April 9, 1928; Overview of the Book

     The effect of starting the novel with disjointed and confusing chapters made the story seem that it would amount to something grand and insightful. At least for me, this method made me intrigued as I tried to figure out why it is that these are memories that Benjy and Quentin recall and what their importance can be to reveal some element of human nature, since that is the way most novels go. However, the more coherent and less personable the writing became, the more the tragedy that has struck the Compton family seemed meaningless and just another mundane part of human life. I believe this was Faulkner’s intention. By starting the novel with characters that fall into streams of conscious when prompted by an external force, it made the reader sympathize more with the Compton family as they traveled along with Benjy and Quentin’s jumbled thoughts. They received bits and pieces of the memories that caused despair in the household, intriguing them to find out what the full story was behind those memories and the actions taken by the character. But by the time we get to Jason’s chapter, those sentimental feelings towards the Compton’s lessen as we realize that nothing profound emerges from these tragedies, only confirmation on vague details from previous chapters and bitterness and self-pity from Jason and his mother. Caddy was just thrown out by her husband and then exiled from her house, the father’s death, and no one seemed to care about the suicide of Quentin. Jason and his Mother seemed to just brush off those deaths and fall back into their self- pity. Jason also just rants on and on in his chapter, sulking about the job Caddy deprived him of, his low status in the town, and his hatred of women. Four chapters tell the same story of the same tragedy from a slightly different perspective, and yet none of the characters could capture the significance of these events. Their narratives were just full of hollow emotions. This novel truly becomes a “tale… full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”.
You could say that this book is about the downfall of a prestigious Southern family, but that would be wrong since that story never climaxed to anything and nothing profound came directly out of their story. However, through the downfall of the Compton family, this book explores larger thematic ideas, such as the decay and corruption of old Southern values and the struggle to accept, or at least tolerate,  the values of the modern world, which can be seen through the struggle of Quentin as he tries to preserve Caddy. Even with all the bad luck that family has faced, there is also a sense of resurrection and renewal that the book focuses on. It is no coincidence that three of the chapters take place around Easter Sunday, and that the book ends with Disley on Easter. As everything about the Compton family deteriorates, Disley rises stronger than ever because she was grounded in the values of love, family, and faith while the Compton’s dwelled in values that no longer existed or were superficial. Dilsey resurrects these values. The lack of a plotline also shows that life is too complex to be accurately described in words.

April 6, 1928 (Jason's Chapter)

       Even though Jason’s chapter was the most clearly written and precise in its narrative, it was the most unbearable chapter to read. Jason is quite the character. He is cruel, bitter and greedy. Having to read about his personality for 52 pages, and along with his self-pitiful mother who blindly loves and adores him for being of Bascomb quality,  was overwhelming to my. His account did clear up confusions and confirmed pieces that were missing in the plot about the Compton tragedy , such as Caddy being divorced from Herbert and Quentin drowning himself (to which he makes a snarky comment saying “at Harvard they teach you how to swim at night without knowing how to swim”). But the way he expresses himself is obnoxious.
Upon reading the chapter, you immediately get a sense of his bitterness. The first thing he states is “Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.” This displays his sardonic attitude in life. He is bitter about having to work in a farming supply store. He feels he has become the lowest Compton after having to succeed his great grandfather, who was a Civil War General, and a grandfather, who was a governor. He is mostly bitter about how his siblings have wronged him. The family sold land and furniture to send Quentin to Harvard, but he ends up committing suicide. Caddy has ruined the family’s name by bearing a bastard child, causing her husband, Herbert, to divorce her. This causes Jason to believe that she “deprive me of a job that was promised to me” from the arrangement of the marriage. Now Jason has to care for Caddy’s child to which he comments “instead of me having to go way up north for a job they sent the job down here to me”. Along with his family, he blames just about everyone else for his misery and misfortune. For example, he blames the Jews in the North for the dropping value of his stock in the cotton market. It goes to show that Jason is narcissistic and self-pitiful.
Jason is also selfish and greedy. All he cares about is money. He thinks about money, the stock he invested in, and he will frequently count the money in his chest just to look at it. For the last 15 years, he has been scamming his mother and stealing money from Quentin as he cashes in the checks Caddy has sent him to be given to Quentin and his mother. He lies to Quentin about the money and tricks his mother to burn what she thinks are the Caddy’s checks because they don’t need anybody’s charity and “certainly not that of a fallen woman.”  He then later will cash in the check for his own usage.
Most of all, Jason is downright cruel. Not only does he scam and deprive his mother and his niece of money that is rightfully theirs, he enjoys tormenting other people and is sadistic. He has threatens to beat Quentin and even Dilsey who comes to Quentin’s defense. When Caddy comes to her father’s funeral (which no one cared to notify her of), Jason is infuriated and boasts about how “We dont even know your name at that house” and that she would be “better off if you were down there with Quentin” in which he is saying she should be dead. He agrees to let Caddy see her daughter “Just so I can see her a minute” in exchange for one hundred dollars. He shows up to their meeting spot up, holds the baby to the window briefly, and then darts away, cheating Caddy from their deal. In another instance of Jason’s cruelty, he happily torments Luster who wants his two tickets to a show he does not even want to attend by first offering to sell them for a nickel and then burning them in front of his eyes because he has no money to pay for them.  Lastly, he is very cruel to Benjy, wishing he had put him in Jackson sooner so that he would not embarrass the family. He sarcastically thinks “Rent him out to a sideshow; there must be folks somewhere that would pay a dime to see him”. His nastiness can be seen from these passages.

June 2, 1910 (Quentin's Chapter)

Quentin’s chapter was even more confusing than Benjy’s when Quentin would remember things that happened in the past. The lack and unconventional use of grammar and punctuation (not having periods, commas, quotations, or apostrophes for words like we’ll; not capitalizing words and capitalizing others, extra spaces between words,) made this chapter very confusing. At times it was hard to determine who was speaking; what was just narration by Quentin; when one idea started and another ended; and if Quentin was mentally in the past or present during these flashbacks. All of this caused me to be disoriented to what was actually happening. It definitely forced me to go back a couple of pages and reread to realize what was going on. 

       However, this style of writing shows the turmoil that exists within Quentin. Quentin’s thoughts are jumbled together as he reflects on the past. This illustrates the disorder in his world that the he is desperately trying to escape. Quentin reflects the traditional Southern values of conduct and manner, where they took pride in the formal gentleman and the purity of ladies, but as Caddy, whom Quentin is very close to (maybe a little too close), challenges these views by being promiscuous, it causes the order Quentin wants to keep to fall into chaos. He is clearly troubled by these memories with Caddy or conversations about Caddy’s promiscuity with other people and shows an unhealthy obsession over it. Quentin is sensitive to Caddy’s behavior. The most extreme example of this is when he even tries to make a pact with Caddy that he would slit her throat and then his so that the family’s name might be preserved from Caddy getting pregnant out of wedlock. Even though Caddy agreed to it, since it was another way to challenge the southern values, Quentin could not bring himself to do it. So he instead wants to take full responsibility by saying he committed incest with her admit that it was some other guy who did this with Caddy’s consent that did this. For whatever reason, Quentin thinks incest is a less shameful act than premarital sex and it is better to have his family name be shamed from incest than the other. His obsession with Caddy can also be seen through his jealousy of her being with other men. However, Caddy also showed jealousy when Quentin was with Natalie.  So maybe they see something more between them than just family. 

       Quentin’s turmoil is deepened furthered by his father lack of concern for Caddy’s behavior. His father says more to Quentin that defend Caddy’s actions saying that virginity is an unnatural idea that men created and a meaningless thing to women. This completely goes against Quentin’s views and creates more disorder, which was rooted in Caddy’s promiscuity in the first place. All this chaos within Quentin drives him to commit suicide, for he feels that is the only solution to escape it all. Yet is peculiar that Quentin is obsessed with having his hair neat and teeth brushed before he does so, so that he can have a little more order in his life before he leaves. 

April Seventh, 1928 (Benjy's Chapter)

      The first chapter of The Sound and the Fury was a difficult chapter for me to understand with a first read through due to the shifts between the present and the past, and especially the jumping around of stories in the past. I think Faulkner starts his novel in this disorientating way because he wants the reader to get a sense and be familiar with the setting of the environment, situation, and background of the Compton family. But instead of telling about what happened during years of the Compton children’s lives, Faulkner expresses the situation by using the memories Benjy recalls through his associations with the present and by what he observes through his senses, especially smell. This technique creates a more emotional and personal atmosphere than compared to a chronological account that tells about these significant events, which tend to detached the reader from the emotions of the family. It emphasizes that feelings and contents matter more than the accuracy of when things took place and other frivolous details. Faulkner also uses Benjy’s story first as a way for the reader to dive into the complex story that is to be unraveled. Since his account is told with little emotion and biased opinions from himself, the reader is able to have an honest and factual information about the Compton family and their attitudes and beliefs from an emotional perspective due to technique Faulkner uses.

      Benjy’s account is told on April seventh, just a couple days before Easter, on his 33rd birthday. Through his account, it is revealed that he is a burden to the Compton family. As a result, he suffers greatly from the treatment of his family (minus his sister, Caddie) , the servant boys, and other people. In addition to that, Benjy also suffers from the loss of his name and dignity, and his of his sister. However, through it all, he still remains innocent. These facts and incidents create a strong parallel to Jesus, who was an innocent and pure man that also suffered. The correlation between the date of the narration and the age of Benjy to the date of Jesus’ crucifixion and his age signify that Benjy is the Christ-like figure in the book. 

Benjy’s presence in the story illustrates the old Southern Aristocracy family view on social matters and the decline of his family in this modern age. The scene in which the family changed Benjy’s original name, Maury, to its current one when they found out that he was mentally handicapped to prevent the name of the mother’s brother to be soiled illustrates the family’s shame about Benjy. They care too much about their outward appearance and keeping a high family status, that they will outcast a family member because of their disability. Benjy also shows the decline of the family as they grow to be poor. By the time he is 33, the family had to sell a great portion of their estate to become a golf course for a company. Many other negative events have occurred throughout the years, such as the death of family members and the absence of Caddie, and this makes Benjy nostalgic for the past where Caddie was present and not many changes occurred.  The development over the years shows a lack of unity in the family. As well reflecting the South as a whole as they try to hold up the old prestigious image of an Aristocratic family, but fall to hardship in the modern age. 

Faulkner

I found William Faulkner life to be fascinating. It was amazing all the things he did and accomplished in his relatively short life. From a guy who dropped out of high school and never earned a college degree, he was able complete twenty novels, numerous short stories, and several screen plays for Hollywood movies, as well as earning numerous awards for his literary success, including the Nobel Prize. Despite all his accomplishments, he remained a humble person claiming that he is a “failed poet”. His personal belief is that a writer “must never be satisfied with what he does” because his work is “never is as good as it can be done.” Faulkner never once recognized himself as a major literary person. He was shy about claiming his Nobel award and could never gain enough courage to speak with James Joyce when he had the chance. He even states that “The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said.” His views on his work are extraordinary compared to other artists and their work. He, in a way, does not take ownership of what he has written and instead writes and gives it to the public.

Another thing I admire about Faulkner was his tenacity in life. Whenever something did not go well for him, he rebounded easily and did something to make it happen. He has even said himself “All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.” He accepts failures and use it fuel his determination. For example, he wanted to fly planes and so he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force only to be denied because of his height. Instead of stopping after that point, he continued to pursue his dream and applied to join the Royal Air Force in Canada. In order to raise his chances of being accepted, Faulkner lied about his birthdate and birthplace and changed his last named spelled Falkner to Faulkner in order to make it seem British. In his meeting with the RAF, he affected a British accent to complete the façade. He went through a lot of trouble and risks to achieve his dream. This trait even showed up in his writing. When several publisher denied to publish one of his books early in his career as a writer, Faulkner kept persisting until he found someone who would publish it. After that failure, he kept on pursuing  writing and strictly wrote for pleasure, where  he created one of his best works, The Sound and the Fury, which he called his “most splendid failure.”

The last thing I thought was unique about Faulkner was that he was outspoken and chance the risks of what he did. When he wrote Sanctuary, he wrote it purely to make money off of it which he stated in the introduction. He also took risks in his writing. He would write about controversial topic, such as with Sanctuary which was about rape. He criticized Ernest Hemingway saying he is never brave enough to take risks in his writing and therefore he was “next to last”. He even voiced his opinions about segregation, which was not popular among the people who were anti segregation or pro segregation. These actions made him seem genuine and a down to earth person. It made most anything else he said seem true and from the heart, such as with his Nobel Prize speech about how man will prevail with the foundation of writers who write about the universal truths. Faulkner was a remarkable man who was true to himself and thus the world.