Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Analysis

In William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Faulkner takes the opportunity to talk to the “young men and women,” who are also dedicated writers. Faulkner explains to the “young men and women” what valuable writing is. Faulkner implies that man cannot write about physical dangers‒ man must write about the universal truths. Faulkner defines what valuable writing is through parallel structure and repetition in his address. In his Nobel Address, Faulkner incorporates parallel structure to answer the principle question, what is valuable writing? According to Faulkner, valuable writing includes “the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed―love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” The universal truths are parallel because they are all abstract nouns; also, since Faulkner uses the same conjunction instead of a comma, the conjunction suggests equality among the truths. Also, if the writer does not write of the universal truths, “He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and worst of all without pity or compassion,” and “He writes not of the heart but of the glands.” Faulkner creates parallel structure through argumentation by negation and prepositional phrases: “He writes not of love but of lust,” and “He writes not of the heart
He answers the question through parallel structure and repetition. He explains that valuable writing contains the universal truths― “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” Faulkner also suggests that the purpose of writing is to help man prevail. Man will not prevail because man has a voice, but because man has a soul capable of the universal truths. With the aid of writers, man will reach his greatest