Sound and the Fury Wrap Up

It seems that Faulkner has presented the Compson’s story starting with a nearly incoherent telling and then subsequent tellings that are clearer in order to show the actual insignificance of this detail to the main theme and message of the story. I believe this because in terms of pure storytelling, Benjy’s chapter is certainly not essential to this book. It seems that the purpose of Benjy’s chapter is that in the end, the only thing that really matters is the individual human experience. In accordance with this, the style employed in this book of using many different narrators to tell the same story emphasizes the importance on perspective. All while telling a story about an unraveling southern family, Faulkner shows us how perspective can completely change the concept of importance. Because everyone has a different concept of importance, it seems to hint that the only thing that really matters and is really important is living your life how you want to. This also seems to be the reason that the only people who seem to end up free from the Compson family misery are the people who make “alternative” life choices, meaning Caddy and at the end Miss Quentin. This statement also seems to be supported by the fact that the one who is living out society’s idea of how a youth’s life should go, Quentin, who is in college, ends up denouncing this traditional way of life and actually killing himself.

The reason the chapters get clearer as they go also seems also to support this idea that nothing in life is really important except living how you want to live. Although Benjy may not really be able to discern how he wants to live life because of his mental state, he is certainly the character least bound and burdened by the standards of society. To support that this is a good thing, Faulkner put his narrative at the begging, and made it the only somewhat happy narrative. I say this not because it is actually very uplifting or heartwarming, but because the horrid and sad events of the rest of the book make it look like a Disney movie among a theater showing the works of Quentin Tarantino.

The statement that this book is about living life how you want is also supported by the rest of the chapters, in that as characters are more and more bound by what society expects from them, they are increasingly miserable. In the case of Quentin, the traditional education path led him to suicide. The traditional longing for a “good” job (which he blames Caddy for losing) along with his perpetuation of southern hate stereotypes leads Jason to become unhappy, bitter, and mean. This is also somewhat evidenced by Caddy and Miss Quentin, in that they leave the Compson household in order to free themselves from the burden and actually be happy (I say this knowing that Caddy was actually banished from the Compson household, because the point is that the decisions she made led to her leaving the house). In general, it indeed seems that Faulkner’s tale signifies an encouragement of those who want to free themselves from traditional, and embrace themselves for who they are and what they value. This seems to be why Faulkner provides so many different examples of what people value as important, in order to show that nothing is truly important to everyone, things are only important if we make them that way.  

Jason Chapter

The character of Jason is a very perplexing issue one faces when they have come this far through The Sound and the Fury. At this point in the book, whatever optimism the reader may have had about the outlook of the Compson family’s situation improving is demolished. Jason is in the position in the Compson family in which he could possibly be the glue that holds them together, or the final nail in the coffin of misery. In the case, he certainly serves as the latter. By all outward perceptions, Jason is bitter, hateful, conniving, unmotivated, and pessimistic.

To me it seems to that the root of Jason’s problem, among other things is his family’s proud history. He seems to think that because in the past his family was one of authority and honor that he deserves to be held in this same light. This would explain his sorrow about his dead end job, because he certainly had not done anything in his own life to deserve any better of a job. He also certainly seems to carry on the classic American southern ideals of hatred, towards pretty much anybody besides able bodied white people, and even in that field he has problems getting along with people.

He also seems to use this same mentality of privilege and entitlement to justify his thievery. In his mind, its seems that he thinks that Caddy somehow stole his good job at the bank by getting divorced (even though she was the one who got him the job in the first place), and so because of this, since he is certainly entitled to some good income, he justifies stealing from Caddy’s daughter. He seems to shockingly see nothing wrong with taking Miss Quentin’s money, as if he is entitled to it in the first place, so what he is doing is justice. Either that, or he is just a psychopath, and feels no remorse for such actions, which would also explain a lot about some of his other life choices. However, it does not seem that this is the case, because he has not quite gone to the extreme of doing something completely psychopathic like, for example, harming Benjy.

Perhaps even beyond his own specific ancestry, his entitlement comes from his Caucasian ancestry at a whole. Evidence of his behavior towards blacks and other minorities like Jews would certainly back up a statement that Jason believes these people are less than he is. This would also be evidenced by the way he treats and thinks of women. He abuses his own mother’s love for his own greed, he detests his own sister and her daughter for something (losing his job) which was not only not Caddy’s fault, but also Caddy was the only reason he got the job in the first place. He also seems to hate women so much that the only intimate contact he is willing to have with one is with a prostitute in Memphis. All in all, it seems that entitlement has made Jason who he is, a person of hate, greed, and utter disregard for the well-being of anyone but himself. 

Quentin Chapter

In Quentin's chapter, the very first thing a reader will notice is the change in narration. Now that Benjy's chapter is over, we have a narrator (Quentin) who is able to comprehend the world around him and differentiate between the past and the present. However, this turns out to be little relief from confusing literature, as Quentin in almost equally confusing in his own way. The reason that Quentin’s narration is so confusing is the constant memories he has from the past, along with his constant fantasies. While it is now clear whether something is a memory or a present occurrence, it is unclear what Quentin is actually remembering and what he is making up in his head, so the memories are somewhat blurred.

Throughout the chapter, it is clear that Quentin’s sense of himself is being largely overlooked. Quentin seems to be such an obsessive personality that he forgets about himself and what is going on around him and gives into his obsessions. The chapter is dominated mostly with Quentin’s angry musing over Caddy’s lifestyle of sin, and Quentin’s strange obsession with time and clocks. In terms of the time obsession, the reader is confused by the entire clock store scene, in which Quentin goes into the store, asks the clerk to fix his broken watch that is still ticking, he then never lets the man have the watch, and does not get it fixed. He also asks the man whether the clocks are correct, but does not care what time it is. In the end, it seems that his obsession with time makes him think that he must escape it, and the only solution he finds for this is to kill himself.

Next, Quentin’s obsession with Caddy and her promiscuity really overwhelms the entire narrative, and does make it somewhat confusing. It is unclear what exactly is the root of his obsession, whether he genuinely cares about his southern values that much to the point that Caddy’s choices bother him that much, or if the reality is a sort of jealousy of Caddy that she can allow herself to have a good time in that way. This entire discussion is greatly clouded by the memory of Quentin telling his dad that he committed incest with Caddy. Again here it is unclear whether he genuinely cares about Caddy that much and just wants to protect her, or has some other weird goal in mind. In my personal opinion, the fact that he killed himself shows that Quentin did not really care that much about his family, because I cannot see any way a person could do that to their family knowing the grief it will cause them, and knowing that Benjy’s favorite pasture was sacrificed for his education (granted this does seem minor, but it was a big deal to Benjy). I think instead that Quentin was just so messed up in the head that he really had no sense of reality, although I cannot really decide exactly why he would have said the incest thing.

In conclusion, all of the convoluted details of this chapter and Quentin’s eventually suicide certainly show that Quentin was not in a good mental state, or even that he was sane at all. I think that the point being made is that despite his disability, in the end even Benjy was saner than Quentin. Irony also seems to have been used by Faulkner here, because one would think the Quentin was a genius because he went to Harvard, but I just cannot see anyone who would make a decision like that being called smart. 

April 7, 1928

I think that Faulkner begins the books with such a disorienting chapter because the chapter is meant to be used as a sort of loose framework for the rest of the events in the book, without immediately telling all the details of every part of the story. We learn about many of the events in Benjy's 33 years of life, but often without context or much detail. This will all be clarified more as the book goes on I would assume.
It seems that Benjy play many roles in the Compson family, but given the clues in this case of the date and his age, it seems to be inferred that Benjy is the innocent lamb, the Chirst figure in the book. Because sin is subject to what a person knows and their understanding of the world, it is assumed that Benjy cannot really sin, and is therefore the Jesus like figure in the Compson family.
Benjy's perspective is unique in that he lacks much capacity for subjective thought, so it is most likely that the reader will receive the most truthful and face value account of the events from this narrator.
Benjy's need for consistency and his nostalgia for the past shows that he really misses his family as it was more intact in the past. He is especially troubled by not having Caddy around, as it was her who showed him the most love and compassion out of anyone in the family. This also suggests that he loves his family very much, he just longs for the past because the family was more abundant in this time, and they all seemed happier.
Without having finished the entire novel, I cannot really say what symbolic role Benjy plays in the novel, but if I had to choose at this time I would say he plays a sort of innocent childlike, if not Christ-like figure in the book.

Activity 1

After reading all of the resources given in the list for activity 1, I have learned many interesting things about Faulkner. I learned that his name was at first spelled without the u, but he added the u to seem more British when he applied to the Canadian Air Force under the fake identity of a Brit. I also learned therefore that he was in the Canadian Air Force during WW1, but never actually saw any action. I learned that his first few publications actually had relatively little success. His prime was between the years 1929-1942, in which he wrote Sound and the Fury. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in both 1949 and 1950, because in 49 the Nobel Prize committee could not agree on a winner, so when they finally did in 1950 they gave him the award for both years. His acceptance speech was at first not understood, but became famous and important when it was later published in newspapers. He is one of the most influential and important North American writers. He even created a fictional county called Yoknapatawpha.