Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 148

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and does not emphasize the contrast between observer and actor. The
original version has a few comic incidents. The Hamlet’s version is
rich in humor and is told by Ratliff to Jody Varner with the intention
of frightening Jody. Ratliff apparently received much of his
information from people who had observed the events. The
obserrvations of several characters are filtered through the
consciousness of Ratliff and presented either to the reader or to the
characters Ratliff tells stories, a change and refinement of the
earlier technique.
The Town is the second novel of the trilogy. It also makes use
of the comic story. The most important and most intriguing of the
comic stories in The Town severely stretches the definition of comic
story. It ends with the death and burial of Eula Varner Snopes and
with her epitaph, "A Virtuous Wife is a Crown to Her Husband, Her
Children Wse and Call Her Blessed."* ^
In a sense, the story of Eula's infidelity, death and burial is a
tragic story with a comic form. The incidents are tragic, Eula's death
cannot be taken any other way, but the story ends with a punch line,
and like other good comic stories, this story builds up to this punch
line which, like many good punch lines, nevertheless comes as a
surprise.
The humor of the punch line derives, like much of Faulkner's
humor, from the combination of conflicting elements. The punch line
adds to the story of an unfaithful wife the statement that she was
virtuous. Of course, everyone in the town realizes that Eula was not
virtuous in the normal sense of the word, but the epitaph confuses the
reaction of both the reader and the observers within the novel by
raising the questions of whether virtue and faithfulness are, in fact,
synonymous, and whether ordinary standards of virtue apply to Eula.
The stories of Gavin's love for Eula and Linda contain several
examples of humor, most of which derive from Gavin's simultaneous
and contradictory desires. He would like to have sexual intercourse
with Eula (later Linda), but he also desires to continue to think of
them as undefiled. His ambivalent attitudes are confusing not only to
himself, but also to many of Faulkner's readers.
Faulkner continues to create comic conflict in The Mansion. In
the introduction to The Mansion Faulkner acknowledges changes from
the earlier two novels. He attributes the changes to "motion," his
additional knowledge of the human heart and of the characters,*^