CRITICAL: How do you understand Faulkner’s extraordinary statement in his Nobel Prize speech “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself … alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat” ?

From my own understanding, Faulkner and the context in which he wrote, immensely feared the atrocities of the World Wars. In a direct response to this, Faulkner urges his young readers to not loose hope but to look deep within and reflect on what it means to utterly and freely be human. Faulkner addresses how we are not human if we do not suffer, sweat and endure pain alone, he does so by saying he would not be a writer if he had not experienced his own loss.

Faulkner’s Nobel Prize speech is extraordinary due to its timeless nature which appeals to humans throughout the history of time. Despite written in 1950, it is still valuable today due to its enduring concepts of humanity and Faulkner’s ability to encapsulate the entirety of the human experience in his writing.