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William faulkner the sound and the fury essay
William faulkner the sound and the fury essay
Important themes of the sound and the fury
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William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" (1929) is one of the monuments of High Modernism. It was the dark side of the social scene, that caught Faulkner's imagination and makes him delves deeply into the social structure of the Americans. He shows the fall and the decay of the family as a unit of society, the failure of the family to hold together and its damaging. The Compson family is one of the samples of a disintegrated and ruined American family whose members are characterized by absence of either the parental or the maternal role, lack of respect and constant conflict, which has shaken the balance of their family leading to its disintegration. Compson family Children are living a life of prisoners of family manners and beliefs in …show more content…
They are portrayed as puppets, their parents the puppeteers” ( qtd. in Easterbrook 62). The relationship among the members of the Compson family seems to be void of emotion; both parents and their children express no emotion towards one another. The family seems to live in chaos where there is no father to be feared, obeyed or even defied. Mr. and Mrs. Compson seem to be alien to one another, the only thread that seems to join them together is the roof of the house; their relationship proves the absence of harmony, love or even attachment, which are usually observed between any married couples. The vanishing of the Compson family has been by several reasons such as the parents who have given up their role in the family; the stability of the family has been affected by the psychological problems of Mr. and …show more content…
Compson the father of the family is dissatisfied with modern world, finding a refuge in alcohol; he becomes alcoholic person who cannot face his reality, his conflict with his wife change the house to bullring in which Mr. and Mrs. Compson rarely communicate. He is portrayed as powerless having no word over his family’s decisions or his children’s behavior. Candace Compson: is one of the victims of her family, of alcoholic father and absent cruel mother. Quentin, as one of the sons and members of the family, also is a victim, he is not able to tolerate the decay and what is not acceptable in their society nor what spoils their family honor (Li 16). He is the only one who tries to prevent his sister from being engaged in sexual relations and cares about the family honor, his interest in his sister’s honor makes him imagine that he has committed incest with her. He cannot bear his sister’s behavior and sin, which has contributed greatly in his tragic end, he chooses to commit suicide as the only way to escape degradation and escape the society that does not believe in moral values. This appears when he
McCullough describes the family as a paradox. "It was, plainly, a family of paradoxes: privileged and cushioned beyond most people's imagining, yet little like the stereotype of the vapid, insular rich; uneducated in any usual, formal fashion but also uninhibited by education - ardent readers, insatiable askers of questions; chronically troubled, cursed it would seem, by one illness or mysterious disorder after another, yet refusing to subject others to their troubles or to give in to despair" (pg. 37).
According to smith and Hamon (2012), Families are considered as a whole in society. However, they believed that couples have many components in which makes up the family, if one component is missing, the family as a whole can get unbalance (Smith & Hamon, 2012). In the Brice’s family, communication was the component that was missing. The couple was not able to communicate their differences, which was what caused Carolyn and David to verbally insult each other. Smith and Hamon (2012), also explain that a person who expresses his or her feeling is considered as someone who is breaking the functions of their family system; especially if the person is focusing on the individual who is causing the problem, rather than the problem itself. In the Brice family, Carolyn could be considered the one that cause the dysfunction in the family structure because she was focusing on David as the problem of their marriage, rather than focusing of the elements that are causing their problems. Smith and Hamon (2012) explain that individuals should focus on how to solve a problem, rather than trying to find who is causing the
Cal and Aron are Cathy's twin sons. In their relationship they too have many conflicts, Aron, the "good" son, studies religion and Cal, the "evil" son, gambles and visits whore houses. Aron tries to convert Cal, but Cal refuses to convert a...
William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Feature bold experimentation with shifts in time and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including "A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner 's fictional Yoknapatawpha
They made many mistakes but don’t seem to care much because they know their children will forgive them. Jeannette 's mother sees her weakness for her father and uses it against her. When ever she messed up she told the kids they “should forgive her the same way [they] always forgave Dad for is drink”(174). She expects them to forgive her just like they forgive their dad because she knows they always think the best of them. She messes up endless amounts of time but the kids forgive them every time because they care about them. They are very selfish, and exploit their kids love. Her father knows she has “a soft spot for him the way no one else in the family did, and he took advantage of it”(209). Jeannette know knows her dad is using her for her forgiveness, but she doesn’t seem to mind because she loves him so much. Her parents use their love to get what they want, and since the kids unconditionally love them. Her mother and father constantly need Jeannette’s help and love, more than she needs theirs. If jeannette ever says no they become disappointed and make her feel bad. But since they are family, they always stick
A key theme in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury is the deterioration of the Compson family. May Brown focuses on this theme and explains that Quentin is the best character to relate the story of a family torn apart by” helplessness, perversion, and selfishness.” In his section, there is a paradoxical mixture of order and chaos which portrays the crumbling world that is the core of this novel.
Lester is not the only character who suffers from this. His wife Carolyn and daughter Jane both know what it is like to feel trapped in an unhappy life. Carolyn is imprisoned by image. She has the notion that she cannot be happy unless everything appears as perfect. And Jane, feeling the weight of her parents, wants to break off from her prison, her home life. She like most teens views her parents as weird and wants out of that life.
not only a family but a society. In a play riddled with greed, manipulation and dishonesty,
For example, his mother Caroline illustrates this well as she often feigns illnesses and claims she is a burden on all others in order to gain their sympathy. His father also subconsciously tries to control him as he gives him life advice or claims theories that cause Quentin to obsess over concepts like time and how it won’t stop. Caddy is not specifically trying to control him, however, her actions dictate his life choices to a severe degree. Like Benjy, Quentin obsesses over Caddy’s promiscuity, but in addition, he attempts to remedy the loss of Caddy’s virginity by devising ideas such as killing themselves or claiming they committed incest together. Quentin’s reaction to Caddy’s loss of innocence is extreme in comparison with his brothers and could be considered mania as we view his long stream of consciousness, such as when his thoughts about her proposed wedding interrupt his other thoughts; “It’s her car aren’t you proud of your little sister owns first auto in town Herbert his present. Louis has been giving her lessons every morning didn’t you get my letter Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson announce the marriage of their daughter Candace to Mr Sydney Herbert Head on the twenty-fifth of April one thousand nine hundred and ten at Jefferson Mississippi. At home after the first of August number Something Something Avenue South Bend Indiana. Shreve said Aren’t you even going to open it? Three days. Times. Mr and
Prior to presenting the expectations her brothers have of her, Faulkner establishes a series of prerequisites to her downfall as an explanation for their unreasonable and selfish intentions. The Compson encounter little parental support due to the obsessions and selfishness of their parents. Mrs. Compson is depicted as a woman who finds parenting a punishment from God, stating: "I thought that Benjamin was punishment enough for any sins I have committed. I thought he was my punishment for putting aside my pride and marrying a man who held himself above me I don't complain; I loved him above all of them because of it because my duty" (Faulkner 154). She is thus painfully unable to support her children and leaves Caddy with no moral compass to help navigate through the development of a young woman. Mr. Compson, an equally pitiful parent, is obsessed with honor. When his children are unable to live up to his reputation and embody the aristocratic image he wishes for his family to represent, he secludes himself from the rest of the world and drinks himself into a stupor and even...
In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the image of honeysuckle is used repeatedly to reflect Quentin’s preoccupation with Caddy’s sexuality. Throughout the Quentin section of Faulkner’s work, the image of honeysuckle arises in conjunction with the loss of Caddy’s virginity and Quentin’s anxiety over this loss. The particular construction of this image is unique and important to the work in that Quentin himself understands that the honeysuckle is a symbol for Caddy’s sexuality. The stream of consciousness technique, with its attempt at rendering the complex flow of human consciousness, is used by Faulkner to realistically show how symbols are imposed upon the mind when experiences and sense perceptions coalesce. Working with this modernist technique, Faulkner is able to examine the creation function of symbols in human consciousness.
The art, literature, and poetry of the early 20th century called for a disruption of social values. Modernism became the vague term to describe the shift. The characteristics of the term Modernism, all seek to free the restricted human spirit. It had no trust in the moral conventions and codes of the past. One of the examples of modernism, that breaks the conventions and traditions of literature prior to Modernism, is Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. The short story uses plot, symbolism, setting, dialogue, and a new style of writing to allow human spirit to experiment with meaning and interpretation.
The Modernist Fiction period took place during the 1920’s and revolutionized the American way of life in literature, economically, and socially. There was a national vision of upward mobility during this time that represented the American Dream. The upward mobility was seen through the consumerism and materialism that dominated this decade economically. Popular novels of this time reflected the mass consumerism in the lives of those wrote them. During the American Modernist Fiction period, Americans became increasingly materialistic throughout the roaring twenties; therefore, the American Dream was to obtain upper class status through the possession of material goods, which was reflected in many of this period’s works.
William Faulkner uses multiple narrators throughout The Sound and the Fury to depict the life of Caddy Compson without telling the story from her point-of-view. Benjy, a mentally disabled 33 year old, Quentin, a troubled and suicidal Harvard student, and Jason, a racist and greedy man, each give their drastically different sides of Caddy’s story to create an incomplete chronicle of her life. Faulkner’s first chapter explores Caddy’s life through the silent narrator Benjy. As a result of Benjy’s inability to talk, much of how he describes the world is through his heightened sensory awareness. Benjy constantly repeats the fact that, which, to Benjy, symbolizes Caddy’s innocence (Faulkner 6). Later in the novel when, Benjy realizes that Caddy has lost the innocence Benjy once idolized and loved (Faulkner 40).
Tragedy is an ever present part of life, whether it be illness, inability, death or anything else, it takes its toll on everyone. A very common tragedy found in literature and daily life is the loss of dreams, in Langston Hughes’s poem “A Dream Deferred” Hughes poses the question of what truly happens to a deferred dream: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up… Or fester like a sore… Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over...Or does it explode?” The outcome of lost dreams differs for each individual and their attitude. This is seen throughout America and also in The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner and The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.