It’s obvious Faulkner isn’t just telling the story of one Southern family’s downfall; rather he seems to be using a family to tell the story of the South’s downfall. We can see this in two ways: first, in how his characters operate not just within the family sphere but the reader is made aware, particularly in Jason’s chapter, of the forces — economic, historic, cultural and so on — converging on the Compson family. But I was interested in looking at the second, which is how Faulkner expands the scope of tiny universe by drawing parallels to mythology, particularly through Jason, perhaps named for he “of the Argonauts.”

Both Jasons have been disinherited from a throne (or thrones) each believes to be rightfully his. In Greek Jason’s case, his uncle Pelias usurps the throne from Jason’s father Iolcus, and when the hero comes of age he rises up to take it back from his uncle, only to be sent by that uncle on series of difficult tasks, including a long, dangerous journey to claim the Golden Fleece. Seeing how difficult the tasks are Jason grows depressed. Jason Compson suffers similar depression and feelings of impotence as he has been disinherited of power in two ways: he has ascended to the head of the Compson family household, only to find that the throne is not worth holding, that the power associated with it has been lost. Second, he repeatedly refers to a lost opportunity for work at the bank — the people in his life altogether “merely symbolised the job in the bank of which he had been deprived before he ever got it.” (306) His greed gives the bank an obvious resonance as a throne-like seat of power.

Jason Compson’s professional failure, along with his failure to sit atop a successful family, ultimately turns into a kind of savage impotence: Near the end of the final chapter, when Jason is pursuing Quentin and the man in the red tie, the narrator twice in quick succession refers to Jason’s sense of impotence. (Eg his “injury and impotence” and “outrage and impotence.” [303]) His sense of impotence manifests in a series of delusions about having an army behind him — an army that also recalls the Greek Jason’s Argonauts: “ ‘I’m Jason Compson. See if you can stop me. See if you can elect a man to office that can stop me,’ he said, thinking of himself entering the courthouse with a file of soldiers and dragging the sheriff out,” (306) and later on the page, “his file of soldiers with the manacled sheriff in the rear, dragging Omnipotence down from his throne, if necessary; of the embattled legions of both hell and heaven through which he tore his way and put his hands at last on his fleeing niece.” Note here how “fleeing niece” seems like a verbal play on “fleece,” as in Golden Fleece.

In addition to expanding the tiny Compson universe in Jefferson, Miss., linking the jerk Jason Compson with the Greek Jason serves to highlight the former’s impotence, to paint starkly the forces that turned this thwarted heir to power into a vindictive man-child.

Jason has little affection for his family. He provides economically for them, there’s enough flour in the pantry and he keeps a roof above their head but he resents his responsibility as head of the household. His vignette is by far more logical than Benjy or Quentin’s narrative, he may lack feelings but at the very least he provides factual information. The brazen swirl of colors and emotions that make the past two stories so enjoyable makes Jason’s narrative a refreshing breeze. Caddy’s story really is the center theme in each narrative, from her first teenage kiss to her banishment from her family. Before Jason, it was easy to sympathize with the headstrong Candace, but after Jason it is a slightly more difficult task. Once a bitch, always a bitch. Once a mad Compson, always a mad Compson. He doesn’t begrudge Candace, he clearly doesn’t think much of her or really care about her in anyway. He doesn’t love her in the same dimension that Benjy or Quentin loved her.  Jason, however, does care about keeping face as best as he can. He’s the only Compson that is not mad, crippled or dead and it shames him to think that the whole town is laughing at his family. So he does what any man in his position would do, to work hard and to dare anyone that might cross him. He tortures Candace and the young Quentin, not because they whore around the town, but because their indiscreet with their behavior. Jason says repeatedly that he doesn’t care whether Quentin runs around with every jelly bean in town, he cares that every townsfolk knows that they can call his niece for a backseat romp. Jason is not a prude, he has a girl on the side, Miss Lorraine, but she lives in another town and wouldn’t dare call him up at work on pain of death. Jason believes in keeping women in line, whether that means beating them or ridiculing them at the dinner table, Jason has more important things to do than concern himself with feminine feelings.

Jason sees what needs to be done; with efficiency and precision Jason does what he does for survival and to keep food on his plate. He may be cruel, his words may be harsh, and yes, he might find pleasure in making his women folk upset, but he has been thrust into the role as the patriarch. He despises Mrs. Compson and Dilsey’s efforts to cajole Benjy and Quentin, and in his own rebellion he has become colder than a cod in a hail storm.  Madness runs in his Compson veins, as well as anyone else, but he has learned to dilute the insanity in acts of cruelty. From burning the circus tickets to calling names, Jason is certainly not without fault but he has discovered how to survive in the madness around him. With his family background, the best Jason can do for himself is learn how to survive.

Someone once said that a man’s problems almost always fall under two categories: finance and romance. With Jason’s chapter we shift towards a money-focused perspective and one that is refreshingly objective, albeit cold and detached. However, we soon realize that, for him, finance and romance are psychologically intertwined.

My experience of reading this novel was like being immersed in a dense fog that slowly began to dissolve as I kept reading. From a narration point of view, it was like being thrown behind a camera that was zoomed in all the way, and then gradually zoomed outward until I could see all of the details, the characters, and the action in focus from a kind of aerial view. Benjy’s narration is so internalized that his world is our world. By the time we get to Dilsey, we are hovering above the family, its dark past, its current struggles and its murky future from a more objective and clearer place. So it is with time: the present is all we know; we are in it and there is no escape. But as we move forward through time and look back, the past begins to clarify, based on what we know now. As the old saying goes, “Hindsight is 20-20.” Faulkner’s novel moves in many directions but steadily takes us from the past to the present and into the future.

It is with Jason’s character that we make this all-important shift in perspective. The novel begins to take on a traditional linear, action-based, plot-driven quality that we are used to (and, by now, yearning for). Jason is unique in his ability to take action. None of the other characters act decisively, except perhaps for Dilsey, who is more of a spiritual mother of the house. What is interesting to note is that both Jason’s sexuality and masculinity are connected to money. He has commodified these primal elements of himself, in an attempt to exchange and control their nature. An obvious example of this is his interactions with women, which are limited to prostitutes. Jason is bitter with the men around him, a tough exterior put on to hide the insecure and impotent interior.

All of the men in this novel are castrated, either literally (in Benjy’s case) or metaphorically. Jason has built so much of his self-value on the money he has stashed away, that when Miss Quentin robs him it is felt to same degree as an actual castration. However there is more than Jason’s self-value in this money, for we learn that it is money sent by Caddy for Miss Quentin. Therefore the money Jason is stealing represents the only way Caddy has of acting as a mother to her daughter. Jason’s role, then, becomes one of blocking the maternal forces that feebly try to manifest themselves, the irony being that he is his mother’s favorite child. He goes into a blind rage when he discovers that he has been robbed, and the action intensifies when he sets out to hunt down Miss Quentin with a manic quality reminiscent of Dmitri Karamazov trailing Grushenka in Dostoevsky’s novel. But Jason’s underlying infatuation with Miss Quentin precedes this robbery. He stalks her the way an ex-boyfriend might, and his detective work is rewarded when he spots her with the man with the red tie. The tie itself becomes a kind of symbol for Miss Quentin’s budding sexuality, a menstrual streak worn proudly by the man on his shirt.

But despite all this, Jason is as impotent as Benjy. We see this when he threateningly tries to provoke the sheriff into helping him find Miss Quentin: Jason told him, his sense of injury and impotence feeding upon its own sound, so that after a time he forgot his haste in the violent cumulation of his self justification and his outrage. And again: He repeated his story, harshly recapitulant, seeming to get an actual pleasure out of his outrage and impotence.  (303) Faulkner underlines the masochistic element of Jason’s character, while at the same time exposing its hollowness. A question for the class: why does Jason get an “actual pleasure” from his own impotence, once he’s lost his money, especially considering how domineering and power-hungry he is?

To put it simply, I hate Jason.  He is without a doubt, one of the vilest characters I have met in a long time.  Throughout his section, the reader is just flooded by his sexism and racism.  And of course, there is that opening line of, “Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say” (180).  I believe it is this that defines Jason and what makes his section and him as a character completely different from the rest of the novel.  On the one hand, a small (very small) part of me feels a sense of gratitude towards the despicable Jason because his section is written in the clearest fashion.  If there is any type of realism in The Sound and the Fury, we see it in Jason.  As readers, we just left Quentin, who by the end of his section has completely broken down and the writing mirrors that destruction.  Jason’s linear section and clarification is a much needed breath of fresh air, however I believe Porter put it best: “But, the price we pay for clarification is a high one: we have to spend a good deal of time listening to Jason, who is certainly among the most repugnant figures in all literature” (47).  And listen to him, we do. We listen to his disgusting racism and watch as he treats the women in his life as far lesser than man.  Why does Jason have to be this way? Why do we have a character like this?  Is it so that when Quentin finally does succeed in robbing him and running away we are sympathetic and understanding to her?  Is the novel just falling into more traditional standards and giving the reader some form of necessary villain?  I find it to be far more complex than that because, let us be honest, there is nothing traditional or easy about Faulkner.

Jason does not escape.  He is the only Compson child who doesn’t. Now granted, none of them have a happy story or ending to begin with, but Jason remains where he was and does not leave.  Caddy obviously is gone after the birth of her daughter, Quentin escapes sadly, through suicide and then there is Benjy.  Benjy is a difficult one for me justify.  However, I feel that since Benjy is given this title of “idiot” Faulkner never lets him become this fully developed character in the eyes of the other characters.  We see a more developed mind as readers, but the rest of the Compson clan only hears his moans.   So to me, Benjy is not fully “allowed” into the structure of the Compson family because he cannot fully “understand” and therefore, he does not have the ability to escape.  So what are we left with? Jason. Horrible, despicable Jason.  And in the end, Jason’s world is somewhat crumbling around him. He was just robbed by a young girl and her “red-tie” accomplice/boyfriend.  It seems, to me, that Jason is a representation of Southern ideals. Now, I feel the need to clarify and say I am in no way implying that Southerners are racists and villains – not at all.  Throughout this novel, we see the fall of the Compson family. They lose their finances, land, reputation and quite a bit of their faith too.  Quentin and Caddy seem to mirror this loss. Quentin loses his life and Caddy her reputation and daughter.  Jason is the only one who holds on to this life and continues to try and be that family.  He is now the patriarch of the Compsons and while the family is practically gone and there is nothing to really show for themselves, Jason will continue to have the final say and be in control of the people around him (which are basically women and his black servants).  This seems to mirror the fall of the Southern way of living. The Old South is gone – we are leaving that lifestyle behind.  Caddy knows, Quentin knows it and possibly even Benjy (in his own way). Caddy acknowledges it through her sensuality and Quentin through his suicide. Even Miss Quentin through her rebellion.  Yet, Jason holds on to these ideals through his vengeance and anger.  By the end, as a reader I am cheering for Quentin and hoping for Jason to be made a fool.  We push for this break from the Old South into something new.  In the end, Jason does get “beaten” by Quentin, but we come full circle and end with Benjy’s moans.  It seems that this break does not fully succeed, but rather remains tattered and in despair.

In the third narration of The Sound and The Fury, Faulkner utilizes Jason as a character that represents the racist, post-defeat of the Civil War, white man and in doing so, attempts to explore the hypocrisy and ludicrousness in the tradition of Southern racism.  Jason projects and displaces his anger of his own shortcomings in life on both black people and women.

Compared to the first two narratives, Jason’s is by far the least trustworthy. Because Benjy is not capable of explicating and making meaning of his own feelings, the reader gets a very sharp and unbiased description of what is said in each scene. In Quentin’s narrative, though he manipulates some parts of his story (mistakenly hearing Gerald say “your sister is a bitch” (166) – Quentin later admits to not having know what was going on) the reader gets a sense that the narrator is earnest and so desperate that he is giving his genuine account.  Jason on the other hand, is manipulative throughout the entire telling of the story, as he justifies his malicious and deceitful actions – his severe hypocrisy is what fails him of his desire to manipulate readers.

This hypocrisy mainly surrounds his racist views and can be seen as a representation to Faulkner’s understanding and experience of the Southern tradition of racism: it is so contradictory that it does not hold up to logic. In the opening scene of the story, Jason speaks of Quentin’s promiscuous actions and advises his mother, “when people act like niggers, no matter who they are the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger.” (181) Only a couple of sentences following, in where Jason per usual of his tendencies, exacerbates how much work he puts in for the family, his mother pleads, “I know you have to slave away your life for us.”(181) First, absolutely none of the black characters in the book display promiscuous behavior – rather it is Jason’s white siblings. Second, the mother somehow equates going to work with being a slave — readers are all well aware that Jason does not actually do any work and instead deceitfully cashes in his sister’s checks.

The narration is centered around Quentin’s skipping out on school, which ironically reveals Jason’s own skipping out on work. On one of the busiest days at work of the year, Jason slips out shortly after arriving to work, finds “a nigger” to fetch his car and when he returns with the car, Jason in his untrustworthy-narrator fashion notes it had taken a week and asks if he had taken so long because he had been “riding along where the wenches” could see him. When the man answers that he had to drive around the square due to traffic, Jason notes that he had “never found a nigger that didn’t have an airtight alibi for whatever he did.” (218)

After stopping at home for a dramatic dinner, stopping at the bank to deposit his stolen checks, and stopping at the telegraph office where he has invested in stocks, Jason finally returns to his job at the store. When his boss, Earl, asks if he had gone home for dinner, Jason tells him that he had gone to the dentist. In a situation where he did not have to lie at all, as Earl had asked in a casual manner and is not a character who has ever shown disrespect, Jason produces an airtight alibi.

To add to his delusion, Jason, in a monologue, speaks of the glory and the farming land his slave-owning family once owned. He gazes at the vast open space, the miles of untilled land and notes, “it’s a good thing the Lord did something for this country; the folks that live on it never have.” (239) Just after noting the fact that his family owned humans to work and tend to his family’s land, he denies the existence of these folks and their unappreciated, uncompensated work.

When Jason strolls late into work, a black man named Old Job who works for Earl, is already at work uncrating cultivators. The name Old Job recalls the story of the biblical figure who had terrible things happen to him repeatedly to test his faith in God. In one hand, Jason could be seen as a Job character, someone who did not deserve to have an alcoholic father, absent mother, siblings who commit incest, and a brother with a mental disease that no one seems to know what to do about. But on the other hand, I think we ought to observe Jason as less of a Charlie Brown, pity party figure and more as a representation of the absurdity and hypocrisy of the southern tradition of racism and its crippling effects on not only the victims but the perpetrator himself.