What stories should a writer tell? That’s always the question for authors, and William Faulkner wasn’t much different. Not only was Faulkner influenced by his contemporary authors, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, he was influenced by the history of the South that surrounded him. Growing up in Lafayette County, Mississippi, Faulkner had a variety of characters at his fingertips, as well as the tales of his great-grandfather, William Clark Faulkner. Faulkner drew on the turbulent experiences of his great-grandfather while first breaking into writing; later he found himself looking at the political and social landscape of the South, specifically Mississippi and New Orleans, to produce works such as Soldiers’ Pay, Mosquitoes, and Flags in the Dust. While Faulkner’s first novels garnered him very little attention, he went on to write works such as Absalom, Absalom!, Light in August, and The Sound and the Fury. He later went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1955 and 1963, among many other accolades. While Faulkner’s rise to fame isn’t well-known by most, his influence and lasting impression on Southern Literature will not soon be forgotten. Faulkner wasn’t afraid to examine the racial disparity of the South or question the lives of Southern aristocrats. Through his use of the Gothic style, his analytical and aberrant texts, and his examination of the Southern tragedy through elaborate and grotesque prose, Faulkner opens the door for his readers to inhabit a crumbling Southern landscape through a literary lens.