Final Post

After finishing The Sound and the Fury, I can clearly see why William Faulkner won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. He is honestly the most talented writer I have ever read. It's not what he writes about, there are several other novels dedicated to the South's backwards ways, it's how he writes about them. Faulkner uses four different narrators to describe the fallen from honor Compson family. Benjy's, Quentin's and Jason's narrative are all first person, and show how distinct each brother has. Their stories all revolve around one person: Caddy. She is the only sibling that we don't get to see what goes on inside her mind. Caddy is different from her brothers. First of all, she is the only one who is truly free. She has no husband and no family so she can do as she pleases, but she still sends money in the mail, which shows that she must be doing pretty well. But the most important thing is the Caddy is really the only character that is capable of love. Although Benjy and Quentin do love their sister, both have not experienced real, romantic love. Jason is basically incapable of loving anyone or anything that is not money, even though he was the one child that was shown affection by his mother. Love is what family is all about and the force that makes it endure, yet the Compsons don't really seem to really love one another. Maybe it wasn't anyone's "sins" that made the family fall apart, but the lack of love that they had.
Faulkner uses the use of narration to his advantage. By looking inside each brother's mind, I got a much more powerful impression of them than if I was to just read about them from the outside. In Benjy's, we learn of the Compson's history, and can see that Benjy knows no distinction between the past and the present. Quentin's section shows that he is clearly not in a fit state of mind, and shows us the reasons why he committed suicide. In Jason's section, we can show in thoughts how awful he is, especially when he feels no guilt after scamming his mother. Although having three different perspectives was quite confusing to piece together, Faulkner used it to show the differences between each character, and the different ways that the corrupted "Old Southern values" have effected them.
The fourth section is a third person narrative that follows the black maid, Dilsey. I don't think that Faulkner's choice to not make Dilsey's section a first person narrative makes him racist or sexist. I think that by making the last section that way we could see the Compson's family through a pair of truly unbiased eyes. At the end of the novel, it is Dilsey that runs the family, even though Jason and Mrs. Compson are consistently degrading her. Even after all these years, and rasing all the children, Dilsey has not given up on the family. I would have been depressed if she hadn't been there. Without her, who would run the house? Jason? Ha no. She creates a feeling of hope in the novel. Even with all the corruption around her, there she is unscathed by it. Faulkner uses her to show that maybe it wasn't the corrupted southern values that destroyed a family, but a family whose corruption destroyed southern values.
The Sound and the Fury is a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Idiot could easily refer to Benjy, but Jason and Quentin weren't exactly the brightest either. Like Macbeth, which told the undoing of a man, it told the undoing of an entire family. It was a long and hard novel to read, yet it really didn't have much of a plot.Maybe Mr. Compson was right in the everything that we do is only temporary. The more things change, the more that they stay the same.