The Sound and the Fury, Caddy Compson by William Faulkner

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Recommended: William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury

Values are instilled from generation to generation ensuring that society is able to function with a sense of order. However, if humans grow mired in greedy and lustful intentions and expectations and allow these values to decline, then their lives are set up for gradual destruction. In William Faulkner’s iconic novel, The Sound and the Fury, Caddy Compson illustrates this decline in values as readers observe the results of her downfall on everyone who depends on her. Despite illustrating her as a strong and independent mother-figure, Faulkner uses Caddy's decline to argue that unrealistic and cumbersome expectations can lead to an erosion in personal values.
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...

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...y 46.3 (1993): 373+. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 30 Dec. 2013.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Modern Library, 1992. Print.
Gebhart, Genevieve. "Fractured Humanity in a Broken South: Modes of Rhetoric in The Sound and the Fury." intersections 11, no. 2 (2010): 1-9.
Nitschke, Marie, Robert J. Roberts, and Sally Wolff. "'The voice that breathed o'er Eden': William Faulkner's unsung wedding hymn." The Mississippi Quarterly 58.3-4 (2005): 595+. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 4 Feb. 2014.
Roggenbuck, Ted. "'The way he looked said hush': Benjy's mental atrophy in The Sound and the Fury." The Mississippi Quarterly 58.3-4 (2005): 581+. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 30 Dec. 2013.
Waldron, Karen E. "Recovering Eve's consciousness from 'The Sound and the Fury.'." Women's Studies 22.4 (1993): 469+. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 30 Dec. 2013.

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