Those who have been abandoned by God have also abandoned themselves - Faulkner's The Temple

Although The Temple was Faulkner's own most critical work, and in 1932 when he wrote a preface to the modern library of novels, he emphasized that he wrote the book out of vulgar ideas, with purely profitable motives, and with a sensational effect using appalling horrors, it was the only book he sold well as soon as it was published.

Even so, today it seems that "The Temple", although it is Faulkner's most pessimistic work, is also one of the most wonderful works, dark and manic and bloody, which will make people feel like they are about to suffocate.

The synopsis of the story is that of a woman abandoned by her boyfriend, Tampor, who is trapped in the abyss of doom, abused by a sexually incompetent person and then sold into a brothel. This sexually incompetent person is called Goldfish Eye and is a liquor seller.

He killed people and blamed people, for the reason that Tampole knew best, and she even had some responsibility for it, but she was instigated or coerced into perjury, resulting in innocent people being lynched by the people.

Ironically, Goldfish Eye was later sentenced to death for his own hairstyle.

Faulkner uses a fast-paced approach to push a large number of highly refined details directly in front of the reader, and deliberately omits some blank spaces to force the reader into the storyline, participate in creation and imagination.

The novel is based on the "Prohibition Order" issued by the United States in 1920 and 1933, which led to the prevalence of the black market to sell illegal liquor, bureaucratic corruption, and gangsters.

The southern plantation economy and values collapsed after the Civil War, and the descendants of the old traditional class, despite their willingness to change the status quo, lacked the courage and strength to live according to the laws of the old South.

In the novel, you can feel the confrontation of classes everywhere, the moments of the characters' tense personalities, and maybe this is the atmosphere of that era.

In the novel everyone is selfish, narcissistic, hypocritical and cold. The first thing Tampole did after being damaged was to look in the mirror, and she cared only about her beauty and not her soul. Like the narcissists in Greek mythology, goldfish eyes were concerned with their own hairstyle before they were executed, without any remorse.

Those who have been abandoned by God have also abandoned themselves, or that they cannot relate to people, and only they are left in their world. There is no place for them in heaven, no seat in hell, so they can only continue to sink in purgatory on earth.

Great novels always bring people deep thinking!!!