GSeweek7.htm

Student Led Seminar Presentation and Summary
Leaders: Giovanna Marcus, Tim Batson and Jennifer Merrilees

Summary Conclusion Questions Bibliography

Biographical Information

William Falkner was born in New Albany, MS on September 25, 1897. He was named after his great-grandfather, nicknamed Old Colonel, who was killed in a duel eight years prior. At age five, his family relocated to Oxford. In Oxford, Romantic poets such as Burns, Thomson, Housman, and Swinburne inspired his early literary attempts. However, young Falkner lacked interest in school, dropping out before he graduated.
In 1918, William moved to New Haven with his long time pal, Phil Stone. There he worked at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, where his name appeared as "Faulkner" in their records due to a tying error. Soon after, Falkner joins the U.S. Air Force under the guise of a British chap named "William Faulkner," keeping the "u" to appear more British. His name remained the same for the rest of his life.
After a very brief stint in the Air Force, during which he saw no action, he moved back to Mississippi. Spreading rumors about his non-existent heroics, he enrolled in Ole Miss under a special provision for war veterans. At Ole Miss, he worked for a literary journal, publishing several poems, short stories, and an unstaged one-act play. In 1920, after only three semesters at Ole Miss, he dropped out once again.
In the following years, William worked several odd jobs. One of these happened to be as a scoutmaster for an Oxford Boy Scout troop, which asked him to resign, citing "moral reasons." Finally, in 1925, Faulkner falls in with the literary crowd in New Orleans. There he worked for a respected journal called the Double Dealer, whose claim to fame is the first publicized works of numerous successful authors.
After a short time living in France, William returns to the U.S. Soon after he writes his first novel set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for most of his novels thereafter. The characters from this novel also appear in later novels. Years later, for his novel Absalom, Absalom!, he even draws a map for his county.
In October of 1929, The Sound and the Fury is published. According to Faulkner, the novel was inspired by the image of a little girl with muddy drawers climbing a tree. He first tried to tell the story through the eyes of one brother, but felt he had failed. After two other attempts with two other brothers, William tried to tell the story through himself, or an omniscient narrator. Once again, he felt he failed. However, he chose to stop there, not devoting a chapter to the girl because he felt she was perceived more passionately through the eyes of someone else. Ironically, this novel comes to be known as one of the greatest novels of Western literature.
After a great career, Faulkner is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. He died on July 6, 1962, also the birthday of his great-grandpa, Old Colonel.

Introductory Reflection on Themes

There are three themes that our group decided to develop further because of their prevalence in the novel. These three themes are sin, loss and the concept of time.
Sin is a constant theme in the novel. The scene where the children are playing in the branch and Caddy gets her drawers muddy and takes off her dress is a foreshadowing of Caddy’s loss of innocence (Williams 63). She asks the boys if they will help her remove her dress and they do not want to (Faulkner 20). When she does disrobe, Quentin pushes her in the mud again, (Faulkner 20) which could be taken to represent her family being one of the main factors as to why she later loses her virginity, as a rebellion from her kin.
Caddy is linked to her gender in a way that dooms her. While still in her muddy drawers, Caddy climbs up a pear tree to discover what is happening in the house that the children have been forbidden to see. It is the grandmother’s funeral (Faulkner 46). The boys look up at Caddy’s muddy drawers (Faulkner 46). The tree that Caddy climbs is a pear tree, which can be linked to a woman’s womb. That she witnesses a death through the tree can have several meanings. It could be linking her fertility to her doom. It is also the tree of knowledge because of her discovery, and this links her to the sexual knowledge, which she will soon know (Pilkington 37). Later, while recounting this scene, Faulkner mistakenly calls the tree an apple tree, which could also turn her into a reincarnation of Eve, and the tree into the tree of good and evil (Pilkington 38). Certainly, it seems fitting because Caddy’s gender itself seems to cause her to fall.
Throughout the book Caddy is an indirect presence, seen only through the eyes of the males in the novel (Williams 64). This is the typical case of the male gaze being dominant and taken as truth. That the men depict the women and the women are essentially voiceless is reflective of who gets to define what constitutes sin. While women may subscribe to these ideals, it is men who define what is proper behavior and what is sinful for women. Similarly, the three brothers have definite ideas of how Caddy should behave. She is the common factor in their three stories (Williams 65). Benjy wants her to remain pure, as is demonstrated throughout his chapter. After he finds her with Charlie, Benjy follows her into the house, crying, until peace is restored and she washes away the sin of kissing with soap (Faulkner 58). He also pulls at her dress and pushes her into the bathroom at other points in the narrative. Quentin would like Caddy to remain pure as well, perhaps so he can retain some sense of the old world values so that his own world retains some meaning (Williams 68). Her sin is part of what leads him to commit suicide. In the little girl who he is with for a large portion of the day that he dies, he seeks to find the purity which Caddy has renounced (Williams 74). Jason would like Caddy to remain in her current adult state so that he can continue receiving money from her (Williams 68).
As for the rest of the characters and their sin, Caroline is a sinner because she cares only about images (Williams 72). She does not attend church on Easter and she cares little for others, including her children. Jason is sinful because he cares so much for money and enjoys torturing people. Uncle Maury commits adultery for a period of five years. Perhaps the most sinful thing about the Compsons is that they live life without love (Pilkington 84).
In Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the misfortune of time "is the true subject of the novel" (Sartre 226). "…[A] man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired, but then time is your misfortune…" (Faulkner 104). Specifically, Quentin feels trapped in time. Repeatedly, he tries to liberate himself from time by freeing time itself of its physical affectations, most notably clocks and shadows. This is exemplified by the passage in which he breaks his grandfather’s watch (Faulkner 80).
In the novel, clocks are man’s attempt to create order from time, which in reality is chaotic. To this end, Faulkner leads us to believe that, in our consciousness, there is no such thing as "the present." According to Sartre, "the present does not exist, it becomes; everything was" (228). Since the future hasn’t happened yet, it does not exist either. This leaves only the "past." As soon as a thought or event is present, it is past. Therefore, the present is nothing more than the sum of the past. "One present, emerging from the unknown, drives out another present. It is like a sum that we compute again and again…" (Sartre 226-7). The passage in which Quentin confuses his fights between Gerald and Dalton Ames (Faulkner 158-64) shows how the past can become present, with a return to the present "only when it has become past"(Sartre 228).
Faulkner attempts to show the true essence of time and "present" through his form, by breaking up the chronology. The novel is one huge "present," made up of randomly associated pasts. This most notably occurs in the Benjy chapter. Due to his condition, Benjy cannot comprehend clocks. Thus he has no understanding of time. He simply exists, jumping from one random memory to the next.
Another affectation of time is shadows. Quentin despises his shadow; he is constantly trying to trick it. Shadows link the physical realm (the self) to the metaphysical (time). To Quentin the sun represents a clock: "There was a clock, high up in the sun…" (Faulkner 83). The sun is also the cause of his shadow: "I stepped into the sunlight, finding my shadow again" (Faulkner 82). By committing suicide, Quentin will destroy his body, thus losing his shadow. This, he feels, will free him from time forever.
One theme in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury was that of loss. The loss of several things, including, but not limited to, Caddy’s virginity, Quentin’s suicide and the upper-class standing of the Compson family, following the Civil War. Obviously there are many more instances of loss than those written here, but during our presentation, these are the ones that were mentioned.
Benjy is rejected by his mother. She either doesn’t want to deal with him, or doesn’t know how, so she just shuts him out . He turns to Caddie for the ‘mothering’ that he has missed out on during his 33 years of life. Caddy has also been rejected, by her mother, and in her rebellion she chose to seek out the affection, fulfillment and approval of men. Both through sexual relations and through her interactions with the opposite sex. She acknowledges, several times in the text, that she does not love the men that she is sleeping with, nor does she always have a splendid time. Quentin becomes obsessed with time, as his life progresses and this obsession lead to his ultimate demise. He is also highly concerned with the insignificant details of life, such as making sure he is clean, dressed etc. This obsession with minute details gives him the ‘control’ he needs, since he can’t ‘control’ time. In his final attempt to ‘destroy’ time, he jumps off a bridge, into the river and drowns. Jason, perhaps the most evil of the Compson family children, lives for no one but himself, and sees no reason to live his life any other way but selfishly. Ironically, Mrs. Compson is the only one who can stand Jason and she lies him tremendously, yet she fails to see his true nature, and he eventually steals a huge sum of money from her, through fraud and other forms of embezzlement.
All of these actions, by the Compson children, are a direct result of the loss of their Mother’s love. Each subsequent action in the Compson children’s lives, after the mother emotionally abandons them, is a result of them losing the ability to cope with life.

Some of the questions that we prepared for class were:

Was Benjy a Christ figure and was Jason a Satan figure?
Was the story hindered or helped by Caddy’s missing narrative?
Was Caddy doomed and aware of it?
What does the loss of a mother do to someone, even if the person who’s left behind
cannot comprehend everything?
Are pain and grief segregated emotions for people with mental disabilities, like Benjy?
Do you agree with Faulkner’s interpretation of time? Does it fit yours?
Do you think Benjy represents someone in true time due to his irrational associative
Consciousness and his inability to comprehend clocks?
Is Benjy’s sense of a motherly figure fulfilled by the combination of Caddy’s love and
Dilsey’s caretaking?
Did you enjoy this book or do you feel it holds true to the inspirational excerpt from
Macbeth that this a story told by an idiot, signifying nothing?
Why must the Benjy section come first, then the Quentin section, then Jason’s, then
Dilsey’s?

Comments and Ideas raised during Seminar:

The question raised of whether or not Caddy and Quentin’s relationship was incestual, even if they didn’t have sexual relations prompted another question: can a relationship between two siblings be so close, that it’s almost incestual, but not quite? Some people thought that even if the two did not engage in sexual relations, their relationship had incestual overtones due to the fact that they were both jealous of each other’s romantic exploits. Also, Caddy named her daughter after Quentin.
It was also brought up that Caddy and Quentin made a suicide pact, which Quentin backed out of, although he eventually committed suicide, by himself. This discussion prompted the question of whether or not they made an incest pact.
The idea that Benjy was supposedly a representation of a Christ figure, and Jason being a Satan figure was also raised. A few people reacted strongly to this comment, and were in opposition to the idea of the Satanic overtones of Jason’s character. But fewer people reacted as strongly to the idea of the Christ = Benjy metaphor. One person saw that some of the characters in the book thought they were Christ-like figures because of their perpetual suffering i.e. Jason, Mrs. Compson, Quentin. Other characters were more Christ-like because they didn’t complain.
The concept of Benjy being ‘stuck’ in a perpetually male adolescent role was offered. Most people didn’t agree with this idea because he was able to avoid individualizing himself. He’s not totally oblivious to things going on around him. He can been seen as almost intuitive because at several times in the novel when people are dying, he moans louder, as if he knows what is happening, even though he is not directly related to the event. He also sees a lot of things happening around him, but is unable to properly express his feelings. The idea of his ‘bellow’ being ‘the moan of all suffering’ was also brought up.
Caddy is what all the men want, they can’t resist her, they think of her as their ‘answer’ to their problems because she seems so ‘sexually free’, while they are stuck in their traditional male roles. One person said that the men in the book are ‘prisoner’s in their own bodies’. She might not always enjoy the sex, but she gains freedom by embracing her sexuality, at the same time others view her sexual relations as a ‘loss’ of her virginity.
There isn’t one common set of guidelines that defines who an "American" truly is. There needs to be a wide variety of voices to define something as broad as that word. The concept of Master/Servant relations was also mentioned. Specifically, Dilsey’s reactions to things that happen to her during her caretaking of Benjy. People thought that she accepted her place in society and learned to work through it, and had decided that she would rise above her standing in life.
Along the vein of race relations, the rampant use of the word ‘nigger’ was brought up. Some people thought that the word ‘nigger’ used during that time, has a different connotation than the word ‘nigga’ used today, in black communities. The group also talked about race relations that we see today, in the South and small towns and people’s direct experiences.

Bibliography

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Cape and Smith, 1929.

Padgett, John B. "William Faulkner." The Mississippi Writers Page. The University of Mississippi English Department, 1999. http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/faulkner_william/

Pilkington, John. The Heart of Yokapatawpha. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
1983.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Time in Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury." William Faulkner: Three decades of Criticism. Ed. Frederick J. Hoffman, and Olga W.Vickery. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963: 225-232.

Williams, David. Faulkner’s Women: The Myth and the Muse. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977.

The web address listed above is from a University Web Page which is on a University server that is accredited and written by professors of English at that University.

Gio worked on the Sin section of the Introductory Reflection along with the summary of the novel. She also did the bibliography section and worked on the conclusion.

Jennifer worked on the Loss section of the Introductory Reflection. She also worked on the conclusion.

Tim worked on the Time section of the Introductory Reflection. He also put together the biography.