the sound and the fury term paper

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NAME 1 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

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The Sound and the Future American Literature Term Paper

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Page 1: The Sound and the Fury Term Paper

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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.

Works Cited

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Brooks, Cleanth. “The British Reception of Faulkner’s Work.” William Faulkner:

Prevailing Verities and World Literature. Ed. Wolodymyr T. Zyla. Lubbock: Texas

Tech. P., 1973. 41-56.

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Carruth, Gorton. What Happened When: A Chronology of Life and Events in America.

New York: Signet, 1989.

Clarke, Deborah. “Of Mothers, Robbery, and Language: Faulkner and The Sound and

the Fury.” Faulkner and Psychology. Ed. Donald M. Karinger. Jackson: U. P.

Mississippi, 1994. 56-77.

Coindreau, Maurice Edgar. The Time of William Faulkner. Columbia: U. South Carolina

P., 1971.

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New York: Norton, 1994.

Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: A Hypertext. U. Saskatchewan. 27 Sept. 2001.

<http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner>.

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1965.

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Nicolson, 1989.

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Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea, 1988.

King, Richard H. “A Southern Renaissance.” The Sound and the Fury: A Norton Critical

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Matthews, John T. The Sound and the Fury and the Lost Cause. Boston: Hall, 1991.

Morris, Wesley. Reading Faulkner. Madison: U. Wisconsin P., 1989.

Napierkowski, Marie Rose ed. Novel for Students: Presented Analysis, Context

Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels. Detroit: Gale, 1998.

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Powers, Lyall H. Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha Comedy. Ann Arbor: U. Michigan P., 1980.

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Athens: U. Georgia P., 1989.

Thompson, Lawrance. William Faulkner: An Interpretation. 2nd ed. Chicago: Holt, 1967.

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<http://www.collegeboard.org/ap/students/ushistory/dbq004.html>