Soldiers’ Pay by William Faulkner (digital e reader txt) 📕
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Soldiers’ Pay is William Faulkner’s first published novel. It begins with a train journey on which two American soldiers, Joe Gilligan and Julian Lowe, are returning from the First World War. They meet a scarred, lethargic, and withdrawn fighter pilot, Donald Mahon, who was presumed dead by his family. The novel continues to focus on Mahon and his slow deterioration, and the various romantic complications that arise upon his return home.
Faulkner drew inspiration for this novel from his own experience of the First World War. In the spring of 1918, he moved from his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, to Yale and worked as an accountant until meeting a Canadian Royal Air Force pilot who encouraged him to join the R.A.F. He then traveled to Toronto, pretended to be British (he affected a British accent and forged letters from British officers and a made-up Reverend), and joined the R.A.F. in the hopes of becoming a hero. But the war ended before he was able to complete his flight training, and, like Julian Lowe, he never witnessed actual combat. Upon returning to Mississippi, he began fabricating various heroic stories about his time in the air force (like narrowly surviving a plane crash with broken legs and metal plates under the skin), and proudly strode around Oxford in his uniform.
Faulkner was encouraged to write Soldiers’ Pay by his close friend and fellow writer Sherwood Anderson, whom Faulkner met in New Orleans. Anderson wrote in his Memoirs that he went “personally to Horace Liveright”—Soldiers’ Pay was originally published by Boni & Liveright—“to plead for the book.”
Though the novel was a commercial failure at the time of its publication, Faulkner’s subsequent fame has ensured its long-term success.
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- Author: William Faulkner
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He paused mountainous and shapeless in his casual black, yearning upon the other. Mr. Saunders rose from his chair and the rector took his arm, lest he escape.
“Yes, that is best. We will see her together and talk it over thoroughly before we make a definite decision. Yes, yes,” the rector repeated, flogging his own failing conviction, spurring it. “This afternoon, then?”
“This afternoon,” Mr. Saunders agreed.
“Yes, that is our proper course. I’m sure she does not understand. You don’t think she fully understands?” (This was Donald, my son. He is dead.)
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Saunders agreed in his turn.
Jones found his pipe at last and nursing his bruised hand he filled and lit it.
VShe had just met Mrs. Worthington in a store and they had discussed putting up plums. Then Mrs. Worthington, saying goodbye, waddled away slowly to her car. The negro driver helped her in with efficient detachment and shut the door.
I’m spryer than her, thought Mrs. Burney exultantly, watching the other’s gouty painful movement. Spite of she’s rich and got a car, she added, feeling better through malice, suppressing her own bone-aches, walking spryer than the rich one. Spite of she’s got money. And here approaching was that strange woman staying at Parson Mahon’s, the one that come here with him and that other man, getting herself talked about, and right. The one everybody expected to marry him and that he had throwed down for that boy-chasing Saunders girl.
“Well,” she remarked with comfortable curiosity, peering up into the white calm face of the tall dark woman in her dark dress with its immaculate cuffs and collar, “I hear you are going to have a marriage up at your house. That’s so nice for Donald. He’s quite sweet on her, ain’t he?”
“Yes. They were engaged for a long time, you know.”
“Yes, they was. But folks never thought she’d wait for him, let alone take him sick and scratched up like he is. She’s had lots of chances since.”
“Folks think lots of things that aren’t true,” Mrs. Powers reminded her. But Mrs. Burney was intent on her own words.
“Yes, she’s had lots of chances. But then Donald has too, ain’t he?” she asked cunningly.
“I don’t know. You see, I haven’t known him very long.”
“Oh, you ain’t? Folks all thought you and him was old friends, like.”
Mrs. Powers looked down at her neat cramped figure in its airproof black without replying.
Mrs. Burney sighed. “Well, marriages is nice. My boy never married. Like’s not he would by now: girls was all crazy about him, only he went to war so young.” Her peering, salacious curiosity suddenly left her. “You heard about my boy?” she asked with yearning.
“Yes, they told me, Dr. Mahon did. He was a good soldier, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. And them folks got him killed with just a lot of men around: nobody to do nothing for him. Seems like they might of took him into a house where womenfolks could have eased him. Them others come back spry and bragging much as you please. Trust them officers and things not to get hurt!” Her washed blue eyes brooded across the quiet square. After a time she said: “You never lost no one you loved in the war, did you?”
“No,” Mrs. Powers answered, gently.
“I never thought so,” the other stated fretfully. “You don’t look like it, so tall and pretty. But then, most didn’t. He was so young,” she explained, “so brave. …” She fumbled with her umbrella. Then she said briskly:
“Mahon’s boy come back, anyway. That’s something. ’Specially as he’s taking a bride.” She became curious again, obscene: “He’s all right, ain’t he?”
“All right?”
“I mean for marriage. He ain’t—it’s just—I mean a man ain’t no right to palm himself off on a woman if he ain’t—”
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Powers curtly, leaving her cramped and neat in her meticulous airproof black, holding her cotton umbrella like a flag, stubborn, refusing to surrender.
VI“You fool, you idiot, marrying a blind man, a man with nothing, practically dead.”
“He is not! He is not!”
“What do you call him then? Aunt Callie Nelson was here the other day saying that the white folks had killed him.”
“You know nigger talk doesn’t mean anything. They probably wouldn’t let her worry him, so she says he—”
“Nonsense. Aunt Callie has raised more children than I can count. If she says he is sick, he is sick.”
“I don’t care. I am going to marry him.”
Mrs. Saunders sighed creakingly. Cecily stood before her, flushed and obstinate. “Listen, honey. If you marry him you are throwing yourself away, all your chances, all your youth and prettiness, all the men that like you: men who are good matches.”
“I don’t care,” she repeated, stubbornly.
“Think. There are so many you can have for the taking, so much you can have: a big wedding in Atlanta with all your friends for bridesmaids, clothes, a wedding trip. … And then to throw yourself away. After your father and I have done so much for you.”
“I don’t care. I am going to marry him.”
“But, why? Do you love him?”
“Yes, yes!”
“That scar, too?”
Cecily’s face blanched as she stared at her mother. Her eyes became dark and she raised her hand delicately. Mrs. Saunders took her hand and drew her resisting on to her lap. Cecily protested tautly but her mother held her, drawing her head down to her shoulder, smoothing her hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to say that. But tell me what it is.”
Her mother would not fight fair. She knew this with anger, but the older woman’s tactics scattered her defenses of anger: she knew she was about to cry. Then it would be all up. “Let me go,” she said, struggling, hating her mother’s unfairness.
“Hush, hush. There now, lie here and tell me
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