Dilsey/ Final Comments

The final chapter of The Sound and the Fury is narrated in the third person, told from the point of view of Dilsey. Because of this narration style, it is the most coherent chapter and the easiest to understand. It is direct and straightfoward, which is a nice break for the reader considering the difficulty and disorienting feelings that came with the first chapters. 

Each chapter is increasingly more coherent and easy to understand. First, Benjy is mentally disabled, and he can't tell the difference between past or present, which makes the reader confused as to which time period he is referring to. Despite this, he gives a fairly direct depiction of the characters in the story because he is able to only tell us what happens without mixing it up with how he feels. Next, Quentin looses his sanity throughout the chapter and ultimately kills himself. He is under immense amounts of pressure from his parents at Harvard, and he has a strong desire to "save" his sister Caddy from her marriage. He too begins to loose his sense of time. Quentin feels much more complex emotions than Benjy, or any character for that matter, which makes him quite the enigma. Third, Jason has a belief system that seems crazy to us, which is the only thing that makes him hard to understand. He speaks coherently, though not always intelligently, which is a big change from either Benjy or Quentin. Finally, Dilsey's chapter is told from the third-person voice, which makes her completely coherent and easy to understand because we don't also have to try to understand her feelings or beliefs. 

Faulker probably presented the book in this order to first introduce characters in an unbiased manner through Benji, and also present to the reader the overarching theme of time in the book. Quentin further gives us an insight into time, and also shows readers other sides of the characters that Benjy could not show. For example, we learn of the horrible pressure that Mr. and Mrs. Compson put Quentin under at Harvard, which tells us that they are not the best parents. More importantly, though, we learn more about Caddy and her marriage, and how Quentin tried to save her from that marriage by telling her father that they had committed incest. Then, through Jason, we are able to learn even more about the characters, such as Mrs. Compson's oblivion to Jason's terrible nature. We learn even more about Caddy in the present day (because Quentin's chapter was set 18 years before), and about her love for her daughter and desire to help her family, despite Jason's evil efforts to intercept the money coming from Caddy. Lastly, Dilsey's third-person narration nicely ends the story in a pragmatic, emotionless way that tells readers what transpires. This makes the narration much more interesting because it continually changes. It is a very effective way of showing readers the many sides of each character. 

The Sound and the Fury definitely parallels the Deep South in the time period in which it was written. Jason is the embodiment of these southern values, mostly rooted in hatred for those who are different and deemed inferior to you. But the progression of the narrators also shows the changing South throughout this period, from a crazy, disorienting place to a place that is much easier to understand. 

This novel is about the presence of idiocy in everyone. All characters have some degree of idiocy, and this is shown through the series of narrations. Benjy shows us the true idiot that cannot help being an idiot because he is mentally disabled. He is the idiot that is innocent, what we think of when we think of idiots. But Quentin is an idiot in the way he deals with his emotions and the way he thinks too much. He allows his emotions to lead him to insanity and eventually suicide. Jason is an idiot because he has an insane belief system that revolves around his egocentricity. This is supported by the Macbeth quote "life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing." Faulker's tale is told four times, yet the plot development is in no way coherent. The four stories told all have different themes and things to take away from them, and only the events that occur are parallel through each narration (though each tells different parts of the entire story, so they do not all match up). What this really shows is that in every story, there are separate stories for each character because everybody has their own story. Every person has their own interpretations and perception of each event, which gives us our individuality, but also provides a source of confusion. 

Jason

Jason is a much simpler character than both Quentin and Benjy. He is not mentally handicapped and unable to differentiate time periods like Benjy, nor is he a pressured student who is an emotional wreck because of the extreme pressure put on him by his parents, who eventually commits suicide because he looses his mind, like Quentin. No, Jason is just a bad person, concerned solely about money and his reputation.

The first line in Jason's chapter is the perfect introduction to Jason's character: "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say" (p. 119). Jason has the horrible burden of caring for Caddy's teenage daughter, Quentin. Not only does he have to pay black servants (whom he despises) to feed her and care for her, but he also has to discipline her when she does wrong, which is all the time. He believes that Quentin is "sleeping around" and trying to become a prostitute. Her image as a promiscuous girl is only enhanced by the globs of makeup she puts on her face, which Jason, unsurprisingly, hates. He thinks Quentin is missing school to hang out with boys, and he beats her and threatens to whip her for almost anything she does. Jason doesn't care about Quentin or her education though, so this is not why he gets angry with her. He is just concerned about his "high up" position in their small town—he says to Quentin "Everybody in this town knows what you are. But I won's have it anymore, you hear? I dont care what you do myself. But I've got a position in this town, and I'm not going to have any member of my family going on like a nigger wench" (p. 125).

As if beating Quentin up regularly and making her life miserable weren't bad enough, Jason also steals money from her. Caddy sends money to both Quentin and her mother often, but Jason has found devious ways to steal her money, and Caddy and Quentin suspect this. Still,  Jason is able to get away with giving Quentin only $10 when her mother sent her $50. Later, he convinces his mother to burn a fake check from Caddy, but he had already pocketed the real check for $200.

Jason is not only a horrible member of his family (which is the opposite of what he thinks), but he is also an awful member of society. He doesn't do much at his job at the store, but his boss can't fire him because he feels too bad for his mother. He hates basically every minority group, most notably Jews, women, and black people. For example, he says "I give every man his due, regardless of religion or anything else. I have nothing against jews as an individual. Its just the race. You'll admit that they produce nothing. They follow the pioneers into a new country and sell them clothes" (p. 126). Concerning women, he says "I never promise a woman anything nor let her know what I'm going to give her. Thats the only way to manage them. Always keep them guessing. If you can't think of any other way to surprise them, give them a bust in the jaw" (p. 128). And lastly, concerning black people,  Jason says "I feed a whole dam kitchen full of niggers to follow around after him, but if I want an automobile tire changed, I have to do it myself" (p. 123). These are only a few examples that show Jason's condescending, egotistical, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and racist personality and beliefs. He is such a bad person that it is almost comical, and it adds greatly to the insanity of the Compson family.

Quentin

Quentin’s chapter begins with his internal thoughts about time and clocks, which prove to be major topics throughout the rest of his story and his chapter. While Quentin is not mentally challenged like his brother Benjy, he is constantly  reverting to old memories, only in a slightly more coherent way than Benjy. His tendency to remember the past accentuates toward the end of the chapter as the day of June 2, 1910 unfolds. Quentin does tie up several loose ends from Benjy’s chapter, such as the fact that the day that Caddy is in the river, he pulled out a knife and threatened to kill her, yet Quentin’s narration confuses readers even more.

Quentin proves to be a more complex character than Benjy because he thinks more than and more complexly than Benjy. While Benjy says exactly what he sees or does, Quentin has the mental capability to feel much more complex emotions, which means that Quentin’s thoughts and actions are more complex. On top of that, Quentin increasingly thinks of past events without much explanation, and readers are left to make assumptions themselves based on previous information from Benjy’s chapter. For example, Quentin gives readers the description of a girl that smells like roses in a veil, and readers must assume that he is describing Caddy’s wedding. Quentin also remembers telling his father that he has committed incest, which comes as a shock to readers because there is not any prior mention of this, nor explanation when he says it.

This story comes together as Quentin’s day progresses, but as his day progresses, Quentin seems to lose his sanity more and more, which makes following the story much harder. We can, however, learn more about Quentin himself, as he seems to stay true to himself throughout the story. We later find out that Quentin told his father that he committed incest to try to “save” Caddy from marriage. This is one example of Quentin’s respect of women and his desire to preserve their honor. Furthermore, Quentin calls all girls “sister,” which shows that he desires this for all women, not just his sister. He also recalls a time when he got into a fight because he defended some girls. He found a little girl (who he called “sister”) and tried to return her home because he genuinely wanted her to be safe. But he ends up being arrested for attempting to steal another man’s sister. This causes him to go into hysterics. This all shows that Quentin is a respectful man, at least to woman, and he would do almost anything to defend their honor, especially for Caddy. So, while he starts to loose his mind, he still keeps a good sense of who he is in this chapter. These present actions intertwined with his obsession with the past and time, along with his seemingly crazed writing style, shows that Quentin is not in the best mental state. This sets the stage for his suicide.

The Sound and the Fury: Benjy

The first chapter of The Sound and the Fury is narrated by Benjy, a thirty-three-year-old mentally handicapped man living in a rural town in the deep South. Benjy often flashes back to previous memories in various times of his life without giving the reader much warning, which makes for a very disorienting chapter. Faulkner probably does this partly to introduce the characters. When the actions of the characters are described by Benjy, they show the true nature of these characters in how they treat Benjy. One of the major topics in the book is about Caddy, who is not one of the narrators, and Benjy's characterization of her gives an insightful introduction into who she was, a courageous, loving, and independent woman. His perspective, though very confusing because of the time period switches, gives fairly straightforward insight into the Compson family. He tells things as they happen, which makes him a surprisingly reliable narrator in that way. In the Compson household, Benjy is a nuisance and an embarrassment to his parents. There always needs to be someone taking care of him, and that person is surprisingly never his parents, rather Caddy or one of their black servants. Yet, Benjy brings the family together because everyone has to deal with him and look after him, even if some family members are nicer to him than others. Benjy needs consistency and is constantly thinking about past events. He gets very upset and cries if something is not the same as it usually is, which shows that consistency is important in a family, and though change is necessary at times, it is important to have some consistent things that keep the family together. This also symbolizes the South's struggle at this point to change their views on race, despite the changing society in other areas of the country. The South continually thinks about the past and believes that their culture needs to stay the same.