During the early twentieth century, public health campaigns taught Americans from all strata of society to recognize that a great threat to the health and prosperity of the South was not an enemy abroad, but rather a bloodsucking parasite living underfoot in Southern soil: hookworm. According to the information widely disseminated by these campaigns, hookworm infection was responsible for the physical "backwardness" of Southern men, women, and children. By linking physical and cognitive symptoms to a parasitic source, the public health campaign introduced a new literary tool for constructing characters who are not "quite right" that continues to be employed in contemporary fiction. This paper focuses on the so-called "lazy man's disease" (hookworm) and takes the work of William Faulkner as a case study to demonstrate how authors deployed a figurative form of hookworm to construct disabled, poor, and degenerate characters.
<span>There is a considerable dearth of criticism that applies the critical lens of Disability Studies to the works of William Faulkner. This paper hopes to contribute to the discourse on Faulkner and disability by using a Disability Studies prospective to explore the intersection of intellectual disability and the psychological coping mechanism of dehumanization in the novels </span><span><em>Sanctuary</em></span><span> and </span><span><em>The Hamlet</em></span><span>. In both novels, characters with intellectual disabilities are depicted as animals. This paper argues that Faulkner's normate characters use dehumanization to marginalize, neglect, and even abuse characters with intellectual disabilities. However, the act of dehumanization has the paradoxical effect of calling attention to the humanity and sentience of characters with intellectual disabilities.</span>
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