The sanctuary

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The novel Die Freistatt , engl. Sanctuary (USA 1931), is a novel by William Faulkner about crime and hypocrisy in the southern United States .

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A girl of 17, Temple Drake, is taken by a young suitor on a joyride that ends in an abandoned planter's house after an accident on the country road. A handful of schnapps distillers have settled in this house and the daughter from a good family, whose father is a judge, kindles the sexual appetites of the crooks, which prevent Temple's quick departure. In a climate of alcohol, male fantasies and mutual threats, the girl's distress increases until the head of the gang, the impotent Popeye, rapes the girl with a corn cob and deflower. As a result, Popeye shoots an accomplice. Then Popeye and the girl disappear together to a brothel in Memphis. Distiller Goodwin is arrested as a murder suspect.

The naive lawyer Horace Benbow wants to save the innocent from the gallows against numerous opposition. He mainly works with a woman who lives with Goodwin and has a child. Benbow locates Temple Drake in the brothel. In the court case, the girl testifies against Goodwin to save the gangster Popeye. Benbow didn't expect it, but lets it happen anyway. The bloody corn on the cob is seen in the trial as an indication of Goodwin's guilt. Goodwin is sentenced to death; shortly afterwards the prison is set on fire by residents of the city and he dies in the flames.

A special relationship develops between Temple Drake and Popeye during their stay in the brothel: he pampers her in a brutally romantic way like a gangster bitch - with him she experiences power, wealth and a voyeuristic sexuality. Because Popeye is desperate because of his impotence, he lets a criminal into bed with her and watches - Popeye later kills this man too. Although he cannot be prosecuted for the murder in the planter's house because of Temple's false testimony, he is later hanged for another murder, which he could not have committed because he was prevented at the time by the murder of a third man in another city . But after experiencing his unrealizable love for Temple, he doesn't care what happens to him, and he doesn't even consider it necessary to defend himself.

Benbow returns to his wife and daughter after the trial and the lynching after a long separation. Temple Drake also returns to her family.

For interpretation

The failure of Temple's young gentleman in the old farmhouse, the naivety of the lawyer who fails because of religious hypocrisy and Temple Drake, mutating into a gangster bride, paint a paper-thin world of decency in which alcoholism , racism and sexual perversion can break out at the next opportunity: only the blinds on the brothel room windows separate the world of Popeye and Temple from normality.

But all of Faulkner's characters, including the “bad ones” like Popeye and Temple, have their story and motifs from which their actions can be understood - the narrator does not work them as sympathetic , but gradually, with often surprising twists, as human out.

The title The Sanctuary could refer to both the brothel in Memphis (a refuge for the unbalanced Temple) and the city itself as a crime scene.

Edition history

Faulkner wrote the novel in the first half of 1929. The first edition appeared on February 9, 1931 in the USA.

filming

The first film adaptation, The Story of Temple Drake (USA, 1933) by Stephen Roberts with Miriam Hopkins in the lead role, was made during the so-called " Pre-Code ", which allowed for a fairly open presentation of the topic for the time. The film led to a nationwide scandal in which church associations and politicians, among others, complained about the alleged immorality of Hollywood. In response, the Hays Code , the American film censorship, was made mandatory a year later . A second film adaptation was made in 1961 as a confession of a sinner ( Sanctuary ) directed by Tony Richardson with Lee Remick and Yves Montand in the lead roles.

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