literary devices adopted and disregarding other factors. The application of formalism theory to Faulkner’s Dry September is useful to the text because it overlooks the cultural and social issues being addressed and instead focuses on different literary devices that are used.

This paper seeks to show how the formalism theory is applied to texts by overlooking all other issues that are discussed and only looking at the literary devices employed (Shmoop Editorial Team). Formalists do not concern themselves with the historical context of text but are more into looking at the literary techniques used and so on. The literary device used in ‘Dry September’ by Faulkner is through a narrator’s point of view who doesn’t give away too much regarding the inner minds of the characters save for Minnie. The dialogues between the characters are limited, and one is left with no clue as to what happened. Maybe the narrator doesn’t want the truth to be known so that emphasis can be on the style that the work is done. Comment by neerav verma: Here I want you to include quote from the story which will be evidence for the point you made that dialogues are limited Which dialogue is Limited? Give example Elaborate it more using phrases like This is because, what I mean by this is that, For example etc Comment by neerav verma:

The ending of the text states, ‘there was no movement, no sound, not even an insect. The dark world seemed to lie stricken beneath the cold moon and the lidless stars’. What happened between Minnie and Will is not known, and the narrator leaves it at that. The formalists will not concern themselves with what happened to the characters too because they’ll be too busy studying the style that has been adopted in the text by looking at the different devices which include dialogue. Comment by neerav verma: Please elaborate it more by talking about metaphors and similes like Cold moon, lidless stars, dark world Why had Faulkner used these metaphors explain?

Works Cited

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Formalism." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 27 Jul. 2018.

Changes needed see below and also two comments in above body paragraphs

1. First of all in introduction I need something to be quoted text below provided by our instructor

· As you know because you’ve been paying attention in class, Formalism is a theory of reading that focuses primarily on very close reading of the elementary particles of a text: to words, especially odd words like metaphors and similes, and to phrases and sentences. Formalists are interested in what you can call a Forensic or Linguist approach to stories—and novels, poems, plays, video games, ads, songs, etc. It is the most intrinsic form of reading that sees the text first and foremost as black marks on a white page that, somehow, produce meaning. Formalists are, as such, interested in figuring out how the words of a story hold the narrative together, how the words produce a sense of who the characters are (characterization) and why the setting is the way it is (psychological setting). Formalism rejects older and more subjective or extrinsic attention to biographical and sociological or historical matters; if it considers those elements at all, it does so after it has done an exhaustive reading of the text. Formalism treats everything as a text produced with words. Romeo and Juliet may have been modelled on real people, but they don’t exist; rather, they are simulations generated by words. This makes perfect sense given that, as Culler says in our textbook, all literature is “language organized to attract attention to the linguistic structures themselves” (28). All literature is, for Formalists, a “linguistic event which projects a fictional world includes speaker, actors, events, and an implied audience (an audience that takes shape through the work’s decisions about what must be explained and what the audience is presumed to know)” (30-1). The objective in a formalist analysis is to understand "how the text works", which can be done only through close focus on the words, phrases, sentences and talking about these things as words, phrases, sentences instead of leaping from the text to more extraneous knowledge of the world. It is a linguistic-based approach to the text. Keywords in Formalist Theory include the following: signifier/signified, literal/figural, tone, metaphor, irony, simile, personification, characterisation, psychological setting, style, diction.

2. Secondly I need my thesis to be answering the question

Applying formalism theory to dry September helps me to understand text of the story……

Not the exact phrase “The application of formalism theory to Faulkner’s Dry September is useful to the text because”

3. Also in one body paragraph It is mandatory that you should use idea from this paragraph. Because I need to include it in my essay. However it is not good paragraph but it is the one I submitted to my instructor last week.

Please include what ever you understand from it Comment by neerav verma:

Faulkner in his story “Dry September” appears to be using symbolism of weather to interpret his deep insights. The opening line of the story “Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass: the rumor, the story, whatever it was” anticipates murder of someone in the story. Faulkner uses the word ‘bloody’ to describe September twilight. In the first section of the story Faulkner uses the metaphor of “dead air” to describe the weather. This is significant as it in one way or another foreshadows to what will happen to Will Maye later in the story. Also, in the third section of the story Faulkner describes the air, though this time he uses word “lifeless”. He also describes day as having “died in pall of dust”. What he means by this is that residents of Jefferson could be morally died particularly McLendon and the lynch mob who are taking law into their own hand. Therefore, ‘bloody twilight’, ‘Dead and lifeless air’ and ‘died in pall of dust’ are symbol of bereavement and dry atmosphere of September.

Somewhere in essays talk about metaphors and similes or characterization or psychological setting.