Hello, everyone! Long time no see! While deliberating who I should focus on for this installment of my long-winded, poorly-titled blog, I found myself rereading the short stories of Faulkner, namely “Barn Burning” and “The Bear.” While I could have written about those (which I might in the future), I found myself more excited in my return to The Sound and The Fury, in which I found a deep inclination of sympathy. William Faulkner’s pieces are often regarded as symbolic and representative of more significant issues. Faulkner displays this pattern in The Sound and the Fury by chronicling the fall of the Compson family. Faulkner allows for interpretation and representation by giving each brother of the Compson family their own section of the novel. This method also allows deep insight into the psychology of each narrative character. Through sentimentality, psychology, and representation of the South, William Faulkner lays bare the trauma of the Southern United States and forces readers to sympathize with an otherwise tragically flawed region.
Faulkner uses Benjy’s limited capacity for understanding in the first part of the novel to not only display uncontrollable forces that necessitate Benjy’s abusive actions but also to represent the collective consciousness of the new South. Benjy is perhaps the most sympathetic of the Compson brothers because, unlike Quentin and Jason, his mental illnesses categorize him as disabled. Benjy is both deaf and mute, and the limits of his cognitive abilities are demonstrated during his narrative. In the opening pages, Benjy is howling and crying along the fence as golfers call for their caddies. This scene reflects an inability to cope, but it also demonstrates Benjy’s failure to understand his methods. Benjy’s fence serves as both a physical and metaphysical barrier between Benjy and the world at large. Since the fence has been put in place and since Caddy’s departure, Benjy has been unable to understand his emotions. In this way, Benjy’s behavior represents a prevalent mentality of the South, one of confusion and inarticulation. Benjy should be understood to represent those descendants of old wealth in the South who do not understand or have not been taught their lineage of hate and are thus disregarded by American society. Faulkner elaborates on the dangers of these tendencies via Benjy’s indifference toward himself in his adult years. Benjy stops seeking nurture and care because, at this point, he has lived most of his life without Caddy. In his article discerning Benjy’s displays of mental atrophy, Ted Roggenbuck, Director of writing and literacy engagement at Bloomberg University, asserts that by the time Benjy is an adult, he “knows that nobody around him can provide what he wants” (584). Essentially, Benjy’s only understanding in his adult life is his knowledge that nobody understands him, and this leads to Benjy’s apathetic tendencies. Through Benjy’s representative journey, Faulkner asserts that if the South is misunderstood, it will eventually want to be left ignored.
Benjy’s indifference to his own suffering should not, however, be read as an unwillingness to contribute to the world around him, as his actions display a yearning to understand, mirroring the South’s longing for inclusion. This desire is reflected in the disregarded sects of the South and is exemplified in the novel when Benjy grabs a girl he thinks may serve as a replacement for Caddy as he is “trying to say, and she screamed, and I was trying to say” (Faulkner 47). Benjy cannot tell the reader what he is trying to understand, only that he is trying. Benjy’s lack of explanation for his emotion, whether to the reader or himself, epitomizes his lack of understanding, allowing readers to grasp what Benjy never will. In the opening, Benjy never once tells the audience that he is crying; instead, this is learned when Luster tells him to “Hush up that moaning” (Faulkner 9). Benjy can not relay his pain or coping mechanisms to any audience. Throughout Benjy’s narrative, we are shown rather than told that he does not have the mental capacity to understand his surroundings without Caddy nurturing him. Benjy relies on the phrase “Caddy smelled like trees” to show times in which he understands and times in which he does not, but he never explicitly explains why Caddy does or does not smell like trees (11). Instead, Benjy’s inability to understand forces readers to infer why Benjy is upset. This phrase ultimately demonstrates his desire to control Caddy. When he first grabs her dress and refuses to let go after seeing her and Charlie, Benjy wails until Caddy scrubs her mouth with soap. After this first of several violent impositions shown to us by Benjy, he claims again that “Caddy smelled like trees” (Faulkner 44). In this scene, Caddy’s smell stems from Benjy’s obsessive and violent tendencies instead of a solely physical manifestation of smell.
The idea that Faulkner displays via Benjy is that if the New South is not invited to be understood and is instead disregarded and tormented, then like Benjy, it will eventually erupt in bouts of anger and confusion. Beyond the more severe instances of resonating sadness, readers are shown through the novel that Benjy is prone to obsessive anger at the slightest inconveniences or changes to his routine. In his article displaying similarities between Shakespearian tragedy and The Sound and the Fury, Warwick Wadlington, Professor emeritus for the English department at the University of Texas, establishes that the novel plays on the classical tragedy tropes of warped mentalities. In doing so, he describes the hellish landscape of Benjy’s daily life, stating, “To Benjy, a single agony of loss recurs daily” (418). Wadlington asserts that, in essence, Benjy lives in an infinite recurrence of mental torment. While readers can acknowledge Benjy’s state of unwavering depression and anxiety as an infinite constant, the fact that these are directly caused by trauma that Benjy will never have the mental ability to comprehend creates an absolute hopelessness. The theme of Benjy’s decadence in the novel’s first part creates a seriously flawed but sympathetic character. Faulkner makes readers walk a fine line with Benjy.
On the one hand, arguing that he alone has willed his adulthood circumstance is to deny him of mental disability; on the other, denying any responsibility for his actions would strip Benjy of his humanity. By walking this line, readers are made to sympathize with Benjy, acknowledging his misdeeds and shaming the outside forces that have worked against him in creating his Hell. Through this sympathy for Benjy, Faulkner creates a level of understanding between southerners and non-southerners. While the South is seriously flawed, the South itself has not been allowed to understand these flaws fully.
Faulkner uses Quentin’s dissociative identity and suicide to reflect the prevalent mindsets of Southerners who deny the change in the South altogether. His desire to ruin the New Compson family or the New South exemplifies this mindset. By the time Quentin’s narrative starts, the family has sold their land to send Quentin to Harvard, which Quentin resents up until his death; “I have sold Benjy’s pasture, and I can be dead in Harvard” (Faulkner 142). Quentin rejects narrative control and control of his family’s future; this desire comes from mournful regret. Because of his unaddressed trauma concerning his childhood, Quentin can not understand his family’s name, much less want to carry it into the New South. Like the embarrassing effects of post-Civil War culture from the explicitly racist Jim Crow era that followed the South’s loss, Quentin’s dissociation is uniquely Southern. The generational identity crises of the region make it so: “-he is neither a new man nor an old one” (Miller 39). Both the South and Quentin exist in a time and space of transition, whereas once his family was famous in the confederacy, he is now playing an active role in their desperate attempts at staying relevant. Faulkner emphasizes through this section the state of knowing that one does not know themselves and the dangerous effects of this dissociation. Quentin’s incapacity to interpret his own experience or articulate any meaning in life “…reflect the decaying world which is at the heart of the novel” (Brown 544). Quentin’s constant struggle to find meaning in his family’s failures exemplifies this decadence of the post-Civil War South. Faulker shows readers, particularly Southern readers, that to assume the South is now in decay after the end of slavery is to place all Southern values in the old world. Doing so ultimately leads to denial and resentment of an ever-changing Southern United States. Quentin’s suicide serves not as Faulkner’s call to action for understanding but as a necessary step in the New South’s actualization. Faulkner further emphasizes this by making Quentin’s suicide necessary for Jason’s narrative, ultimately making any development brutally dependent on the act. Faulkner implies the agency of old Southern values transitioning by making Quentin “serve as a medium for…exploration of…uniquely Southern problems” (Miller 39). Faulkner uses this relation to explain that the Old South has been doomed from the very beginning, that if southerners resist change as they desperately have in the past, then like Quentin, their obsessions over past values will serve to their downfall.
Quentin’s downfall is, however, ultimately sympathetic to the extent that his depersonalization is not entirely self-inflicted. Instead, the values imposed on him by his father have failed since their inception. Benjy can not carry on the family, and he can not carry the South, but Quentin is non-disabled and willing to carry on “the mausoleum of all hope and desire” given to him by his father (Faulkner 67). The complex of his life presented in the novel is how he is supposed to carry old Southern values into a world that has all but rejected them. Much like the South has been inexplicably both proud and embarrassed by its old values, Quentin’s attempts at holding onto pride stem from his view that Caddy’s promiscuity has embarrassed the family. Through his obsession with time, Quentin actively seeks to destroy the new world- a world signified by Caddy’s maturity and departure. This paranoia is best symbolized by his obsession with the destruction of time. As time passes, Quentin is perpetually further away from the old chivalrous attitudes he wishes to uphold. Faulkner uses this obsession in Quentin to display that the attitudes and values of the Old South are still prevalent in the South today. Quentin’s less-than-noble, dying attitude should be read today as a stand-in for those in the South obsessed with Confederate flags and monuments. There is not much pride to be found in Quentin’s past or that of old white southern values, and the forward marching of time serves as an infinite reminder of this. No matter how Quentin tries to deny and destroy the new world, watches and clocks keep ticking a “blank dial with little wheels clicking and click- ing” (Faulkner 70). The hopelessness displayed in Quentin’s journey of failed obsession is not unlike Benjy’s, but it does have an ending. The Old South is put to rest through Quentin, but in this act, the good and bad of the New South have both lost crucial lessons from its past.
Faulkner displays the dangers of the New South, denying its history through the characterization and psychology of Jason. Jason, throughout the entirety of the novel, is at war with himself. As a child, he constantly misbehaves in desperation for attention, such as when he chews on paper to disrupt Quentin’s studies. Jason rejects his father’s repeated questioning and asking for him to “Stop that” and eventually does stop when Dilsey calls dinner, but later on repeats the action and is beaten for it (Faulkner 60-64). The troublemaker role he assumes as a child is in stark contrast to the roles of the organized Quentin, nurturing Caddy, or idiot Benjy. Jason slowly becomes the family’s problem child, not just for the adults. Jason’s tattling slowly breeds an obsession with order, and his repeated threats to Caddy and Quentin of “I’m going to tell on you” allowed for teasing by his siblings, which ultimately became bullying and disregard (Faulkner 27). These patterns of coping with isolation and neglect “…were adaptive during [his] childhood, but destructive of self and others in adulthood” (Storhoff). This inheritance is best exemplified by his constant chastising of Earl, through which Jason becomes incredibly hypocritical, telling Earl, “At least I can tend to my own business and let other people’s alone,” while he uselessly berates him ( Faulkner 195). To see him for his abusive behavior as an adult without considering the abuse he received as a child is to ignore the trauma that necessitated these learned behaviors that Jason denies.
This denial creates in Jason a state of paranoia not entirely different from Benjy’s or Quentin’s. The differences, however, lie in Jason’s coping mechanisms. Instead of wholly assuming the role of the patriarch, Jason constantly regresses to his troublemaker status and thus “enslaves himself through his selfishness,” ultimately holding himself and his family hostage in the world they were left behind in (Rodden 89). For instance, while hoarding the money from the checks the family receives, he not only says they have burned but purchases “The first car in town,” both building his image and sacrificing the family’s welfare (Faulkner 140). These selfish behaviors suggest that Jason could change the family’s trajectory if he tried, but his inability to assume a singular role is ultimately his most significant flaw. However, with his trauma, the constant shifting of blame, and paranoia, Jason cannot assume a heroic stance in the family. Jason not meeting his potential is not a solely self-fulfilling prophecy, but rather the combination of traumas that he lacks the capacity of patience to struggle for progression. The combination of a dead brother, disabled brother, deserter sister, and alcoholic father makes Jason hone in and obsess over other people’s flaws and intentions, leaving himself no room for growth. In allowing readers to recognize this level of trauma as insurmountable, Faulkner draws on our deepest sympathies for the worst narrator of the novel in terms of anger, ignorance, and selfishness.
The idea Faulkner draws here through representation in Jason is yet another mindset of the New South. Unlike Benjy’s representation of this culture through the inability to understand its history or Quentin’s denial, Jason’s New South pawns off its responsibility for its decadence. Jason, like the ignorance in the New South, understands that it has grown out of a downfall, but assumes no personal responsibility for its shortcomings. Instead, Jason constantly blames Caddy as well as her daughter and displays this in the opening words of his narrative “Once a bitch, always a bitch” (Faulkner 146). This overarching tone of misogyny can be seen through his interactions with Dilsey, Quentin, and his mother, in which he frequently assumes either physically or mentally violent methods. These flaws mirror the very same flaw of the South, and this flaw’s destructive nature is displayed when Quentin runs away from the family with the three thousand dollars Jason had hidden. This event breeds more profound paranoia in Jason, who frantically pursues Quentin across the state, harming himself with the smell of gasoline. Jason has painted himself as a victim of “robbery” (Faulkner 224). Jason’s victimized mindset throughout his adult section is not the slightest bit noble but is fueled by his constant rejection of responsibility. His family is bordering poverty, not because of his poor investments and mismanagements, but because of “the fellows that sit up there in New York and trim the sucker gamblers” (Faulkner 155). Jason continues in the very same section to single out his opposition as “Those rich New York Jews,” inferring that Jason’s view of his circumstances is that they are not in his control but ruled by outside forces that actively seek him out. These instances of blaming women, Jewish people, and “…dam trifling N’s” for his misfortune solidify Jason as not just a paranoid person but a conspiracy theorist and white supremacist (Faulkner 154). This mindset is not new to the South, and white supremacism is more often than not a product of misunderstood trauma. Jason does not assume responsibility for his circumstances until the end of his narrative when he takes the reigns from Luster. At this moment, Faulkner summarizes the message he makes with Jason by finally actualizing him as Benjy’s hero. Yes, this is a small act, and he still hits Benjy, but he demonstrates that he not only knows how to take care of him but that he is finally willing to. John Rodden, Author and Professor at the University of Virginia, displays in his article concerning the representation of African Americans in the novel, that Jason is a man who initially “…never grants anything except the worst motives or behavior…” toward other people, but by the end of the section, is literally and figuratively taking the reigns of the New South’s future (91). Jason can best be understood as the most developed character in the novel to the extent that his arc is uninterrupted and always progressing. By painting Jason as a profoundly flawed and deeply hurt character with the ability to change, Faulkner makes readers sympathize with and understand the perpetrator of one of the most harmful ideologies in American history.
By forcing readers to sympathize with all three brothers of the Compson family, Faulkner displays the harsh realities of the South and Southern attitudes and a deep appreciation for the widely misunderstood region. By offering deep insight into the psychology of each brother via their narration, Faulkner allows readers to interpret and analyze their traumas and motivations. Ultimately, Faulkner displays the more significant issues pertaining to the decadence of the South as misunderstanding, ignorance, and denial, but offers a path of healing for the New South, one that entails patience and responsibility. Psychological, historical, and ethical approaches to the novel reveal the inner workings between the lines of the narrators and Faulkner’s ultimate declaration of sympathy.
– Samuel McFerron, Blogger.
Samuel McFerron – Asst. Managing Editor, Webmaster, Prose Editor, Poetry Editor & Blogger: Samuel is a Senior at Lewis University. They are double majoring in English Literature and Philosophy. They aspire to become a professor of U.S. Literature and spend most of their free time reading and writing. They hope to improve upon their writing and literary analysis skills during their time here at Lewis. Some authors they recommend are Ana Castillo, Willa Cather, Navarre Scott Momaday, Walker Percy, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their poetry appears in The Kudzu Review (FSU) and Beyond Thought (UNLV).