Speech Story

Christina Collinge

COM 3330/04

April 20, 2011

300-Word Speech Story

The Noble Prize Speech That Will Always Be Remembered

     William Faulkner was awarded The Noble Prize in Literature 1949 “for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel." He accepted The Nobel Prize a year later on December 10, 1950 in Stockholm, Sweden.

     On that December day in 1950, no one knew that the speech that Faulkner made when accepting his Noble Prize, would make history. This speech is now titled one of American Rhetoric’s Top 100 Speeches.

     In Faulkner’s speech, it was clear that he did not want the fame or glory that went along with accepting such a prestigious award. “I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work -- a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before,” Faulkner said. He wanted to instead, dedicate his hard work to other young men and women who shared the same dedication as he did and teach them his reality of literature.

     Faulkner said to all the young people in his speech that they must write about love and the truths of the heart, such as love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice. If people cannot write about the things that matter in this world, then they “will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man.” However, if people write about these things and write with their heart, Faulker said that man would then prevail, “because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

     “The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”