Men beset by ego and pride are prone to the “sound and fury” of rageful impotence, violently oriented toward themselves and to others. Nowhere in America were men more beset by ego and pride than in the Deep South, with its stated ethos of heritage, honor, politeness, and purity — all, of course, a veneer over the abiding, pervasive racism, misogyny, and violence embedded in the culture. In William Faulkner’s 1929 book, The Sound and the Fury, the Compson family of Mississippi is decaying like their old plantation house, their lineage stunted by bitterness, and with resonate irony that Dilsey, their Black servant, is not only someone who abides by those Deep South ethos, but is the remaining stable force in the family. Faulkner’s book is not an easy read, owing to his stream-of-consciousness style writing elucidating the fluidity of time, as he oscillates between the memories of the characters and the present happenings. Indeed, though, like an abstract painting, the more one gazes upon it, the more it takes shape. With Faulkner, that shape reflected back through the Compson family is the corrosive nature of the Deep South. It’s an ethos that turned upon itself until its last vestiges were in the old, Black hands of people like Dilsey.
The first chapter begins on April 7, 1928, and is told from Benjy’s perspective. Benjy is severely intellectually disabled — another seeming curse upon the men, and lineage, of the Compson family — and thus, narratively, this chapter is the most difficult to read and understand, as Benjy’s mind flits about like a bird, only stopping occasionally for memories he still holds onto, mostly of Candace, or Caddy, his sister. She’s an anchoring point in that way, or from the perspective of the rest of the family, when memories of her trigger his wailing and crying, a trigger and shackle. We later learn that Benjy was castrated, his plantation sold to fund his brother, Quentin’s, tuition to Harvard, and it’s often threatened by his other brother, Jason, to take him to Jackson, a state asylum. It seem to be only his mother and Dilsey who are adamantly against it. Luster, a Black servant, keeps Benjy company, but often berates him, if you ask me. Benjy is the most obvious emblem of the “sound and fury” of existence: his life and understanding of what he’s experiencing is quite literally a cacophony of sounds, the fury of others, and smells, like associating Caddy with the smell of trees. Which using Benjy to open the book is a rather fascinating choice by Faulkner since that means Benjy is unable to have any tangible interest or thoughts regarding those Southern ethos. To ascribe to him an ego or pride would make no sense, either. He just is and how others orient themselves in relation to him speaks more to their character than his, like having him castrated, or wanting to send him away to an asylum. The throughline, however, between Benji and the other Compson men, and the overall narrative, is the chaos, the ruination of order without time to make sense of anything. Hence why Caddy is an anchoring point, a point in time if you will, to bring some semblance of order to his worldview.
Next, with the second chapter, Faulkner takes us back to June 2, 1910. This chapter is told from Quentin’s perspective. I found this to be the most haunting section of the novel (Jason’s is more alarming and unnerving than haunting), owing to Quentin’s inability to deal with his Southern ethos eroding. Which is to say, the fact of Caddy’s existence and behavior, as it were, is the corrosive agent because in that culture, the sister (or daughter, or wife) reflects upon the man. In this case, Caddy being seen as promiscuous, then pregnant, and then wed, is seen as dishonorable and as such, makes Quentin dishonorable. The Compson family continues to descend, to rot away. What’s particularly noteworthy here is I’m not sure where the delineation is between Quentin trying to be the flagbearer for those Southern ethos and there being something incestuous with him and Caddy. At one point, he even claims to his father that Caddy’s baby is his. (His father is largely aloof, I think, and dismisses the idea of virginity and feelings, as well as this claim; nothing matters.) Whatever the case, Quentin tries, impotently, to be that flagbearer throughout this section, such as doing the so-called gentlemanly “defending of her honor” fighting with others and for his troubles, is beat up. Sweetly, though, he sort of takes on an Italian girl as a quasi-sister when he can’t find her home to return her to (her brother, interestingly, tries to defend her honor, thinking Quentin kidnapped her). Once the first semester of school is over, though, to justify using Benjy’s plantation for the expense, Quentin kills himself by drowning. It should be noted, too, Faulkner’s time motif continues in this section, with Quentin imprisoned by time while actively trying to avoid it. He breaks his watch, asks a watchmaker to fix it, and then not tell him what time it is. To put it another way, time means nothing to Benjy and everything to Quentin. He’s also haunted by his shadow, regularly referencing its presence. It was clear someone in his position would see suicide as the only way out of time and out of a space haunted by shadows. His section also devolves into heavy stream-of-consciousness and includes this particularly haunting reflection, “Father was teaching us that all men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away the sawdust flowing from what wound in what side that not for me died not.”
Faulkner doesn’t mince words in how he opens the next chapter from Jason’s perspective, April 6, 1928: “Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.” Jason is a cruel, bitter man — the quintessential Southern man beset by ego and pride I mentioned at the top. His bitterness is oriented toward Caddy, whose marriage promised riches through a banking job and its dissolution meant working at the country store instead, and then having to essentially raise Caddy’s child, named Quentin (which was confusing at first!), who seems to be as “promiscuous” and rebellious as her mother. Caddy sends back money for Quentin, which Jason stole to the tune of like $50,000 over the course of 15 years. Eventually, Quentin would steal it from him, which is the biggest afront to him: a woman got away with stealing from him. She represents his raging impotence. That all said, the clarity of Jason’s sadism made for far easier reading, adding to my understanding of the story. As for the time motif with Jason, while there are no memories per se, he is stuck in the past and specifically, what he views as the “wrongs” done to him in the past. After all, perceived past wrongs are the building blocks of present bitterness.
The final section of the book, April 8, 1928, is told from Faulkner’s third-person perspective, again, making it a far easier-to-understand read, although, I was expecting (and hoping) Caddy would narrate this section to get more of her perspective, but I think it was deliberate by Faulkner to have the book narrated by the failed men of the Compson family and then bring it back to a bird’s eye view at the end. This is also the section that demonstrates Dilsey’s stalwart presence in the Compson household and where Quentin is revealed to have stolen from Jason and absconded. Notably, Faulkner’s conclusion to the book happens on Easter, where Dilsey attends a sermon (where she also unabashedly brings Benjy) and hears a preacher talk about Jesus’ death and resurrection. One could take away from that Faulkner telling us redemption is still possible for the Compson family, but I think Jason’s bitterness is too all-consuming to make room for hope and renewal. Time, or their lineage, has effectively ceased for the Compson family.
Overall, again, The Sound and the Fury is not an easy read, which is to say, it’s not always enjoyable to be reading a book where you feel lost as to what is happening. That was especially true during Benjy’s chapter, but even Quentin’s stream-of-consciousness and descent into taking his own life left me feeling adrift at times. The anchoring points, however, were Faulkner’s use of time as a motif and the evidence of the Compson men’s impotence and insolence. Even though it was initially difficult, in sticking with it and getting to Jason’s section and then the final section, as the pieces came together from a plot and character standpoint, I appreciated what Faulkner was doing. Without time, or with the overwhelming feeling of death closing in, as it was with Quentin, it is disorienting and generates a feeling of being adrift. Time is what allows for memories and reflection upon those memories, and feelings (unless you’re a psychopath like Jason). Time is what allows for the slow disintegration of the Compson family and their Southern ethos along with it.
Milam's Musings 