At-Tadzkir: Islamic Education Journal
Vol. 5 No. 2 (2026): Progressive Islamic Education

A Stylistic Analysis of Complexity in William Faulkner’s That Evening Sun

Israa Burhanuddin Abdurrahman (College of Education for Humanities, Tikrit University, Iraq)
Hajir N. Turki (College of Education for Women, Tikrit University, Iraq)
Ruqaiya Burhanuddin Abdurrahman (College of Education for Humanities, University of Al-Hamdaniya, Iraq)
Ali Hussein Hazem (College of Education for Humanities, University of Al-Hamdaniya, Iraq)
Zahraa Muharam Salman (College of Education for Humanities, University of Al-Hamdaniya, Iraq)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Jun 2026

Abstract

A stylistic analysis refers to the identification of the patterns of usage in writing. However, such an analysis is not restricted just to the description of the formal characteristics of texts, but it also tries to clarify their functional importance for the interpretation of the text. This paper tries to answer the question of how William Faulkner functions his complex style to convey meaning in That Evening Sun. It aims to check out William Faulkner's style and how he manages sentence structure and sentence length in establishing images and meaning in the text. This paper follows a mixed-methods research design. It analyzes the short story That Evening Sun according to Leech & Short's model (2007) to identify the syntactic complexity according to the different grammatical structures. The results of analysis show that Faulkner uses his complex styles as a means to convey meaning especially when it revolves around complex situations and complicated characters. The study demonstrates that teaching syntactic complexity through literary texts can enhance students' understanding of how grammatical structures serve narrative and thematic functions. It also validates Leech & Short's model (2007) as an effective framework for empirically linking stylistic choice to literary meaning in classroom contexts.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

tadzkir

Publisher

Subject

Religion Humanities

Description

At-tadzkir: Islamic Education Journal (E-ISSN 2963-8887) is an open-access scholarly journal, publishing peer-reviewed studies of Islamic Education thought and practice. It is available online to promote critical, hermeneutical, historical, and constructive conversations. At-tadzkir: Islamic ...