470th Birthday of Miguel de Cervantes

               One month ago, precisely on 29th September, the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes would complete 470 years old, so this post is a tribute to him. When I was in the university I had to analyse his main book, and in order to do this I read almost entirely his masterpiece, and read two others books that analysed his book "Dom Quixote." "The Theory of the Novel," by Gyorgy Lukacs and "Myths of Modern Individualism," by Ian Watt. The subject Theory of Literature was one of my favorite when I was studying Idioms in the university. "Dom Quixote" is one of most read and studied books of all time, and is considered the birth of the modern novel.  This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes. The second was published at  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Miguel-de-Cervantes. The third was published at  https://www.expatica.com/es/about/The-enduring-literary-legacy-of-Don-Quixote-writer-Cervantes_453828.html

               Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) was a Spanish writer who is widely regarded as the greatest writer in Spanish language. His masterpiece Dom Quixote has been translated into more languages than any other book except the Bible. His major work, Dom Quixote is considered the first modern novel, a classic of Western literature, and is regarded among the best works of fiction ever written. In 1569, in forced exile from Castile, Cervantes moved to Rome, where he worked as chamber assistant of a cardinal. Then he enlisted as a soldier and continued his military life until 1575, when he was captured by Barbary pirates. In Rome, he focused his attention on renaissance and knowledge of Italian literature. In Esquivias, Toledo, in 1584, he married Catalina de Salazar. Her uncle Alonso de Quesada is said to have inspired the character of Dom Quixote. Over the next 20 years, Cervantes led a nomadic existence, working as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada and as a tax collector. In 1606, Cervantes settled in Madrid, where he remained for the rest of his life. If a remark which Cervantes himself makes in the prologue of Dom Quixote is to be taken literally, the idea of the work occurrred to him while in jail. Cervantes' idea was to give a picture of real life and manners, and to express himself in clear language. The intrusion of everyday speech into a literary context was acclaimed by the reading public. Dom Quixote certainly reveals much narrative power, considerable humour, a mastery of dialogue, and a forceful style. Of the two parts written by Cervantes, perhaps the first is the more popular with the general public, containing the famous episodes of the tilting at windmills, the attack on the flock of sheep, and the episode with the barber and the shaving basin. The second part shows more constructive insight, better delianeation of character, improved style, and more realism and probability in its action.

                   On the voyage his ship was attacked and captured by pirates, Cervantes and his brother were sold into slavery in Algiers. The letters he carried magnified his importance in the eyes of his captors. This had the effect of raising his ransom price, and thus prolonging his captivity, while also, it appears protecting his person from death or mutilation. In 1580, three years after his brother had earned his freedom, Cervantes's family with the aid and intervetion of the Trinitarian friars demanded for his release. Cervantes's striking modern narrative gives vioces to a dazzling assortment of diverse beliefs and perspectives. His inclusion of many differing opinions constitues a provision of multiple voices, who deemed it essential to the development of the modern novel. Cervantes's influence resonates in the popular term "quixotic" and the and the immediately recognizable forms of his two major protagonists, whose adventures reappear continually across the cultural landscape in theatre, film, opera and even comic books. By illuminating the many differences in and surrounding his world. Cervantes placed in doubt the previous ways of portraying that world. Whether those were literary or historical. Criticism in the late 20th century began to focus on Cervantes's preoccupations with contemporary economic and historical events. The 1609 expulsion of the Moriscos, the correct governance of Spain's colonies, and the exploitation of slaves are often considered polemical topics for his readers.

                Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, who died in 1616 is considered the father of the modern novel, with his Don Quixote often is listed as one of the world's greatest works of fiction. Cervantes biographer Jean Canavaggio, a literature professor, explains why the author remains an enduring literary figure and what makes Don Quixote popular  more than 400 years after it was written. Is Cervantes a literary giant? Answer: "We say that Cervantes created the modern novel. He let his character speak for themselves instead of a narrator recounting their tale. They somehow internalise their adventures. In the 17th century, his novel was greatly appreciated but he was not considered a major writer. It was translated and enjoyed great success but was seen as typifying Spain at the time. We say that Don Quixote is an encarnation of Spain, a character that embodies its decadence and its missed encounter with modernity. Then in the 18th century things begin to change. People realised that there is something new in the characters and in the telling of their adventures. This revolutionised the novel since it was no longer what was being told but the way in which the character told it. The German romantics will see in Don Quixote the bible of humanity. Various writers in different countries follow in his footsteps - Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary is a sort of feminine Don Quixote and there are the Russians with Dostoyevsky. Why is Don Quixote famous world-wide? Answer: This book is well-known for two reasons. Firstly, it has many readers, altough certainly not as many as Harry Potter or Millenium. And then there are those who have heard of the character mainly through his adventures with the windmill. On the other hand, he makes you laugh because he is anachronistic. But on the other hand, he sticks to his ideals. This has captured the imagination of the art world. No other myth in the history of modern literature is as universally recognisable. Not even Faust or Don Juan. 

The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency

                  The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, once said, "transparency is for Governments and big corporations, privacy is for individuals." This summarizes his activism for freedom of speech and for governmental and transnational corporations transparency and for individual's privacy. We all must engage in such activism. A better politics and governance, a more democratic  and inclusive political system, and respect for our right to privacy, depend on this fight. This post is a summary of  a book review from the book with the title above and published at  http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/6227/1787

                 A swarm of research has been buzzing around subjects such as WikiLeaks ( and other platform of digital disclosure), open government initiatives, and antisecrecy advocacy. While communication scholars explicate their theoretical implications and assess their practical effects, the causal factors that helped  spur their development have received little attention. Our field urgently needed a text that, rather than taking for granted the artifacts of today's culture of transparency, puts this culture in a historical and sociological context. The latest book by Michael Schudson valuably fills this need by examining a set of social, political, and cultural shifts from the Cold War era, which propelled a new model of demoracy in which people could, as never before, expect "freedom of information" and transparency from their government. This type of democracy has been characterized alternately as "advocacy democracy," and "monitory democracy." Schudson introduces each of these before ultimately endorsing political scientist John Keane's idea of monitory democracy. He observes how "modern democracies...especially after 1945, have added new mechanisms of representation that allow continuous, rather than episodic, representation; popularly generated rather than party-controlled representation; and many platforms for entrepreneurial democratic action. By his lights, these developments contribute to a democratic practice in which various actors and institutions keep an eye on one another, engendering a political system that is "more representative than ever." We tend to think of the advent of political polling, fact-checking, and watchdog organizations as key players in this new monitorial culture. But we could also think of the way in which politicians send "trackers" with handheld cameras to their opponents' rallies in hopes of recording a gaffe or the way in which news organizations have begun to publicly criticize each other for reporting errors and perceived bias. The bulk of Schdson's book, after all, is concerned with cultural history and media sociology, not political theory. Schudson source and synthesizes seemingly eclectic phenomena from various parts of political and popular culture to craft a comprehensive and compelling analysis. Included in this analysis, to different degrees, are the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1996, the emergence of television talk shows, which "incorporated openness as a practice and as a value;" the Inspectors General Act of 1978, which dramatically expanded government accountability; the increasing prevalence and influence of whistleblowers during the Watergate era. Schudson stes out "to sketch the emergence of a culture of disclosure... and institutionalization of civic knowing" and to explain them. He begins his analysis by stalking out a general claim and overarching observation: "In domains public, private, and professional, expanded disclosure practices have become more fully institutionalized in the past half century and the virtue and value of openeness more accepted, enough so to suggest that both the experience of being human and the experience of constructing a democracy have changed in response to a new transparency imperative and a new embrace of a right to know. The reader is then taken on a tour with several fascinating stops. It begins with examination of the origins of the Freedom of Information Act and then is followed by: the advancement of informational rights for consumers, legislative reforms which made the workings of congress more visible, the advent of more independent and contextual journalism, and the broader changes within democratic political norms that accommodated and encouraged new culture of transparency. Schudson's work is distinhuished by a knack for situating sociological analysis within historical research. This makes for engrossing narratives. He acknowledge that sociologists are more confortable investigating social structures and processes, and have much to learn from historians who "may remind us that events, unpredicted but impossible to ignore, and forceful individual personalities, not just generational cohorts or offices and roles, matter." In emphasizing the importance of pivotal events, Schudson's work departs from not only an ahistorical habit within wherein social and cultural dynamics are seen as stable and explicable products of institutional arrangements. But also included are "the happenstance of everyday politics, everyday events, and a "spirit that made right-to-know or disclosure reforms resonants with a changing culture." With a broad analytical perspective, Schudson convincingly demonstrates how individuals and events uniquely contributed to this spirit, or "what British scholar Raymond Williams called a 'structure of feeling', as institutions acted to catalyze and codify it." Schudson's book also departs  from the historian's habit of focusing on the ostensibly "historic" personalities, the presidents and media moguls who championed open government to shine a light on the work of senior bureaucrats and obscure lawmakers, the unsung agents of social change. John Moss was a California Congressman and a "longtime Democratic activist with an indomitable work ethic" who tapped into the patriotism of Cold War to promote the freedom of information legislation that ultimately became the Freedom Information Act. Esther Peterson was the Kennedy and Johnson administration official who pushed for truth-in-packaging bills before heading to work for supermarkets to initiate consumers reforms such as nutritional labeling practices. Richard Conlon was a former journalist who, for decades, headed the Democratic Study Group, a congressional caucus that used research to push progressive policies. Readers who come to this book in a university setting might be satisfied to learn much of the current culture of transparency is attribute to a "mass public with access to a critical culture in higher education" and that the expansion and shifting character of college education helps expalin not only the changing culture (as audiences increasingly obtained college degrees) but also the growing acceptance efforts to keep a more watchful eye on government and sometimes also on corporate that touches consumers directly. In his final chapter, Schudson recalls how he began his research expecting the rise of the transparency movement. A critical reading of this text suggest cultural transformation are not, in fact, as patterned and predictable as some scholars would like to believe. Nor  is this continuity something upon which we can blindly rely. "The rise of cultural support and institutional mechanisms for a right to know need to be a permanent transformation." Schudson warns. Just as those who forget dark parts of history are doomed to repeat them, those who fail to appreciate brighter parts of history are liable to fail to sustain them. "Sometimes the human spirit shifts. When it does, and when it does in a way that enhances human capacities, we should recognize it and accord it the honor it deserves." By giving us such an illuminative book that simultaneously examines a culture of information and openness as well as represents an examplar of that culture, Schudson honor that spirit indeed.

Day of the Teachers 2017

              Today, 15th of October all over Brazil is celebrated the importance of the teachers. The  improvement of education passes through the appreaciation and value their work. So, this post is a tribute to them. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leading-from-classroom-arne-duncan. The second was published at  https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-importance-of-teacher-in-our-life. The third was published at http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104136/chapters/The-Power-of-an-Effective-Teacher-and-Why-We-Should-Assess-It.aspx. The fourth was published at  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teachers-matter-now-more-_b_5269063.html

              Over the last 8 - 12 years, huge shifts have been ocurring in education. Some changes are positive, such as our nation's record high school graduation rate, narrowing achievement gaps, and a greater number of students attending college. But all types of change, particularly those that have the potential to yield the most positive outcomes, can be challenging. Change requires that we confront the status quo, demands new ways of approaching our work. Now, at a time when educators are courageously raising the bar for student achievement higher than ever before, the job of the teacher has never been more critical to the success of our children and to the prosperity of the nation. Educators frequently share that teaching is the most difficult job that anyone can have, and the most rewarding. Teachers are our nation builders, the strength of every profession in our country grows out of the knowledge and skills that teachers help to instill in our children. And as a nation, we must do much, much more to fully appreciate and support their work. With the transition to more rigorous achievement standards and better student assessment, a focus on data to drive instruction, and the use of technology to learning, teachers are carrying an incredible amount of responsibility. We are in the midst of a new era, one with more engaging lessons, creativity, and innovation, which is bringing joy back into the classroom. the state of teaching is stronger because teachers everywhere are leading from their classroom and taking on new roles to improve education. And we all know, when teaching is stronger, students benefit with increased engagement and achievement. There is no better resource for a school than teachers who are empowered and equipped to solve problems using their own talent and experience. We must do more to encourage teachers who long to share in the responsibility of leading change in our schools. Teaching has never been easy, and it never will be. It takes heart, commitment and passion. But for all the very real challenges, there is reason to be optimistic about where we are going. Why? Because of the teachers who will lead the way. They will shape the state of this profession and the future prospects of our children.

              Whether we realise it or not, a teacher is the most important influence in our life. A teacher is not necessarily one who has taught us in schools or college, they are our parents, mentors and friends too. Whosoever have something to teach is a teacher. We all must offer our gratitude to them. The best teachers are those who show us where to look but don't tell us what to see. Because good teachers educate us and the right education is to know where to look. What we need from education is to awaken intelligence in us. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the truth that is all around us but hidden from our view. To awaken this capacity in oneself and in others, is education.  There is really no end to education. It is not about reading a book or passing an examination and say that "my education is finished". Education never ends. It can not end. The whole of life, from the moment we are born to the moment we die, is a movement of learning. 

            The transformative power of an effective teacher is something almost all of us have experienced. If we were fortunate, we had numerous exceptional teachers who made school an interesting place. Those teachers possessed a passion for the subject that they taught and genuine care for the students. They inspired us to play with ideas, and pursue career in a particular field of study. Some exceptional teachers achieve celebrity status, such as Jaime Escalante, the math teacher who inspired the film Stand and Deliver, but thousands of unsung heroes go unrecognized in their work with students on a daily basis. We know intuitively that these effective teachers can have an enriching effect on the daily lives of students and their lifelong educational and career aspirations. We know now empirically that these effective teachers also have a direct influence in enhancing student learning. Years of research on teacher support the fact that effective teachers not only make students feel good about school and learning, but also that their work actually results in increased student achievement. 

             It is not easy being a teacher today. National, state and local politicians, philanthropists, researchers, journalists and many other people that never actually taught a student are deciding how and what teachers should teach and how their effectiveness should be assessed. Teachers have always played an extraordinary role in the development of their students. In recent history, Hellen Keller, Eleanor Rooselvelt, James Earl jones and Magic Johnson are just  a few of the many highly accomplished people who point to a single teacher that set them on a course toward greatness. I know there are countless other lesser-known stories of teachers who encountered troubled students and moved them onto a path toward success. Teachers are challenged to do all of that every day. We ask students, "What matters most to you, and why? It is a invitation for them to bravely share their stories. We learned that students today are not as insulated from the problems of the world as they were 30, 20 and even 10 years ago. There are no more filters, children today are exposed to everything. Third-graders worry about  human trafficking, and sixth graders mention anxiety, depression and body image. They are steadily bombarded with news of tragedies from around the world. Though the world is a safer place than it has ever been, it doesn't seem like that to a young child who consumes so much media as older students do today. Yet, students need the perspective and counsel of teachers more than ever. So how is a teacher to respond to this? 9 things teachers can do. 1) You do what you are called to do.  2) You do what students need you to do.  3) You make time to touch their hearts every day.  4) You look into students' eyes, and they see in yours that you love them.  5) You serve as the voice of reason, courage and hope.  6) You assure them with your presence that they are beautiful creature.  7) You tell them that they matter, that they are geniuses, and that the world needs their contribution.  8) You choose your words carefully, so that those words help students envision success, strech their thinking, and advance independent behaviors and actions. Well-chosen words will stick with your students the rest of their lives.  9) You teach. Your students need you more than ever.

120th Birthday of William Faulkner - Part II

             Faulkner was totally right about his worry with his right to privacy. A nightmare called dystopia starts with violations of basic human rights, and with the helping hand of a dehumanizing big media talking daily about these violations as it were a normal event, so without we realize our rights are being violated and then suddenly,we are already  living in this nightmare. Therefore we all must fight privacy violations, if you know about any of them, record, being a witness, help fight evil, because otherwise you can be the next victim. Join us in this fight, the democracy, the justice, the people and me really appreciate this humanitarian act. We all have to keep the democratic and humanitarian values, we can not tolerate an inversion of values and hypocrisy.  In this post remains the tribute to the American writer William Faulkner. This post is a summary of his essay with the complete title and subtitle of, "On Privacy." The American dream: what happened to it. The second summary was published at  http://www.vqronline.org/essay/faulkner%E2%80%99s-criticism-modern-america. The third was published at http://mwp.olemiss.edu//dir/faulkner_william/

            This was the American dream: a sanctuary on the earth for individual man: a condition in which he could be free not only of the old established closed-corporation hierarchies of arbitrary power which had oppressed him as a mass, but free of that mass into which the hierarchies of church and state had compressed and held him individually thralled and individually impotent. A dream simultaneous among the separate individuals of men so asunder and scattered as to have no contact to match dreams and hopes among the old nations of the old world which existed as nations not on citizenship but subjectship, which endured only on the premise of size and docility of the subject mass; the individual men and women who said as with one simultaneous voice: "We will establish a newland where man can assume that every individual man has inalienable right to individual dignity and freedom within a fabric of individual courage and honorable work and mutual responsibility." Not just a idea, but a condition: a living human condition designed to be co-eval with the birth of America itself. The dream, the hope, the condition which our forefathers did not bequeath to us, their heirs and assigns, but rather bequeathed us, their successors, to the dream and hope. We ourselves heired in our successive generations to the dream by the idea of the dream. And not only we, their sons born in America, but men born in the old alien repudiated lands, also felt that breath, that air, heard that promise, that proffer that there was such a thing as hope for individual man. And the old nations themselves, so old and so long-fixed in the old concepts of man as to have thought themselves beyond all hope of change, making oblation to that new dream of that new concept of man by gifts of monuments and devices to mark the portals of that inalienable right and hope: "There is room for you here from about the earth, for all you individually homeless, individually oppressed, individually unindividualized."  A free gift left to us by those who had travailed and individually endured to create it, we their successors, did not even to nourish and feed it. We needed only to remember that, living, it was therefore perishable and must be defended in its crisis. Because that dream was man's aspiration in the true meaning of the word aspiration. It was not merely the blind and voiceless hope of his heart: it was the actual inbreathe of his lungs, his lights, his living and unsleeping metabolism, so that we actually lived the dream. The dream audible in the strong uninhibited voices which were not afraid to speak, "that all individual men were created equal in one mutual right to freedom." That was the dream. Then we lost it. It abandoned us, which had supported and protected and defended us whicle our new nation of new concepts of human existence. Something happened to the dream. Many things did. This, I think, is a symptom of one of them. About ten years ago a well known literary critic, a good friend of long standing, told me that a wealthy widely circulated magazine had offered him a good price to write about me, not about my work, but about me as a private citizen. I said no, and explained why: until the writer committed a crime, his private life was his own, and not only had he the right to defend his privacy, but the public had the duty to do so since one man's liberty must stop at exactly the point where the next one's begins, and that I believed that anyone of responsibility would agree with me. Across the board in fact, a parlay, a daily triple: truth, freedom and liberty. The point is that America today any organization can postulante to itself immunity to violate the individualness, the individual privacy which he can not be an individual and lacking it which individuality he is not anything at all worth the having or keeping, of anyone who is not himself a member of some organization or group numerous enough or rich enough to frighten them off. There are occupations which are very valuable,  such as writing novels and short stories, which require, demand privacy in order to endure, live. The American sky which was once the topless empyrean of freedom, the American air which was once the living breath of liberty, are now become one vast down-crowding pressure to abolish them both, by destroying the last vestige of privacy without which man can not be an individual.

              Every great novelist has his wisdom, but he imparts it in his own mode. He doesn't make statement and offer arguments. He dramatizes fictional characters. His judgments are normally implicit, not explicit. But they engage human interest in a way in which the abstract statements of the political scientist never can. They make their appeal to the imagination. The work of the great literary artist, as a matter of fact, has never been more necessary than now. In a world which increasingly resembles the innards of a vast IBM machine, a world in which the human integers are likely to feel themselves dehumanized and left at the mercy of forces which are impersonal, we need the rich particularity and the imaginative reach of the literary artist. What he gives us is not life itself, but perhaps the next best thing to life itself: a simulacrum of life that helps us to come to terms with ourselves, to understand our history, and to get a firmer grasp on reality and truth.

            The man himself never stood taller than five feet, six inches tall, but in the realm of American literature, William Faulkner is a giant. More than simply a renowned Mississipi writer, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist is acclaimed throughout the world as one of the 20th century' greatest writers. During what is generally considered his period of greatest artistis acievement, from The Sound and the Fury, in 1929 to Go Down, Moses in 1942, faulkner accomplished in a little over a decade more artistically than most writers accomplish over a lifetime of writing. It is one of the more remarkable feats of American literature, how a young man who never graduated from high school, never received a college degree, living in a small town in the poorest state in the nation, all the while balancing a growing family of dependents and impending financial ruin, could during the Great Depression write a series of novels all set in the same small county in the South, that would one day be recognized as among the greatest novels ever written.

120th Birthday of William Faulkner

             Last Monday 25th of September, the American writer William Faulkner would complete 120 years old, so this post is a tribute to him. Besides being a Nobel Prize winner and an innovative writer, his activism for the right to privacy became his works more genuine, understandable and meaningful.  This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner. The second was published at http://www.findingdulcinea.com/guides/Education/Great-Authors-William-Faulkner.pg_. The third was published at http://www.semo.edu/cfs/teaching/4853.html. The fourth was published at  http://www.vqronline.org/essay/faulkner%E2%80%99s-criticism-modern-america

             William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897-1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Mississipi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel in literature. A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962) won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He had three younger brothers. His family, particularly his mother Maud and his maternal grandmother Leila were avid readers and his mother valued education and took pleasure in reading, so she taught her sons to read before sending them to public school and she exposed them to classics such as Charles Dickens. Faulkner's prodigious output includes his most celebrated novels such as, The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom! (1936). Faulkner was known for his experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence. In contrast to the minimalist understatement of his contemporary writer  Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner made frequent use of "stream of consciousness" and wrote often highly emotional, subtle, cerebral, complex, and sometimes Gothic stories of a wide variety of characters including former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor agrarian white or working-class southerners, and southern aristocrats.

               William Faulkner, revered modernist writer, historian and sociologist, is known for capturing the raw beauty of the rural South in all its dark complexity. In new Orleans, Faulkner met Sherwood Anderson, a writer who would become his friend and mentor. He also became friends with John McClure, a journalist who helped edit a literary magazine. In 1929, he published, "The Sound and the Fury," an experimental novel that follows the destruction of the Compson family. The novel's first scene, which shows Caddy peering in at her grandfather's funeral from her perch in a tree. Faulkner wrote the book five times. In 2004, Faith Lapidus said that between 1929 and 1936, Faulkner reinvented the novel. The Sound and the fury, may have been Faulkner favorite, but most critics believe his best work and perhaps the best American novel is "Absalom!" Published in 1936, it tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, a Southerner who marries one woman in Haiti and another in the South. He then swindles an estate from the Native Americans. Recognition for Faulkner came slowly. During the Great Depression, he continued to rely on screenplays and short stories. Readers of Faulkner rely on emotional instincts to embrace and unravel the ambiguities woven into each passage. Robert Hamblin, an expert on Faulkner's literature, tells frustrated readers to think of themselves as members of a jury. Imagine sitting in court listening to and sifting through... contradictory testimonies of a parade of witnesses, and knowing that finally you'll have to make up your mind about what actually happened and who is and is not telling the truth.

                Several novels and short stories wrtitten by Faulkner can be included on high school reading lists and if taught would enhance student experiences of American literature. Malcolm Cowley in his classic introduction to The Portable Faulkner said, "Faulkner's novels have the quality of being lived, absorbed, remembered rather than merely observed. And they have what is rare in the novels of our time, a warmth of family affection, brother for brother and sister, the father for his children, a love so warm and proud that it tries to shut out the rest of the world." It is difficult to imagine someone reading the final scenes of Light in August and not being moved by the fate of Joe. It is hard to imagine a reader can experience the journey with Bundren family to bury Addie in As I Lay Dying, and not be a better person for the experience. What student can experience Faulkner's encapsulation of the world in The Sound and the Fury and not come to a deeper understanding of himself and his place in that world? Literature allows students to understand the heritage of the past. Faulkner teaches us better than most writers what it means to be American, not just a American from the South. We must learn to share the heritage wrought by slavery and learn to understand the prejudice and greed that forged its development. More than most writers, Faulkner is able to lead us to a personal understanding of "man's inhumanity to man."

              Faulkner did not at all mind speaking out about the world in which he lived. At one time or another he complained of many features of our American life style: of our haste, of our activism-though we all said that we approved of culture, we could not find the time to read a book or listen to music- of our commercialism, of business so often pursued merely for the sake of business, of our tendency to reduce nearly all human relations to the cash nexus.  Closely allied to this fear of what your neighbors may think of you is something that sounds like its direct opposite: your own nagging desire to know the worst about your neighbor, the wish to find out all about his private life, and a willingness, if necessary, to violate his privacy. The modern vice that most outraged Faulkner, however, was the violation of one's private life. Its enormity had been brought home to him by attempted violation of his own privacy. These attempts came to a head in 1953 with the publication in Life magazine of, "The Private World of William Faulkner." Though Faulkner had begged the editors of Life to desist, they could not be persuaded to leave him. Faulkner took the matter to heart to devote to it one of his rare full-dress essays. It bears the title: "On Privacy." It constitutes his most elaborate and considered attack on the value system of contemporary America. In the essay, however, Faulkner undertakes to rise above his personal problem and take a large, overall view. What had happened to him, he tells the reader, was what had also happened on a level of much graver seriousness to more important figures such as, for instance, Charles Lindberg and J.Robert Oppenheimer. Though the nation had rejoiced in Lindberg's great achievement, it had not been able to protect his child, and when the child was kidnapped, it had not shielded his grief but had exploited it. Good manners and decency had been engulfed by the urge to make money by pandering to the public's greediness for the sensational. It is worth noting that Faulkner chose as a subtitle for his essay on privacy, "The American Dream: What Happened to it." Our republic had been born out of a dream. It had been founded to guarantee to every citizen freedom from oppression by the arbitrary power, whether of church or state; yet though the nation had been born out of a revolt against one kind of enslavement, it had capitulated to another, the individual's enslavement by a mindless and venal mob. Pushy newspaper men, in Faulkner's view, were no mere pimples on the body politic; rather, they evidence a deep and malignant growth. A long essay by Richard Goodwin, entitled, "Reflections: The American Condition."  Though range over a great number of topics, the portion of this essay that is most pertinent to Faulkner's criticism of the modern world: that is, the individual's freedom considered as an absolute end in itself and freedom as an aspect of the individual's fulfillment of himself. Goodwin insists that the purpose of the true individual are not mere individual preferences and opinions, but purposes which are consistent with those of his fellows. The true individual seeks to satisfy his own wants and to cultivate his own faculties in a manner that is consonant with the well-being of others. Goodwin remind us that Plato, in "The Republic," asserts that the greatest good is the bond of unity in which there is community of pleasure and pains, in which all citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow.