The Story Archive

The Hamlet

William Faulkner · 1940 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Modernist

Flem Snopes arrives at Frenchman's Bend as a clerk in Will Varner's store, and within a few years the Snopeses hold the store, the blacksmith shop and the Varner daughter. The country's own talk carries the book, through a horse auction that ruins everybody, an idiot in love with a cow, and a salted patch of ground where treasure is supposed to lie. First of the Snopes trilogy, built partly out of stories Faulkner had been publishing for a decade.

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Attributes

Genre
TragicomedySatire
Theme
Wealth & GreedClass & InequalityAmbition & HubrisTradition
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
TricksterAnti-HeroEveryman
Plot structure
EpisodicRags to RichesPolyphonic
Symbol / motif
The HarvestThe EstateGold / TreasureFire
Conflict
vs Societyvs Person
Mode / tone
ComicIronicRealist
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues