the sound and the fury term paper
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The Sound and the Future American Literature Term PaperTRANSCRIPT
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Collapse of the Compsons:
Moral Degradation in The Sound and the Fury
The American South’s loss in the Civil war proved to worsen the economic and
moral conditions. Its dependence on slavery and farming seemed to be the South’s
downfall. The South didn’t just plunge economically, but its societies were affected also.
As wealthy white families faced the difficult task of rebuilding their worlds without their
slave labor, blacks were trying to establish completely new lives as free Americans. Of
course, there were many conflicts and problems along the way, and they caused the
undoing of families that even had strong foundations in their society. How could any
family last when there was a great lack of love?
In The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner narrates the demise of the
Compsons, a southern family from Mississippi. The book is structured in four parts, with
Benjy, the retarded son, narrating the first part. The second part is narrated by the
psychologically fragile Quentin, and the third part is narrated by his brother, Jason, a
cruel and vindictive man. The fourth part of the book further develops the characters of
Dilsey, the housekeeper. The book begins on the Saturday before Easter Sunday when
Benjy turned thirty three. From here, the book is not chronological in any way. Benjy,
Mrs. Compson, Jason, Dilsey, and Ms. Quentin (Caddy’s daughter) were the only
members of the original Compson household remaining at the end. We learn that
Quentin had committed suicide eighteen years prior to this time at Harvard. Caddy had
gotten pregnant, had to marry someone quickly to save her and her family’s honor.
Jason who is the only one who is capable of making money mistreats his sister Caddy
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and her child Ms. Quentin. Faulkner’s novel ends with Jason yelling at a house servant
for irritating Benjy, and it is showing the family dissevered.
In The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner struggles to explain the Compson
family through four different parts in the novel. Each progress through simpler, more
mature characters. Keeping Caddy as a central focus, Faulkner uses the themes of
love, time, and sin to unify his story. The setting is in Yoknapatawpha County, a location
the author created for his novels near Jackson, Mississippi. The characters display
language and customs from that time. This allows for new historicism. The character’s
view on women are explained with feminist criticism. The book attempts to portray that if
each person doesn’t play their role in a family, the family cannot successfully survive.
Faulkner’s family experiences show how the thoughts of the lack of love come
into this story. Growing up in an unloving, but influential family, William Faulkner
portrayed his childhood troubles in The Sound and the Fury. He spent most of his life in
the South from the very beginning: “William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 in New
Albany, Mississippi into a family that played a prominent part in the history of the South”
(BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). William
Faulkner’s family appeared content and well to their community, but it truly wasn’t that
way. He was the older brother of three other boys, who all got married before him. He
never did get along with them throughout his life. One important thing about Faulkner’s
siblings that he later noted was that none of them were girls (Faulkner 159). He grew to
greatly love all his female characters because he lacked the chance to love any during
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his early life. Even though his family had a favorable role in society, they didn’t help
Faulkner when he needed it (Wittenberg 76). When Faulkner was five, they moved from
New Albany to Oxford, Mississippi. He wasn’t a great student and quit school in the
tenth grade (BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). Although
he didn’t succeed in school, he was an avid reader and also wrote poems as a child. His
influence in literature came from his mother who showed her son Dickens, Twain, and
Shakespeare and from his great grandfather who had been a well known author
(Padgett http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html). His mother
seemed to care for him, unlike the rest of the family. Estelle Oldham, Faulkner’s only
friend during this time, left him because her father had wished for her to marry a college
graduate from the University of Mississippi (BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). Estelle
became yet another female who left him in his life. Faulkner was really upset because
he had expected Estelle to be his future wife (BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml).
Faulkner’s childhood fabricated a morose foundation on which he based his future
novels.
Some of his adult life can be compared with his early life. At the outbreak of
World War I, “he was rejected by the US Army because he was too short, so he enlisted
in the Canadian Air Force” (BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). Faulkner
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faced an additional set back in his life before his writing. Although he did not see
combat, he was made an honorary second lieutenant in December, 1918 (BBC
Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). He did
see something admirable coming out of the air force that showed Faulkner he was
worth something. Faulkner later took admittance to the University of Mississippi under
English and French Literature, but he also quit that after one year (BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). Faulkner
worked in random jobs to support himself while writing poems. Many poems did get
published and some of them pertained to Estelle (BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). Faulkner
was still emotional about the girl, but had to move on. At the recommendation of a
novelist in Oxford, he took a job in New York City as an assistant in a bookstore and
also was employed as a postmaster (Padgett
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html). He didn’t really settle down
in one job. After continuing forward and publishing many novels, Faulkner worked in
Hollywood to earn money (BBC Education
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml). He found
time in between his work to write. In the middle of his life, he was in his “prolifically
productive years” while writing many great novels (Brodsky 87). Faulkner struggled
through many barriers to finally begin and continue writing.
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Faulkner’s writing career lacked a true beginning. He started writing as a young
child. When he wrote The Sound and the Fury, he didn’t have the calmest surroundings:
From any standpoint, 1928 was certainly an odd and probably a trying
time in writer’s life. That year he became 31, yet he still lived as a bachelor
in the house of a father he despised and was confronted daily with
younger brothers who were not only married but producing children.
(Wittenberg 76)
Even as Faulkner grew older, he still could not find a way to get along with his brothers.
Faulkner encountered difficulties writing this book because he had planned the novel as
a short story, and also because of his life at home. He kept writing the novel to keep
Caddy, a lovable female character, in existence longer (Coindreau 41). The fact that
Faulkner didn’t have any sisters influenced his writing. Oates explains further reasoning
for Faulkner to continue writing the novel: “When Faulkner finished the Benjy section, he
wasn’t satisfied. Some how Benjy’s view of events need to be clarified” (74). He carried
the longing to make the story more understandable to his other sections, and he
clarified the novel by the end. Faulkner said so himself that he experienced troubles to
complete The Sound and the Fury: “No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t capture
the story as it lived in his dreams, in the other world of his imaginations. He had never
anguished so much, never worked so hard to bring a story off” (Oates 75). Faulkner by
the end of his career had consummated twenty novels including Sartoris, and A Fable.
When asked to state his occupational preference in third grade teacher, he replied “I
want to be a writer like my great-grand-daddy” (Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: A
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Hypertext http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner). The fact that William Faulkner was
going to write had been decided early on. Faulkner’s great grandfather, after whom he
had been named, had written The White Rose of Memphis, a bestseller at the time as
well as other novels (Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: A Hypertext
http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner).
William Faulkner’s life greatly affected his writing. His novel, The Sound and the
Fury, indicates his reason for a strong female character: “Most of his remarks about the
genesis of his favorite novel center on Caddy, his ‘heart’s darling,’ the “beautiful and
tragic little girl” who was created to compensate for the sister he never had and the
infant daughter he was to lose” (Clarke 58). Faulkner included influential women in his
writing due to their nonexistence in his life. One could even say that he grew
emotionally attached to the women he created. Caddy being one of them, controlled his
writing in The Sound and the Fury, and that character forced him to write three
additional parts plus an appendix to his short story to transform it into a novel
(Wittenberg 76). His parents are also portrayed in this novel: “Quentin’s father, like
Murry Falkner, gives little to his sensitive son but a destructive example, and Quentin’s
mother—like Falkner’s, during a crucial period—bestows the bulk of her attention on
another child” (Wittenberg 76). William Faulkner never appreciated his father, who
couldn’t appreciate the family’s honor that both Faulkner’s great-grandfather and
grandfather had continued. Murry Falkner squandered his money that he earned from a
small business on drinking and never was there to properly look after the family
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(Napierkowski 56). This particular novel can really help determine how much influence
Faulkner’s life had on his literature.
Faulkner didn’t face many difficulties trying to get his books published, but he
was specific to how he wanted them. The Sound and the Fury made its entrance in
1929 through Norton Press after certain revisions: “At the publisher’s office in New York,
Faulkner’s friend and agent Ben Wasson revised the Benjy section by removing the
italics and ordering wider spacing between lines in text to indicate the time shifts”
(Pilkington 40). This change didn’t satisfy William Faulkner. His mind was set on
something else: “Faulkner also proposed the use of different colored inks to make the
divisions in time. Both the wide spacing and the colored inks were rejected by the
publishers” (Pilkington 40). Faulkner decided that the reader would need some sort of
help distinguishing between past and present and was forced to use italics by the
publisher. Even though these italics were meant to aid in understanding the novel, “at
times it creates confusions” (Thompson 35). For the most part, the italicized text do
successfully fulfill the author’s purpose. Thanks to an understanding publisher, Faulkner
was able to get his new and unique novels published with major incidents.
Norton Press, his publishers, did take some risks when it came to Faulkner’s
novels due to their new style and structure. There were many different reactions to this
novel, especially in foreign countries: “The reception of Faulkner in Great Britain has
been far more grudging than, for instance, in France . . . the French literary critics as a
group rather quickly sensed what Faulkner was trying to do and asserted the success of
his accomplishment” (Brooks 41). The Publisher must have foreseen the positive
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criticism that The Sound and the Fury would receive. The novels that were published
within a small period of time also related to the same topic: “While somewhat later in
conception and composition, The Sound and the Fury was published in the same year
as Sartoris (1929) and serves as an illuminating companion novel to it, offering another
(and nearly contemporary) view of the continuing collapse of the South” (Powers 24).
This most likely made a strong familiarity between Norton Press and William Faulkner
on what to expect from each other.
The Sound and the Fury is set during Faulkner’s lifetime from around 1910 to
1928, but it skips to and from the past throughout the entire novel. During that time,
things hadn’t gotten incredibly better since the Civil War when it came to earning a living
in the South. Carruth explains: “The farm population continued its steady decline” (625).
The southern states depended on their farms and plantations to support their families. It
was difficult for Southerners to leave farming to find other work because there was very
little: “Not until after Reconstruction, when the lessons of northern industrial
entrepreneurship were embraced by the chastened and newly ambitious South, did the
cult of antebellum splendor really take hold” (Matthews 97). The southerners didn’t learn
to develop their industries and make factories until they realized they weren’t
succeeding. While much of the country was earning a very respectable amount of
money and buying cars and radios, the farmers of the South were stuck in a losing
battler for financial freedom. Through these trying times, the slave’s freedom,
Reconstruction laws, and their economy fabricated negative experiences. Thus we find:
“It had learned what it was to be faced with economic, social, and political problems”
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(Woodward 242). With World War I and the Great Depression right around the corner, it
was as if Faulkner had foreshadowed this downfall in his story.
While many people had progressed to higher income occupations such as the
two previous generations of Falkners, there were still those like Murry who couldn’t
succeed in the growing capitalistic society. The Falkners had a wealthy and prospering
background, but William Faulkner’s father ended up destroying it with drinking and
neglecting his family (Wittenberg 76). Quentin’s Father had to sell all of his land by 1910
to pay for Caddy’s wedding and Quentin’s tuition (Carruth 625). The South did have its
time to develop: “Locating the origins of Renaissance in 1929, the year that saw the
publication of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel and William Faulkner’s The
Sound and the Fury, Woodward characterized it as a flowering of ‘literary arts—poetry,
fiction and drama’” (King, 246) As the cities expanded, and the country as a whole
progressed, it left behind the traditional small towns and shops. Those who were
bogged down with racism and fear of moving on, were left behind.
Through the lack of love and sin in The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner depicts the
demise of the Compsons as the unifying theme. Critics also observed the deterioration
of the South to be prominent in Faulkner’s novel. It is that and personal, family problems
that finally destroy and rend the Compsons. Napierkowski also points out: “Pride is the
undoing of the Compson family” (57). This family lacks the unity of a whole, but tries to
live as separate individuals under one roof. Faulkner explains this through Mrs.
Compson and Jason: “’I don’t want to go in your room,’ Mrs. Compson said. ‘I respect
anybody’s private affairs. I wouldn’t put my foot over the threshold, even if I had a key.’
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‘Yes,’ Jason said. ‘I know your keys wont fit. That’s why I had the lock changed.’” (173)
There is no sign of family; Jason doesn’t trust his mother, and Mrs. Caroline distrusts
her son. As a critic portrays, the love between parents and children and brothers and
sister is missing: “Faulkner’s diagnosis of the Compson disease points to its source in
the general failure of love” (Powers 24). The three brothers seem to be alien in relation
and hold different ideas and values. In no way do all three love each other genuinely or
equally. Jason clearly depicts his apathy towards his siblings: “He reached back and
struck Ben, breaking the flower stalk again. ‘Shut up!’ he said. ‘Shut up!’” (Faulkner 199)
Love appears only in one or two characters, and the main one is Caddy. The hate and
sin from her kin decreases any hope for love to prevail: “He is literally sick with sex, can
see Caddy only as a sex abstraction and not as a person, only as a weak custodian of
virginity embodying the family honor” (Hunt 43). Quentin, Caddy’s younger brother,
can’t help but view his sister as anything but a sex object, thus reducing her value in his
heart and mind. When love is smothered by sin or not found in a family, then
possibilities of unity and survival disappear.
Time is an enormous component of the novel. Usually time is considered to
make things better, but not in The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner uses time in the
negative sense to portray how it brings the demise of the Compson family: “Although
time can be redemptive, in The Sound and the Fury time is a component of entropy, the
increasing chaos of the universe” (Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: A Hypertext
http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner). As the story progresses, the relations between
the family members just kept effusing away. Each character receives different effects
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from time. Benjy doesn’t have any grasp on time and doesn’t realize where he is. This
makes his section confusing: “All of Benjy’s section is given in the past tense. By the
use of italics, the reader is initially made aware of time shifts in Benjy’s thinking (Hunt
43). Benjy recalls past events and arranges them in his mind as if past and present are
parallel. Quentin also remains entangled with the past while trying to escape from it.
The constant reference to time and watches foreshadows an eerie sense of his demise.
Jason’s conception on time is straightforward, never looking back. He is living a race
against time, always rushing and getting angry at anyone who hinders him just a little:
“I’ll give you ten seconds to put that cup down like I told you” (Faulkner 115). One
example of his disregard of the past is his treatment of Caddy, his sister. He doesn’t
seem to remember any relationship from the past with her and threatens Caddy to show
his apathy towards her: “’If you think you can get that money back just try it,’ I says”
(129). Jason steals Caddy’s money when they meet again. The only true perceiver of
time in the Compson house remains Dilsey, their house maid. She has a clear-minded
vision on the past, and she lives sanely in the present. Time doesn’t prove to be a
challenge to Dilsey. One example that symbolizes this is when the clock “struck five
times. ‘Eight oclock,’ Dilsey said” (Faulkner 171). Dilsey knew and understood the
Compson’s clock isn’t set correctly. She retains the potential to comprehend and use
time effectively. Only one member of the entire Compson house benefits by grasping
time, and the rest can not help but fall.
The tone represented in the novel is the manipulation and separation of voice
from the individual, family, and society. Faulkner writes about the Compson family living
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together at first, but he is also showing them go away from each other and lose sense of
themselves. As Ross puts it, “Contained within this one episode are all the strategies
for creating phenomenal voice that Faulkner used throughout his fiction: contrasting
figuration of vision and voice, attention to voice itself, and separation of voice from the
speaker.” The Sound and the Fury consists entirely of separate individuals. Their
suffering and lack of love pulls each person further and further away. Faulkner
successfully shows this through Ms. Quentin:
’It’s his fault,’ she says. She jumped up. ‘He makes me do it. If he would
just—‘ she looked at us, her eyes cornered, kind of jerking her arms
against her sides.
‘If I would just do what?’ I says.
‘Whatever I do, it’s your fault,’ she says. ‘If I’m bad, it’s because I had to
be. You made me.’ (Faulkner 162)
The author utilizes dialogue to convey the tone. This conversation between Jason and
Ms. Quentin establishes their separation from voice and removal from family. Here, Ms.
Quentin completely excludes herself from her actions, leaving them all on Jason.
Faulkner’s tone is a result of the lack of love in the Compson household.
In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner has set the story in Yoknapatawpha
County, a fictional location made to resemble Mississippi, to help convey the tone of the
separation of the family and lack of love. One critic recognizes that : “The drama takes
place in Mississippi among the members of an old Southern family, once proud and
prosperous but today sunk in wretchedness and humiliation” (Coindreau 42). The
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Southern culture may have been a factor in the behavior of the characters. Quentin first
recognizes a difference in Northern thinking when he goes to school: “I used to think
that a Southerner had to be always conscious of niggers. I thought that Northerners
would expect him to” (Faulkner 55). The author’s use of a regional descriptions and
ideas indicates a use of local color. This local color illustrates that the novel’s setting is
in the South. The quote is talking about how Quentin’s living in the South most of his life
has effected him an his thinking. He sees a difference in color, meaning there was some
deficiency in love for another person causing a separation. Jason’s view is also
impregnated with prejudice: “When people act like niggers, no matter who they are the
only think to do is treat them like a nigger” (Faulkner 114). Faulkner continues to
develop the setting with local color explaining the intensity of their notions. The lack of
love including the lack of love towards others such as their views towards blacks can
rend the families.
New historicism criticism shows how the power bases in southern society (the
setting of The Sound and the Fury) were formed. New historicism criticism shows that
there was some contrast from the South and the rest of the nation. King claims: “By way
of cultural compensation, popular fiction pictured Southern society as essentially
different form the rest of the country” (251). Since the culture did differ, there has to be
some discrepancy in their sources for power. King goes on to explain one: “Southerners
rejected the notion that they were peculiarly cruel or unjust” (251). The power bases that
form in Faulkner’s southern setting are the people who take control of everyone and
everything. The southerners who have owned or who mistreat the colored folk were the
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power bases of this society. If the Compsons possibly saw their unkindness towards
their families, especially Jason, the family might have been able to do something about
it. This, however, brings a question to mind. Since the cruel, powerful people are the
most successful in the South, then why isn’t Jason, the cruelest, and the most
controlling Compson, prevailing in The Sound and the Fury? The southern aspect of
power bases must be flawed. The rest of the country is opposite, and it prefers the
loving caring people to the hateful ones. Due to America moving forward with more
technology and industrialization, the power bases overall were people who had a proper
education and love to support them.
Benjy, the narrator of the first section, confuses the past and present due to his
mental problems and lives life only with the support of others. He has caretakers all his
life: “Three black servants are Benjy’s caretakers at different times: Versh when Benjy is
a small child, T.P. when Benjy is about 15 years old, and Luster when Benjy is 33 years
old” (Padgett http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html). Even though
Benjy lacks the proper intelligence, he sometimes gives the illusion that he knows
exactly what is happening. He wails and hollers to alert everyone that he has grasped
something. When Luster, Benjy’s Negro caretaker, purposefully diverts Benjy in the
wrong direction, Benjy recognizes this: “For an instant Benjy sat in utter hiatus. Then he
bellowed. Bellow on bellow, his voice mounted, with scarce interval for breath”
(Faulkner 199). William Faulkner brings imagery into the novel to increase the readers’
emotions towards Benjy. His bellows can be heard as we feel his breath. Benjy
simplifies the missing love and the intense hatred with moans and bellows. Otherwise
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Benjy is lost: “Totally unable to reason, to link cause and effect, Benjy is also without
any sense of time (history) other than the present. All events, regardless of how distant
past, are equally present to him” (Pilkington 39). Benjy goes to the past and present
thoughts interchangeably, and he thinks they are all happening at once. To demonstrate
this, Faulkner writes: “Come away from there, Benjy, Luster said. You know Miss
Quentin goin to get mad. It was two now, and then one in the swing. Caddy came fast,
white in the darkness. ‘Benjy.’ She said. ‘How did you slip out“ (Faulkner 30).
Flashbacks are essential to Benjy’s role in the novel. He explains why the Compson
family is distraught in the present through past memories. As shown by Faulkner,
Caddy, the only one in the family who loves him, makes sure he is happy. Benjy always
wants to be with his sister Caddy and bellows at the mention of her name when she
deserts the family. Benjy stands no chance with the Compson family. The fact that
Benjy is an idiot keeps him intellectually removed from the Compson family, but still
emotionally involved.
Quentin possesses intelligence, but internal, mental problems bring him to his
demise. Quentin is smart, and it makes him capable of going to Harvard for college.
When he is young, he shows signs of this. One night the children were out playing, and
when the came home they were told to go into a different room for supper. Quentin
derives why: “I told you mother was crying” (Faulkner 18). What Quentin says is almost
an epigram, showing he knows what he is talking about. He is also extremely kind-
hearted. When he is at a bakery, some small girl who doesn’t speak English seems
totally lost. He goes out of his way to help her find her home: “Which way do you live?”
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(Faulkner 81) Quentin then goes roaming around town with this girl who he has never
known until her father appears. After learning how noble Quentin is, one wonders why a
great person like Quentin commits suicide. His main problems resides in his feelings
towards Caddy, his sister. When the children are young and still live under one roof,
Quentin wants to abandon their house with his sister. In college, he keeps on having
memories of the men she dates including Dalton Ames who Quentin despises. He can’t
lose his feelings of incest for her and is mentally troubled due to this. Quentin’s
obsession with Caddy’s virginity and honor is also strange. He feels that the family
would fall apart if Caddy loses her honor. The only way Quentin sees a way out of all of
this is death: “Moreover, Faulkner says that Quentin ‘loved death above all’ and
anticipated death as a lover anticipates the surrender of his beloved’s body” (Pilkington
45). Death releases Quentin from the falling Compson family.
Caddy, the only female sibling of the Compson family assumes two important
roles, one to the author and one to the family. Faulkner became emotionally attracted to
this one character allowing the book to continue past Benjy’s monologue:
This novel began as a short story, William Faulkner once said to me. After
that, the same thing happened to me that happens to many writers—I fell
in love with one of my characters, Caddy. I lover her so much I couldn’t
decide to giver her life just for the duration of a short story. (Coindreau 41)
Caddy carries the author throughout the entire novel. She is also responsible for the
honor and the unity of the Compsons. She is the loving, caring child. William Faulkner
conveys her as the older sister he never had: “’Keep your hand in you pockets.’ Caddy
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said. ‘Or they’ll be froze. You don’t want you hands to be froze on Christmas do you’”
(8). Repetition is used with the word “froze” to emphasize what Benjy might be like
without Caddy’s love. Only she could show true affection to Benjy, the idiot child.
Powers says, “Her Problem, indeed, is her superabundance of love, Her fall is the result
of that superabundance, uncontrolled and undirected; her ‘sin’ is the excess of virtue,
the chiefest virtue” (25). Caddy ruins herself by getting into relationships she cannot
control. One such relation is with Daltan Ames. Quentin claims that the family honor has
been violated at this time. He tries to stop Caddy from more such encounters with other
men, but she doesn’t stop, eventually getting pregnant. Then she had to hurriedly
choose a partner for marriage. That partner turned out to be Herbert Head, another
person that Quentin disliked. Head found out that Caddy’s baby wasn’t his and stranded
her in the world with a child named Quentin in memory of her brother. Caddy with no
hope turns it over to her mother who was a very poor parent Clarke describes her as, “A
cold selfish complaining woman, she neglects all of her children. . .” (71). Then she
never really gets to lay eyes on her daughter again due to her brother Jason’s duplicity.
Caddy only fulfilled her task towards Faulkner, not the Compsons.
Feminine critics attack The Sound and the Fury for its use of female characters
as representatives of the decline of southern morality. Mrs. Compson is presented as a
woman who does not properly allot any time for her children, not even for her personal
favorite Jason. The author explains through Mrs. Compson, “’I know I’m just trouble and
a burden to you,’ she says, crying on the pillow. ‘ I ought to know it,’ I says. ‘ You’ve
been telling me that for thirty years’” (Faulkner 114). Due to this, Sally R. Page asserts:
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“The Compson family is dying because Mrs. Compson is incapable of loving or caring
for her children; she is a total failure as a mother. As a result, the affectionate child
Caddy assumes the false role of playing ‘mother’ to her brothers” (47). Caddy however,
is also presented as a promiscuous woman. Faulkner writes,
‘Come here.’ Mother said.
‘Hush, Caroline.’ Father said. ‘Let her alone.’
Caddy came to the door and stood there, looking at Father and Mother.
Her eyes flew at me, and away. I began to cry. It went loud and I got up.
Caddy came in and stood with her back to the wall, looking at me. I went
toward her, crying, and she shrank against the wall and I saw her eyes
and I cried louder and pulled at her dress. She put her hands out but I
pulled at her dress. Her eyes ran. (44)
So, as we can see, even though Caddy is a loving mother figure to Benjy, she is still
portrayed in a negative way. As page notes, “Faulkner’s female characters are usually
at different levels on morals and they “symbolize the moral choices available to
humanity” (46). Unfortunately, the moral choices the female characters make are
negative ones that illustrate the decline of southern morality. For this reason the feminist
critics fail to praise Faulkner’s work.
The quadripartite structure used in The Sound and the Fury is probably one of
the first of its kind. It is broken up into different parts or monologues. Each section is
designated to a different character, all from the Compson house. The Sound and the
Fury utilizes four sections to develop the story of the southern Compson family: “Two
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elements in the structure of the novel, its quadripartite nature and the constant
recurrence of the past in the present, are obsessions and revealing” (Wittenberg 74).
The four parts represent the point of view of totally different characters who hold vastly
different opinions. These four separate pieces that can only come together in one’s
mind: “By fixing the structure while leaving the central situation ambiguous, Faulkner
forces the reader to reconstruct the story and to apprehend its significance for himself”
(Vickery 29). Another aspect that is equally important in the novel is the usage of italics.
This change of font style indicates a shift from the present to the past. Using
Wittenberg’s observations, the pieces are placed together in Faulkner’s structure.
Faulkner’s novel begins on April 7, 1928, and it is Benjy’s thirty-third birthday.
Luster, his caretaker, is telling Benjy to play in the water when he suddenly remembers
Caddy: “’Now get in the water and play and see can you stop that slobbering and
moaning.’ I hushed and got in the water and Roskus came and said to come to supper
and Caddy said, It’s not supper time yet. I’m not going” (Faulkner 11). The author uses
interior monologue to show conversations that had taken place earlier in the character’s
life. In this monologue of his sister, we can see Benjy’s obsession with Caddy and her
importance to her brother. When Benjy is just emerged in water, he returns his thought
process to what could be over twenty years prior to the present. Benjy’s time shift
reveals the impact his sister had on him. The time changes that occur in Faulkner’s first
section, gradually decrease in the following ones.
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Quentin’s section begins on June 2, 1910, twenty eight-years prior to Benjy’s
narration. As Quentin starts what seems to be just another day in college, he strangely
becomes involved with time:
It was propped against the collar box and I lay listening to it. Hear it, that
is. I don’t suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or clock.
You don’t have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then
in a second of the ticking it can create in the mind unbroken down the long
and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus walking, like. And the good
Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister.
(Faulkner 49)
Quentin’s unusual zeal with the time foreshadows his eventual suicidal death. Quentin
is worried about and obsessed with time because he himself realizes that he is
sacrificing the present. Volpe also thinks: “Quentin is intelligent, his mind moves rapidly
from one thought to another—ideas, allusions, memories flash across his conclousness”
(92). While Quentin ponders over time, he goes into the Biblical allusions of Jesus
walking with the rhythm of time. This allusion might be relating to his past, where he still
felt like a part of the family. Also, the obsession with his sister returns to Quentin’s mind
uncovering his strong feelings towards Caddy.
Jason, however, holds an entirely opposite feeling towards their sister Caddy. As
Jason resumes the novel a day before Benjy’s birthday, April 6, 1928, he displays his
temper and animosity towards his past to his mother:
‘You are the only one of them that isn’t a reproach to me.’
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‘Sure,’ I says. ‘I never had time to be. I never had time to go the Harvard
or drink myself into the ground. I had to work.’ (Faulkner 114)
Faulkner uses dyslogism through the narrator’s point of view aimed at fellow Compson
family members. Quentin, Jason’s brother studied at Harvard, and also committed
suicide there. Jason’s father drank excessively to a point of sickness and death. Jason
views both as people who took advantage of him and left him with the responsibilities of
what remained in the Compson household. For this reason, Jason cannot stand his past
and wants sees only the present. Some may ever argue that he is rushing through the
present, and this is taking him and the family towards demise (Faulkner’s The Sound
and the Fury: A Hypertext http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner). Jason’s obsession with
the present indicates he gives no significance to the past and reveals that he lives only
to increase the distance from his disconsolate childhood and the current time.
Easter Sunday in the year 1928 marks the beginning of the third person narration
describing Dilsey, the caretaker. Her control and understanding of both the past and the
present greatly exceeds all of the Compsons. Dilsey even has things’ worth worked out
in time: “’You got six weeks’ work right dar on yo back, ‘ Dilsey said. ‘ Whut you gwine
do ef hit rain?’” (Faulkner 180) The dialect of Dilsey can be observed throughout the
novel. The author’s use of the technique, however, might be misleading. Usually, the
less educated or less accepted people are the lesser of importance, but here, Dilsey is
the only one who truly able to decipher the family’s past and present. Due to this
comprehension, she hold the role of taking care of the Compson family. Dilsey can
make better judgements and support them, unlike any other person. Karl agrees and
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states: “If we pursue this view, Dilsey becomes Faulkner’s example of loyalty, fidelity,
and support” (325). As seen here, the obsession in past and present isn’t as important
as understanding it. Dilsey’s actions reveal that her strength comes from a clear thought
process that enables her to remember what the Compsons were before Quentin,
Caddy, Benjy, and Jason and what they still might be.
New historicism and feminist criticism can be used to analyze The Sound and
the Fury, where William Faulkner struggles to explain the Compson family through four
different parts in the novel. The South has been labeled with cruelty and hate during the
time of the novel. The attitudes of characters like Jason delineate this southern
disposition. Caddy remains a truly feminine character assuming the role of the mother in
the Compson family and actually becoming one. Faulkner uses the themes the lack of
love and time in the story to elucidate the tone of the novel. The severing of the
Compsons equals the tone in the book. Mississippi perfectly consists of the dying and
disappearing society that the Compson family represents. The Sound and the Fury
successfully shows that if each person doesn’t play their role in a family, the family
cannot successfully survive.
The one question still remains unanswered. How does any family, whose center
isn’t based on love, remain together? The Compsons severely without the love of
parents and the unity of their children. The many problems created by a dormant
Southern culture and failing economy doesn’t help either. The South had lost in the Civil
War and lost its valuable slavery. As wealthy white families faced the difficult task of
rebuilding their worlds without their slave labor, they also had to change their
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conception about colored folks. This hatred towards blacks carried into families and hurt
them too, leaving families like the Compsons in ruins. Faulkner showed how one
external thing like the community can go on to effect an entire family as far as it did with
the Compsons. When there is no love anywhere, there is just hatred and death left to fill
the holes.
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<http://www.collegeboard.org/ap/students/ushistory/dbq004.html>