NAME 1 Collapse of the Compsons: Moral Degradation in The Sound and the Fury The American Souths loss

in the Civil war proved to worsen the economic and moral conditions. Its dependence on slavery and farming seemed to be the Souths downfall. The South didnt 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 (Caddys 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 familys honor. Jason who is the only one who is capable of making money mistreats his sister Caddy

NAME 2 and her child Ms. Quentin. Faulkners 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 characters view on women are explained with feminist criticism. The book attempts to portray that if each person doesnt play their role in a family, the family cannot successfully survive. Faulkners 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 Faulkners family appeared content and well to their community, but it truly wasnt 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 Faulkners 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

NAME 3 his early life. Even though his family had a favorable role in society, they didnt help Faulkner when he needed it (Wittenberg 76). When Faulkner was five, they moved from New Albany to Oxford, Mississippi. He wasnt 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 didnt 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, Faulkners 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). Faulkners 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

NAME 4 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 didnt 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.

NAME 5 Faulkners writing career lacked a true beginning. He started writing as a young child. When he wrote The Sound and the Fury, he didnt have the calmest surroundings: From any standpoint, 1928 was certainly an odd and probably a trying time in writers 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 didnt have any sisters influenced his writing. Oates explains further reasoning for Faulkner to continue writing the novel: When Faulkner finished the Benjy section, he wasnt satisfied. Some how Benjys 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 couldnt 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 (Faulkners The Sound and the Fury: A

NAME 6 Hypertext http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner). The fact that William Faulkner was going to write had been decided early on. Faulkners 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 (Faulkners The Sound and the Fury: A Hypertext http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner). William Faulkners 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 hearts 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: Quentins father, like Murry Falkner, gives little to his sensitive son but a destructive example, and Quentins motherlike Falkners, during a crucial periodbestows the bulk of her attention on another child (Wittenberg 76). William Faulkner never appreciated his father, who couldnt appreciate the familys honor that both Faulkners 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

NAME 7 (Napierkowski 56). This particular novel can really help determine how much influence Faulkners life had on his literature. Faulkner didnt 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 publishers office in New York, Faulkners 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 didnt 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 authors 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 Faulkners 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

NAME 8 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 Faulkners lifetime from around 1910 to 1928, but it skips to and from the past throughout the entire novel. During that time, things hadnt 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 didnt learn to develop their industries and make factories until they realized they werent 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 slaves 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

NAME 9 (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 couldnt succeed in the growing capitalistic society. The Falkners had a wealthy and prospering background, but William Faulkners father ended up destroying it with drinking and neglecting his family (Wittenberg 76). Quentins Father had to sell all of his land by 1910 to pay for Caddys wedding and Quentins 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 Wolfes Look Homeward, Angel and William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury, Woodward characterized it as a flowering of literary artspoetry, 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 Faulkners 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 dont want to go in your room, Mrs. Compson said. I respect anybodys private affairs. I wouldnt put my foot over the threshold, even if I had a key.

NAME 10 Yes, Jason said. I know your keys wont fit. Thats why I had the lock changed. (173) There is no sign of family; Jason doesnt 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: Faulkners 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, Caddys younger brother, cant 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 (Faulkners 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

NAME 11 from time. Benjy doesnt have any grasp on time and doesnt realize where he is. This makes his section confusing: All of Benjys section is given in the past tense. By the use of italics, the reader is initially made aware of time shifts in Benjys 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. Jasons 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: Ill 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 doesnt 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 Caddys 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 doesnt 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 Compsons clock isnt 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

NAME 12 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: Its 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, its your fault, she says. If Im bad, its 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. Faulkners 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

NAME 13 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 authors use of a regional descriptions and ideas indicates a use of local color. This local color illustrates that the novels setting is in the South. The quote is talking about how Quentins 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. Jasons 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 Faulkners 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

NAME 14 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 isnt 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 Benjys 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, Benjys 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

NAME 15 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 Benjys 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 kindhearted. When he is at a bakery, some small girl who doesnt speak English seems totally lost. He goes out of his way to help her find her home: Which way do you live?

NAME 16 (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 cant lose his feelings of incest for her and is mentally troubled due to this. Quentins obsession with Caddys 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 beloveds 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 Benjys 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 writersI fell in love with one of my characters, Caddy. I lover her so much I couldnt 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

NAME 17 said. Or theyll be froze. You dont 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 Caddys 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 doesnt 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 Caddys baby wasnt 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 Jasons 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 Im just trouble and a burden to you, she says, crying on the pillow. I ought to know it, I says. Youve been telling me that for thirty years (Faulkner 114). Due to this, Sally R. Page asserts:

NAME 18 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, Faulkners 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 Faulkners 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

NAME 19 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 ones 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 Wittenbergs observations, the pieces are placed together in Faulkners structure. Faulkners novel begins on April 7, 1928, and it is Benjys 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, Its not supper time yet. Im not going (Faulkner 11). The author uses interior monologue to show conversations that had taken place earlier in the characters life. In this monologue of his sister, we can see Benjys 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. Benjys time shift reveals the impact his sister had on him. The time changes that occur in Faulkners first section, gradually decrease in the following ones.

NAME 20 Quentins section begins on June 2, 1910, twenty eight-years prior to Benjys 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 dont suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or clock. You dont 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) Quentins 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 anotherideas, 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 Quentins 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 Benjys birthday, April 6, 1928, he displays his temper and animosity towards his past to his mother: You are the only one of them that isnt a reproach to me.

NAME 21 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 narrators point of view aimed at fellow Compson family members. Quentin, Jasons brother studied at Harvard, and also committed suicide there. Jasons 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 (Faulkners The Sound and the Fury: A Hypertext http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner). Jasons 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 authors 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 familys 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

NAME 22 states: If we pursue this view, Dilsey becomes Faulkners example of loyalty, fidelity, and support (325). As seen here, the obsession in past and present isnt as important as understanding it. Dilseys 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 doesnt play their role in a family, the family cannot successfully survive. The one question still remains unanswered. How does any family, whose center isnt 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 doesnt 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

NAME 23 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 Brodsky, Louis Daniel. William Faulkner, Life Glimpses. Austin: U. Texas P., 1990. Brooks, Cleanth. The British Reception of Faulkners Work. William Faulkner: Prevailing Verities and World Literature. Ed. Wolodymyr T. Zyla. Lubbock: Texas Tech. P., 1973. 41-56.

NAME 24 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. Faulkner, William. An Introduction to The Sound and the Fury. A Faulkner Miscellany. Ed. James B. Meriwether. Jackson: U.P. Mississippi, 1974. 156-161. Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. David Minter. New York: Norton, 1994. Faulkners The Sound and the Fury: A Hypertext. U. Saskatchewan. 27 Sept. 2001. <http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner>. Hunt, John W. William Faulkner: Art in Theological Tension. Syracuse: Syracuse U. P., 1965. Karl, Frederick R. William Faulkner: American Writer. New York : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989. Kartiganer, Donald M. The Sound and the Fury and the Dislocation of Form. Modern Critical Interpretations: William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea, 1988. King, Richard H. A Southern Renaissance. The Sound and the Fury: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. David Minter. New York: Norton, 1994.

NAME 25 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. Oates, Stephen B. William Faulkner: The Man and the Artist. New York: Harper, 1987. Padgett, John B. William Faulkner: American Writer. William Faulkner On the Web. 4 April 1996. U. Mississippi. 27 Sept. 2001. <http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html>. Page, Sally R. Faulkners Women: Characterization and Meaning. Deland : Everet, 1972. Pilkington, John. The Heart of Yoknapatawpha. Jackson: U. P. Mississippi, 1981. Powers, Lyall H. Faulkners Yoknapatawpha Comedy. Ann Arbor: U. Michigan P., 1980. Ross, Stephen M. Fictions Inexhaustible Yoke: Speech and Writing in Faulkner. Athens: U. Georgia P., 1989. Thompson, Lawrance. William Faulkner: An Interpretation. 2nd ed. Chicago: Holt, 1967. Vickery, Olga W. The Novels of William Faulkner. Louisiana: Louisana State U. P., 1964. Volpe, Edmond l. A Readers Guide to William Faulkner. New York: Farrar, 1964. William Faulkner. BBC Education. 27 Sept. 2001. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/faulkner/faukbiog.shtml>. Wittenberg, Judith Bryant. Faulkner: The Transfiguration of Biography. Lincoln: U. Nebraska P., 1979.

NAME 26 <http://www.collegeboard.org/ap/students/ushistory/dbq004.html>