It’s not about Faulkner, per se, but a student in another course sent me this poem from the contemporary African American poet Claudia Rankine. If Jason is a Trumpist before such a thing existed, I think we can see echoes of themes in Faulkner’s novel at work in Rankine’s moving meditation on the barriers to self-reflection that seem to be built into whiteness in the US:
Although there are countless contrasts between the characters highlighted in the last two sections of The Sound and the Fury (Jason’s section, “April Sixth, 1928” and Dilsey’s section, “April Eighth, 1928”), one that is particularly compelling to me is the distinction made between the two segments’ central characters in terms of environmental indicators revealing the clash between the two characters’ worldviews.
Jason’s worldview is a very black and white one, as evidenced by his hateful dismissals of nearly everyone around him, including his own family members, based on reductive dichotomies (men = good, women = bad; white = good, black = bad, etc.) and his parallel inability to see anyone other than himself as a fully-fleshed person. Correspondingly, the environment in which Jason moves is a dark and drab one. The environmental cues hinting at Jason’s dark inner world exist in two somewhat paradoxical forms: decaying but ever-present nature and sterile urbanization. One instance of the coexistence of these elements occurs in the landscape surrounding Jason in the town of Mottson shortly after he becomes violent toward an elderly man while questioning him in an attempt to locate Quentin II. He describes an “empty platform where an express truck stood, where grass grew rigidly in a plot bordered with rigid flowers and a sign in electric lights,” which aligns with his overly rigid stance toward life (311). On the Compson property itself, the decaying weeds covering the property where sculpted gardens once reigned, in the glory days of the Compson family, signify the encroachment of nature onto the small amount of land that the family still owns, existing alongside the slow intrusion of urbanization, represented by the transformation of much of their land into a golf course, as discussed in class.
Dilsey’s view of the world is more colorful and expansive, resulting in the formation of warm and loving relationships with not only her family and select members of the Compson family but also the wider community of Jefferson, as evidenced by the affectionate greetings she receives from those she passes on her walk to church in the novel’s final section. The imagery interspersed throughout her quasi-narration of the last section is expressive of this. Dilsey is described as emerging from her cabin next to the Compson house on a Sunday morning clad in various articles such as a “maroon velvet cape” and “a dress of purple silk” as she moves among her various tasks. As she makes her way to the Compson house, “A pair of jaybirds came up from nowhere, whirled up on the blast like gaudy scraps of paper and lodged in the mulberries, where they swung in raucous tilt and recover” (266).
Also interesting is the manner in which these divergent worlds collide. Evidence of both worlds is observed by Jason and Dilsey alike and is intertwined throughout both of their narratives. Such a collision occurs in the opening lines of Dilsey’s section, upon her entrance into the Compsons’ world from her own home on their property:
The day dawned bleak and chill, a moving wall of gray light out of the northeast which, instead of dissolving into moisture, seemed to disintegrate into minute and venomous particles, like dust that, when Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into her flesh, precipitating not so much a moisture as a substance partaking of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil. (265)
Since the world of Dilsey’s cabin is contained within the Compsons’ land, the color and life with which aspects of her life are infused appear to be merely specks of brightness within the larger, darker landscape of the Compson home. “Bleak and chill” days, “gray light,” and disintegrated “venomous particles” that violently pierce her skin assail her in the outside world.
Jason experiences similar collisions with what he views as “gaudy” intrusions into his rigid life. The colorful, dazzling fair that has come to Jefferson is a prime example. Jason spends a substantial portion of his section ranting about this fair, believing that it brings nothing of import to the town, although the people of Jefferson clearly derive satisfaction from it. Since Jason views everything in life as a transaction, he is of course unable to enjoy anything for the sake of enjoyment. This anger, which manifests throughout much of Jason’s section, perhaps reaches its zenith when Jason becomes frustrated with his search for Quentin II (“with her face painted up like a dam clown’s”) and the man with the bright red tie (232). When he sees the two in a passing car, recognizing both Quentin II’s face and the red tie, he “saw red,” stating “When I recognised that red tie, after all I had told her, I forgot about everything” (238). These incidents highlight an additional difference between Dilsey and Jason. When Jason is confronted with something that challenges his worldview, he often reacts with rage and violence, whereas Dilsey relies on her copious inner strength to traverse whatever comes her way.
I would like to zero in on a quote occurring twice within the stream of consciousness section appearing toward the end of Quentin’s narrative, “June Second, 1910,” in The Sound and the Fury. During an imagined conversation with his father in which Quentin falsely confesses to committing incest with his sister Caddy, Quentin’s father states that “every man is the arbiter of his own virtues” (176). Although the meaning of this statement (and Quentin’s section as a whole) is still not completely clear to me, the quote evokes for me the dueling nature of Quentin’s thoughts as he approaches his death (his own moral code and his love for his sister in opposition to social mores) and provides insight into societal attitudes of the time regarding women’s sexuality.
Quentin’s final internal monologue is bookended by the phrases “The three quarters began. The first note sounded, measured and tranquil, serenely peremptory, emptying the unhurried silence” and “The last note sounded. At last it stopped vibrating and the darkness was still again” (176; 178). These markers usher in and out the tumult of thoughts accompanying Quentin’s final preparations for his suicide and indicate the contrast between the outer world and his inner turmoil. Toward the beginning of this section appears the first instance of the statement at hand: “every man is the arbiter of his own virtues,” directly followed by “whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself than any act otherwise,” perhaps in reference to Quentin’s decision to commit suicide (176). Providing additional emphasis, Quentin’s father repeats the statement toward the end of the section: “every man is the arbiter of his own virtues but let no man prescribe for another mans wellbeing” (178). Quentin’s father appears to be advocating for individuals’ ascription of meaning to take precedence over the meanings delineated by society.
Although an aspirational statement, Quentin’s father’s assertion doesn’t otherwise ring true for me, since while it is true that societal values are simply constructions, the extent to which one can define one’s own virtues and have these definitions mean anything in society varies greatly dependent on one’s gender, race, etc. Such descriptive power appears to be reserved for men like Quentin and his father. Rather than being simply an abstract concept to puzzle over, this issue for Caddy is rooted in her lived experience. Although Caddy does indeed define and live by her own standards by freely expressing her sexuality, there is a point at which her autonomy ends: once she is “found out” by her husband when he realizes that she is pregnant, her personal standards move her beyond the boundaries of acceptable femininity of the time and she is punished severely through permanent separation from her daughter and home (as enforced by her own brother, Jason). Furthermore, although Caddy’s loss of her virginity and her subsequent promiscuity do help to precipitate the downfall of the Compson family, the person whom these events affect most harshly is Caddy herself, a fact that is shrouded within Quentin’s thoughts. Thus, Caddy certainly does not appear to be the arbiter of her own virtues.
However, Quentin himself is also unable to extract himself from the values that society thrusts upon him and Caddy. Based on descriptions of their relationship appearing throughout Quentin’s section, Quentin and Caddy appear to be quite close; they can perhaps even be seen as doubles in a sense, as made apparent within Quentin’s internal monologue when he describes them as fusing into one entity: “if people could only change one another forever that way merge like a flame swirling up for an instant then blown cleanly out along the cool eternal dark” (176). Quentin seems to view Caddy’s struggles as intertwined with his own and perhaps sees them as encapsulating the general clash of individuals against stringent societal norms. This thought of Quentin’s may also indicate, however, that despite their closeness, Quentin is unable to see Caddy fully: he seems to have trouble thinking of her as a whole person who is separate and distinct from himself. The fractured manner in which Quentin sees Caddy is reiterated for the reader through the fact that we are never granted access to Caddy’s own thoughts. Instead, we view them through other, male, characters’ eyes such as Quentin’s, and this lens through which Caddy’s and Quentin’s own experiences are filtered is that of society, a lens that Quentin cannot quite set aside. Quentin grapples with this complexity until almost the moment of his suicide.
My essay will attempt to understand the connection between trauma and memory in The Sound and The Fury. More specifically the link between how a trauma psychologically impacts our memory and sense of time. I will also examine how the structure of the book emphasizes the narrative of understanding the past and present via memory. I am looking to understand how Benjy’s comprehension of the present frames his memory of the past. For Quentin, I am looking to analyze his obsession with time, and how his memories of the past have led him to determine the fate of his present self (i.e. his suicide). What I am looking to achieve is to somehow integrate both the psychological aspect of memory and the way in which the narrative is structured between Benjy and Quentin in their relationship to the “loss” of Caddy.
Brown, May Cameron. “The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury.” American Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 1980, pp. 544–553. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2924957.
Brown’s essay examines the Quentin chapter through the lens of time or the fixation with time. Brown alludes to the significance time plays in Quentin’s chapter considering he is planning his death. Essentially, this essay also examines how this sense of time is constantly being constructed and reconstructed through memories of the past and present. For Quentin, Brown argues how past events relating to Caddy cause Quentin to reshape the present only to realize that he’s made the same mistake twice; that he cannot save Caddy or protect her honor. I want to use Brown’s argument on how certain imagery and fixation on time, structures Quentin’s story.
Forter, Greg. “Freud, Faulkner, Caruth: Trauma and the Politics of Literary Form.” Narrative, vol. 15, no. 3, 2007, pp. 259–285. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30219258.
This article examines Freud’s psychoanalysis and its effect on trauma. From my understanding, Forter discusses the way in which historical moments are shaped and reshaped by those living through a trauma. Therefore, the mind/consciousness undergoes a “process” that would organize the trauma into coherency and this is done through the retelling of memories, which would allow for an individual to move between past and present simultaneously. Forter attempts to understand “systematic traumatizations.” Although Forter uses LIA and AA as example texts, I plan to repurpose his understanding of Freud’s psychoanalysis on systematic trauma in relation to TSAF.
Howard, Leon. “The Composition of The Sound And The Fury.” The Missouri Review 5.2 (1981): 109-38. Web.
Leon Howard’s critical essay examines the structural component of The Sound and The Fury. He discusses how Faulkner essentially created a narrative out of chaos, and this is represented through the stream of consciousness of Benjy’s idiocy and Quentin’s scattered consciousness. Each of their narrative are centered around their relationship to Caddy. Howard ultimately investigates Faulkner’s creative process in order to understand how this unorthodox style of storytelling is arranged to construct a coherent timeline.
McGann, Mary E. “‘The Waste Land’ and ‘The Sound and the Fury’: To Apprehend the Human Process Moving in Time.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1976, pp. 13–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20077547.
Mary McGann examines the work of TSAF as a structural integration of both time and death. She asserts that the structure of the novel forces the reader to interpret the novel as an anomaly they must decode. That the structure plays an integral part of the overall narrative. What she claims is that the structure of the novel and the point of view of each character, lends itself into the complexities of the human mind. Importantly, she focuses on how time shifts are essential to the meaning of the story. As well as, how time in the novel functions as an emotional aspect, rather than chronological, which is similar to the argument I am presenting.
Porter, Carolyn. William Faulkner (Lives and Legacies). N.p.: Oxford UP, 2007. 39-54. Print.
Carolyn Porter examines how Faulkner experimented with point of view in The Sound and The Fury, constructing the story as a puzzle. Porter explains how Faulkner had “no plan” at all for the novel and had originally wanted to open the book with Quentin’s chapter, but instead the opening of the book is told via Benjy’s perspective, which sums up the complexity of the novel as a whole. I plan on using Porter’s argument through the lens of how Benjy’s chapter is formulated and how his recollection of the past is triggered by moments from the present. What makes Benjy’s chapter so extraordinary and unique is that he is a character that suffers with a disability. He is unable to express his emotions verbally, so Porter examines how Benjy’s “stream of consciousness” is not linear but jagged. Benjy’s narrative mimics his thought process which is complex and paradoxical. It provides an alternative lens to understanding the past and present.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Digital Chalkboard.” Jean-Paul Sartre: “On ‘The Sound and the Fury’: Time in the Work of Faulkner” :: Resources :: Digital Chalkboard. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 May 2017.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s opinion of TSAF is a negative one. He deconstructs the structural component of the novel only to claim that it reveals no real story. He claims that the story does not “unfold.” What Sartre tries to convey is the absence of time (i.e – Quentin breaking the watch and Benjy’s inability to comprehend time; past or present). In essence, what he argues is arrested development. The characters Benjy and Quentin are not functioning within the past or present, they are merely suspended in past events. I plan on using this article as a possible counter-argument for how time/memory is essential to understanding past/present.
My final project will focus on TSAF. When reading TSAF I was most interested in the way in which the story was told, but more specifically how memory is constructed and reconstructed over and over again, mainly by Benjy. His chapter was the most interesting because Benjy is considered a “retard” and he is unable to verbally express his emotions over the loss of Caddy. I had spoken about this in my first blog entry on how even though Benjy is unable to verbally express himself, the only way he is able to cope is through memory. Therefore, memory and time become skewed. This idea of time and memory is then seen in Quentin’s chapter. I want to somehow tie in the psychological aspects of how time and memory affect the way we perceive and cope with loss, but in this instance it would focus on Benjy, Quentin, and maybe Jason. I have been having a hard time finding articles, but I was thinking of perusing through JSTOR, Project Muse, data bases outside the field of English, and Google Scholar.
I don’t know if this would be better as a long wiki or a research paper.
After Katie’s sketch of her excellent entry on jimson weed in TSAF, I quipped that Pynchon must’ve worked it into one of his novels. Look no further: call it loco weed, devil’s weed, or moonflower, Pynchon did work it into Inherent Vice. I knew it.
And who knew that every Pynchon novel has its own wiki?
In the last chapter of TSAF, the narration changes to third person omniscient and takes place on Easter Sunday. The narrative style is able to transcend the time obsessed loop the Compson family has been stuck in. Dilsey takes the main stage in this chapter with her going to her Easter Sunday sermon, and just like the narration, the reader sees a transcendent moment. The preacher, an out of towner, is slowly transcended out of his lackluster body. The preacher’s voice is first heard, “he sounded like a white man” (TSAF, 293). The reader begins to see the preacher moving out of his form, although the congregation is not that impressed. When the preacher starts with ‘Brethren’ the congregation starts to pay attention, and the narrator describes the preacher’s voice leaving and detaching from his body. The congregation “watches with its own eyes while the voice consumes him until he is nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice but instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words” (TSAF, 294). From this point we see the congregation replying with sounds (mmm) much like Benjy’s own sounds. Faulkner connects Benjy to the congregation. He is someone who is relatively on the outside of the family (much like the Dilsey and her family). Perhaps because of his outsider quality, Benjy is able to attend this segregated mass.
As the preacher’s voice continues to float, ‘brethren’ becomes ‘bredden.’ The preacher’s speech and jargon are morphing, he is connecting more and more with his congregation and leaving his own body. He is no longer the “white voice”, but rather the voice of the congregation and the connection between them is extending beyond the need for words. His own words (and the reading of these words) are difficult to understand, they are so far removed from when he had initially started (and far removed from Standard English). Language at the peak of the sermon is breaking down. While the sermon builds up the congregation is brought to only sounds, there are repeated mmm’s as they build up to language ceasing. Dilsey then sits “upright beside, crying rigidly and quietly in the annealment and the blood of the remembered Lamb” (TSAF, 297). She is speechless and moved. Her only response to the sermon is to cry, and she leaves.
As they are leaving the church Dilsey seems to have come to a realization from the sermon about the Compson family. She states, “I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin” (TSAF, 297), after a sermon about the eternity of Christ she is able to spot the ending for the Compsons and possibly her role with the Compsons. As the mammy figure, she too was stuck in a loop, one where the Compsons would have children and she would raise them and continue to cycle through watching the Compson family change and grow. She can see the ending of the Compsons as they have no real legitimate heirs to keep the family going, and their family is now broken and fragmented. Dilsey’s faith allows her to look at time in a linear fashion, she is always looking ahead and is not stuck in the past. Her final statement after this moving sermon shows that Dilsey has ‘seen the light.’
After delving into the mind of Faulkner in two of his texts, I’ve come to realize the manner in which he embraces fantasy. Characters in their youth who go on massive escapades through bizarre situations serve as a driving vehicle for his narrative delivery and more often than not, vignettes are told through the lens of one who is discovering Faulkner’s world, a world rooted in reality where any number of variables might interfere in the character’s objectives.
In TSAF, Quentin Jr. and her mother prove emblematic in their sense of escaping from the confines of what is socially acceptable and cause supposed “societal degradation” because of it. With regard to these female voyagers, Faulkner seems to imply that though they are flawed in ways that are taboo and inconceivable, their incentive to explore foreign, deviant horizons is a natural byproduct of their societal circumstances and by comparison to the oppressive Jason whose worldview is so narrow, we ought to admire them as the free souls that they possess.
Coincidentally, “freedom” from the bounds of society serves as an intricate theme in our latest novel, The Unvanquished, and though said freedom leads to quite the muck and mire, it also sets the stage for a fantastic voyage of two faux-brothers and their family unit. The traumatic catalyst of Bayard and Ringo shooting down a Yankee soldier leads to exodus from the houses and encounters with the unfathomable in the forms of riding alongside exotic frontier soldiers (one of whom is Bayard’s father), escorting a railroad’s worth of fleeing and even accidentally “forgetting” Granny in a wagon on the trails. At one point, Bayard has a revelation: “There is a limit to what a child can accept… And I was still a child at that moment when Father’s and my horses came over the hill and seemed to cease galloping and to float” (Faulkner 66). The scene is painted in such a way as to capture the awe of a child at beholding the remarkable nature of an unforgettable moment and in many respects, Faulkner capitalizes on this sense of boyish ambition to experience the world.
Ringo serves as an interesting specimen from which to consider Faulkner’s association with the fantastic. Ringo is a boy who is assimilated into the Sartoris family despite his opposite skin color, a concept beyond profound for its time. As the books develops, Ringo takes on a more assuming role striking bargains with rival Yankees and leading the front lines of the battlefield alongside Colonel Sartoris (67 – 68). The extent to which Ringo has availed himself of the societal standards attributed to blacks is remarkable and elevate him to a status far greater than the stereotypical nature attributed to Jim and Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Ringo is Bayard’s equal, at least to the point where they consider each other family.
Faulkner is attributed with “spinning tales with more verisimilitude than veracity” (Porter 1) and so far, TSAF and The Unvanquished have shown this to hold weight. Although Faulkner’s stretches of the imagination in these novels often venture off into the unfathomable, his use of historically relevant landmarks and time frames in his home state of Mississippi only aids in generating unforgettable moments within his character’s escapades thereby allowing him to comment on an array of themes centered around the human condition.
“Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say” (TSAF, 180) are the words with which Jason Compton begins his section. It’s easy to loathe Jason; he is cruel to Dilsy, Quentin, Benjy, and Caddy. He thinks of Benjy should be “the state asylum’s star freshmen” (230) and he withholds Quentin’s money. He literally made his ‘fallen’ sister chase after his carriage once he allowed her to get only a quick, teasing glimpse of her infant daughter. And yet, Jason felt justified for his cruelty; based on the terms of his arrangement with Caddy, he technically did fulfill his end of the deal – he sneaked out baby Quentin so that Caddy could see her. Jason is not a stupid character; he knew that there was more to that deal, but because it was only implied, not spoken, and because he felt aggrieved at Caddy having cost him a job, he “didn’t feel so bad” (205) as he counted the money she paid him. It seems that in Jason’s world, while he understands the familial responsibilities he has to shoulder the burden of such as dealing with and complying with all of his maudlin mother’s wishes, and housing and paying for the care of Benjy and Quentin, Jason is concerned first and foremost with himself. Having grown up with three other siblings but having no distinguishing characteristics, save for his brutality, he was largely ignored. Only his mother gives him attention and professes that he is the only one of her four children “who isn’t a reproach” to her (181) and is really the last beacon of hope for the Bascombs. Her attentions toward her son are not altogether altruistic – mother is aware of what she benefits from by putting all her hopes for the family’s future on Jason. I can’t help but wonder if Jason’s fight with Quentin is from a place of fear; fear that Quentin will end up like her mother, a fallen woman and this is not to say Jason is concerned with her morality, but how another fallen woman in the family would make Jason look to people he’d want to forge business ties with.
From the outset, Jason’s character is specifically defined along a relationship to telling—as a child, it’s connected to his known position as a tattletale, and his early scenes in Benjy’s section of Jason only serve to confirm this. In these early glimpses, the act of “telling” bears a twofold function: it operates as a signifier of power as well as an act of self-determination. For example, in designating Dilsey to be in charge on the night of the funeral, their Father notes twice that the children must “mind Dilsey, now” (24). When Caddy then asks to be placed in charge, Jason disagrees:
“‘I wont.’ Jason said. ‘I’m going to mind Dilsey.’
‘You’ll have to, if Father says so.’ Caddy said. ‘Let them mind me, Father.’
‘I wont.’ Jason said. ‘I wont mind you.” (24, emphasis mine)
The act of verbalization implies a conveyance of power, at least in terms of the dynamic of the household. Through the act of verbalizing whom the children are to mind, the authority of their father becomes something able to be conferred, whether from himself to Dilsey, Dilsey to Caddy, etc. However, Jason also reveals the power of the act of verbalization to reveal. When Caddy mocks him for crying after eating, Jason threatens to tell on her only to have her answer, “You’ve already told. […] There’s not anything else you can tell, now” (26-27). Through “telling,” Jason has already played his card; once having revealed the secret, there is nothing further (at that point) for him to reveal. Simultaneously, the act of telling (about oneself) represents a means of self-determination. For example, “Jason said he wasn’t afraid of snakes and Caddy said he was but she wasn’t and Versh said they both were and Caddy said to be quiet, like Father said” (37). The act of verbalization performs multiple functions here. It draws Jason’s position as not afraid of snakes out of the abstract and unspoken into something more real, threatens consequence through an invocation of authority conveyed through speaking, and illustrates the volley between Caddy and Jason for a particular kind of social cachet (fearlessness among children).
In “telling” his side of things, Jason makes pronouncements in order to better defend his positions, often utilizing repetition as well as the structure of the rhetorical question to do so. This is first visible in an adolescent Jason’s exchange with Caddy: “You think you’re grown up, dont you. You think you’re better than anybody else, dont you…” (41). Caddy’s response is to demand his silence, which Jason refuses to heed, ending with a variation and repetition of his initial claim: “Just because you are fourteen, you think you’re grown up, dont you. […] You think you’re something. Dont you” (41). Further, his section of the novel opens with a character indictment that is anchored to a tag that attributes the comment to his act of speaking as he notes, “Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say,” which is repeated and used to bookend the end of his section as well, in a slightly variable form, “Like I say once a bitch always a bitch” (180, 263, emphasis mine). For the reader, his decision to verbalize is not only illustrated in his constant dialogue tags (“I says”), but also in the repeated uses of these phrasings, which continually foreground his position as the active speaker, a role that necessarily holds (or, at least, presents as) a position of narrative power. For example, in his run-in with Caddy later on, his rhetorical patterns emphasize the power he wields over her within the specific frame of the family—a power that is also defined by silence (a refusal to speak Caddy’s name):
“’We dont even know your name at that house,’ I says. ‘Do you know that? We dont even know your name. You’d be better off if you were down there with him and Quentin,’ I says. ‘Do you know that?’
‘I know it,’ she says” (203).
Jason dominates that particular exchange, and his position of power in the family is reasserted in his repetition and his ending question, which Caddy is then prompted to answer. In his dealings with Quentin (II), it is also his rigid control over Caddy’s “speech” (particularly through access to her letters) that gives him power over her, at least temporarily. In a novel where dialogue and speech constantly interject into the flow of narrative to redirect from linearity, Jason channels his furious presence into attempting to wrangle language into compliance through bluster and force as an attempt at salvaging not only the family reputation, but also his own.
