Jason Compson lives a bitter, isolated existence in each and every sphere of his life, be it work, family or pleasure. As he progresses from his position as the youngest and least powerful Compson child to the symbolic head of the family’s household, Jason develops a massive superiority complex. For while he comes to be the partial breadwinner of the family, other characters, like Dilsey, still maintain a more practical authority over how the house is run. The early alienation he experiences from his family combined with the over-flated sense of pride his mother reserves for the two of them, who are “more Bascomb than Compson” at heart, leaves Jason with a dangerous sense of unfulfilled deserving (103). Moreover, just as he feels that he has been perpetually and disproportionately slighted, he also believes the converse: that others have been given unwarranted advantage.

From an early age, Jason comes to resent his father and his older siblings, who have formed an unspoken alliance from which he is excluded. Growing up, he is constantly targeted by his siblings, and receives little defense from his father, Jason Sr.. During Damuddy’s funeral, for example, Caddy calls Jason a “[c]ry baby” and specifically targets him with the temporary authority Jason Sr. has granted her for the evening, despite Jason’s opposition (26). When Jason attempts to stand up for himself and the others, Caddy retorts: “They will [mind me] if I say so…Maybe I wont say for them to,” taunting him with the implication that she could choose to exercise her authority over Jason solely, while letting the others retain their relative autonomy (33). And when the family’s financial struggles prevent him from receiving the same opportunities that were granted Caddy and Quentin before him, Jason’s resentment takes on an aspect of cynicism: “I believed folks when they said they’d do things, I’ve learned better since” (206). Moreover, he allows his cynical outlook to justify his own lying and scheming; because he was cheated out of what was rightfully owed to him, it is acceptable, in turn, for him to steal and manipulate from those around him.

As a grown man he constantly speaks ill of his deceased father and brother and openly disrespects all other living members of the house, even his mother, Caroline, the one character in the novel who loves him unconditionally. Jason and Caroline’s relationship is characterized by a complex love-hate dynamic: Caroline smothers Jason with undying praise and adoration, fueling his pride and consequently, his lack of respect for others, including her. Indeed, his superiority complex is so extreme that it manifests itself as utter contempt for the people he interacts with day to day: his family, his servants, his boss, and any townsfolk unlucky enough to be sharing the sidewalk with him at the same time.

Jason’s hatred is so complete that he tends to project essentialist (most often racist and sexist) qualities onto other individuals or groups of people, i.e. “Once a bitch, always a bitch” and “I never found a nigger yet that didn’t have an airtight alibi for whatever he did” (180, 218). He is too narrow-minded to be sympathetic towards others’ societal predicaments, so he ends up holding the oppressed responsible for their oppressions. Indeed, Jason’s pride is so great that he finds endless faults in others, but none in himself; any self-criticism is really just a disguise for self-glorification. Jason is the kind of person whose remorse for his own actions stems only from his disdain for others (Others), and hence, he won’t pass up an opportunity to make vicious, underhanded attacks: “You’re a nigger. You’re lucky, do you know it? I says I’ll swap with you any day because it takes a white man not to have anymore sense than to worry about what a little slut of a girl does” (243). He plays off his vengeful desire to dominate Quentin as concern, while simultaneously upholding racist and sexist ideologies, and trivializing the experiences of those affected by their institutions.