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 They meet a scarred, lethargic, and withdrawn fighter pilot, Donald Mahon, who was presumed dead by his family.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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She ceased to struggle and became completely lax. “I haven’t. I just want to marry him. Let me go. Please, mamma.”
“Cecily, did your father put this idea in your head?”
She shook her head and her mother turned her face up. “Look at me.” They stared at each other and Mrs. Saunders repeated: “Tell me what your reason is.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t?”
“I can’t tell you.” She slipped suddenly from her mother’s lap but Mrs. Saunders held her kneeling against her knee. “I won’t,” she cried, struggling. The other held her tightly. “You are hurting me!”
“Tell me.”
Cecily wrenched herself free and stood. “I can’t tell you. I have just got to marry him.”
“Got to marry him? What do you mean?” She stared at her daughter, gradually remembering old rumors about Mahon, gossip she had forgot. “Got to marry him? Do you mean that you—that a daughter of mine—with a blind man, a man who has nothing, a pauper—?”
Cecily stared at her mother and her face flamed. “You think—you said that to—Oh, you’re not my mother: you are somebody else.” Suddenly she cried like a child, wide-mouthed, not even hiding her face. She whirled running. “Don’t ever speak to me again,” she gasped and fled wailing up the stairs. And a door slammed.
Mrs. Saunders sat thinking, tapping her teeth monotonously with a fingernail. After a while she rose, and going to the telephone, she called her husband downtown.
VII VoicesThe Town:
I wonder what that woman that came home with him thinks about it, now he’s taken another one. If I were that Saunders girl I wouldn’t take a man that brought another woman right up to my door, you might say. And that new one, what’ll she do now? Go away and get another man, I guess. Hope she’ll learn enough to get a well one this time. … Funny goings-on in that house. And a preacher of the gospel, too. Even if he is Episcopal. If he wasn’t such a nice man. …
George Farr:
It isn’t true, Cecily, darling, sweetheart. You can’t, you can’t. After your body prone and narrow as a pool dividing. …
The Town:
I hear that boy of Mahon’s, that hurt fellow, and that girl of Saunders’ are going to get married. My wife said they never would, but I said all the time …
Mrs. Burney:
Men don’t know. They should of looked out for him better. Saying he never wanted for nothing. …
George Farr:
Cecily, Cecily. … Is this death?
The Town:
There’s that soldier that came with Mahon. I guess that woman will take him now. But maybe she don’t have to. He might have been saving time himself.
Well, wouldn’t you, if you was him?
Sergeant Madden:
Powers. Powers. … A man’s face spitted like a moth on a lance of flame. Powers. … Rotten luck for her.
Mrs. Burney:
Dewey, my boy. …
Sergeant Madden:
No, ma’am. He was all right. We did all we could. …
Cecily Saunders:
Yes, yes, Donald. I will, I will! I will get used to your poor face, Donald! George, my dear love, take me away, George!
Sergeant Madden:
Yes, yes, he was all right. … A man on a fire-step, screaming with fear.
George Farr:
Cecily, how could you? How could you?
The Town:
That girl … time she was took in hand by somebody. Running around town nearly nekkid. Good thing he’s blind, ain’t it?
Guess she hopes he’ll stay blind, too. …
Margaret Powers:
No, no, goodbye, dear dead Dick, ugly dead Dick. …
Joe Gilligan:
He is dying, he gets the woman he doesn’t want even, while I am not dying. … Margaret, what shall I do? What can I say?
Emmy:
Come here, Emmy? Ah, come to me, Donald. But he is dead.
Cecily Saunders:
George, my lover, my poor dear. … What have we done?
Mrs. Burney:
Dewey, Dewey, so brave, so young. …
(This was Donald, my son. He is dead.)
VIIIMrs. Powers mounted the stairs under Mrs. Saunders’ curious eyes. The older woman had been cold, almost rude, but Mrs. Powers had won her point, and choosing Cecily’s door from her mother’s directions she knocked.
After a while she knocked again and called: “Miss Saunders.”
Silence was again a hushed tense interval, then Cecily’s muffled voice came through the door:
“Go away.”
“Please,” she insisted. “I want to see you a moment.”
“No, no. Go away.”
“But I must see you.” There was no reply and she added: “I have just talked to your mother, and to Dr. Mahon. Let me come in, won’t you?”
She heard movement, a bed, then another interval. Fool, taking time to powder her face. But you would, too, she told herself. The door opened under her hand.
Powder only made the traces of tears more visible and Cecily turned her back as Mrs. Powers entered the room. She could see the indentation of a body on the bed, and a crumpled pillow. Mrs. Powers, not being offered a chair, sat on the foot of the bed, and Cecily, across the room, leaning in a window and staring out, said ungraciously: “What do you want?”
How like her this room is! thought the caller, observing pale maple and a triple mirrored dressing-table bearing a collection of fragile crystal, and delicate clothing carelessly about on chairs, on the floor. On a chest of drawers was a small camera picture, framed.
“May I look?” she asked, knowing instinctively who it was. Cecily, stubbornly presenting her back in a thin, formless garment through which light from the window passed revealing her narrow torso, made no reply. Mrs. Powers approached and saw Donald Mahon bareheaded in a shabby unbuttoned tunic standing before a corrugated iron wall, carrying a small resigned dog casually by the scruff of the neck, like a handbag.
“That’s so typical of him, isn’t it?” she commented. Cecily said rudely:
“What do you want with me?”
“That’s exactly what your mother asked me, you know. She seemed to think I was interfering also.”
“Well, aren’t you? Nobody asked you to come here.” Cecily turned, leaning her hip against the window ledge.
“I don’t think it’s interference when it’s warranted though. Do you?”
“Warranted? Who asked you to interfere? Did Donald do it, or are you
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