51 pages • 1 hour read
William FaulknerSanctuary
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1931A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Nature
The natural world is often brought up in the narration of Sanctuary, setting the mood and tone of scenes. There are elements of the gothic genre in Faulkner’s natural descriptions, particularly those of the Old Frenchman place. Being on the outskirts of town, the landscape around it is wilder, just like the activities that take place there.
It is repeatedly mentioned that it is spring. The events of the book take place over the months of May and June 1929, and Benbow in particular is attuned to the season. He remarks on it frequently, and the renewal of the Earth seems to parallel in some ways the renewal Benbow feels he is experiencing by leaving his family and through working for no pay on Goodwin’s trial. Just after he loses the case in the car ride on the way home, he looks out the window and says, “‘It does last,’ Horace said. ‘Spring does. You’d almost think there was some purpose to it.’” (285), representing his loss of faith in this transformation.
It is significant that Temple and Gowan were supposed to be on their way to a baseball game, an outdoor event, when Gowan crashed the car. Temple tries to escape the Old Frenchman place by running toward the nature around it, and when her plan is foiled, she is returned to the indoors and confinement. When Temple is in Memphis she is alienated from the natural world, not allowed to leave Miss Reba’s place, and instead turns to drinking. At the very end of the novel when Temple is trying to move on from her experiences, she and her father are seen in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, engaging with nature in a controlled form.
Alcohol
Alcohol is a presence throughout the entirety of Sanctuary, a representation both of the criminal underworld and high society. The motif of alcohol and its consumption is often used to further the theme of social pressures. Gowan’s repeated refrain that he “learned to drink like a gentleman” while at the University of Virginia is meant to be a mark of status and prestige (34). In reality, his drinking problem is what leads him and Temple to be stuck at the Old Frenchman place, his intoxication keeping them from leaving and keeping him from protecting Temple. He is unable to confront this, immediately looking for a drink to drown out the shame he feels when he realizes what he has done.
Alcohol is often mentioned in connection with criminality. Since Sanctuary is set during Prohibition, alcohol and its consumption are technically illegal. Goodwin’s bootlegging operation, however, is ignored when it is useful for the town to ignore it, only shutting it down when social pressures dictate it should be. It is also seen as a force that corrupts innocence. Temple displays a growing dependence on alcohol at Miss Reba’s, and Benbow goes on a rant against alcohol, saying, “I’m going to have a law passed making it obligatory upon everyone to shoot any man less than fifty years old that makes, buys, sells or thinks whiskey” (162) when he is concerned for his teenaged stepdaughter—though Benbow drinks himself. The tension between the idea of “gentlemanly” drinking and alcohol’s association with the criminal and corrupt is yet another contradiction within the world of Sanctuary.
Eyes
Eyes repeatedly appear as symbols of a character’s inner state and characteristics. Popeye’s eyes again connect him to the artificial or mechanical, as they “looked like rubber knobs, like they’d give to the touch and then recover with the whorled smudge of the thumb on them” (5-6). His name, too, references eyes, implying the bulging eyes of a corpse of the pop of a gun.
The narrative mentions Tommy’s eyes several times as well. They are described as growing brighter and brighter the angrier he becomes over Temple’s treatment. In contrast to the artificiality of Popeye’s eyes, Tommy’s are distinctly alive and compassionate. As his “eyes glowed again, the pale irises appearing for an instant to spin on the pupils like tiny wheels” (97) the description gives the impression of movement and vitality. Though Tommy is only present for a small portion of the novel, his eyes depict him as full of life.
Temple’s eyes receive many references, particularly to their blankness. After her abduction, her eyes (and her whole countenance) grow more and more blank. At the height of her distance from her old life, as she attempts to have sex in the bar with Red, her eyes are described as having the “blank rigidity of a statue’s eyes” (232), alienating her from humanity and internal life. Though these descriptions become more pronounced after her abduction, even her initial description mentions blankness, “her eyes blankly right and left looking” (29), implying some internal emptiness in Temple from the start and positioning her as a monument, of sorts, of the Old South.
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By William Faulkner
