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A 3 page book review and personal reaction to Knight's Gambit by William Faulkner, which is a collection of five mystery stories and one novella that all feature the same character, a lawyer practicing in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi named Gavin Stevens. What makes this collection fascinating is not only Faulkner's adaptation of the detective fiction genre to his favorite locale, but the stories collectively show the evolution of the Stevens' evolving conceptualization of truth and the proper application of justice. Throughout the course of the collection, Stevens' orientation moves away from supporting impartial legal justice towards a stance wherein this character favors instead his own self-made, self-interpreted form of social justice. No other sources cited.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khfkg.rtf
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Mississippi named Gavin Stevens. What makes this collection fascinating is not only Faulkners adaptation of the detective fiction genre to his favorite locale, but the stories collectively show the
evolution of the Stevens evolving conceptualization of truth and the proper application of justice. Throughout the course of the collection, Stevens orientation moves away from supporting impartial legal justice towards
a stance wherein this character favors instead his own self-made, self-interpreted form of social justice. The first stories in the volume, which are entitled "Smoke" and "Monk," serve primarily
to introduce the character in interesting circumstances. In fact, the premise for the conclusion in "Smoke" is so implausible, one wonders if Faulkner intended it to be intentionally somewhat unbelievable.
Stevens establishes that the murderer favored an unusual, but easily recognizable brand of cigarette, whose smoke gives off a distinctive odor. A small box that was closed when
the body was discovered presumably will have sufficient smoke in it to be identifiable (Faulkner 33). The murderer implicates himself when he jumps up and flaps "at the fading smoke"
when Stevens opens the box (Faulkner 33). In this story, it is clear that Stevens considers himself to be an impartial officer of the court, which offers the reader a
starting point by which to judge his slow drift away from this position towards enforcing justice as he sees it. In "Monk," Faulkner shows that Stevens perspective is changing
due to the corruption that he sees within the criminal justice system. In this story, Stevens walks out of a hearing by the state pardons board in a rage
of self-righteous indignation. As he back to his home in Jefferson, Faulkner writes that he was "glad of the heat...glad to be sweating, sweating out of himself the smell and
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