April/Faulkner Book: The Sound and the Fury

[Virgil]

Just finished this on my own. Loved loved LOVED it. Hate to drudge up an old thread, but didn't know where else to talk about it.

I laughed out loud at how cruel and hilarious Jason's dialog could be at times.

Anyone else reading/read this?

Welcome to lit net coldsore. Obviously since I have so many comments in this thread I read and thoroughly enjoyed the novel.

[PabloQ]

Apparently I'm clueless when it comes to TSATF. I recently finished it and I've read this entire thread from 3 years ago. I missed a key element in that Quentin was a virgin. I didn't think so. When I read the novel, I took his confession of incest to be honest, his father's bs answer about virginity as a sort of denial, Caddy's quick marriage as protection of the baby's true father, her brother Quentin. I interpreted Caddy's promiscuity as her striking out against her family's unsoundness, instablility, weakness. Her unwanted baby was her ticket out. Naming the baby, Quentin, to me, flaunts the truth of the baby's heritage in the face of the whole family.

Her brother Quentin couldn't accept it, couldn't cope with the distance created by Caddy moving away. In his twisted way, the way to make Caddy and honest woman is for her to stay. Quentin's suicide is steeped in guilt and shame. Much of the shame is based in the sordid relationship with his sister, and that shame is compounded by the family's sacrifice of Benjy's 40 acres to pay for his first year of Harvard. Someone along the way in this thread questioned where the other 3 years were to come from. Makes me wonder how long he was intended to be away. One for Quentin in Massachusetts. The sentence ended up being harsher than just separation, Yankee snobbery made him unwelcome and difficult for him succeed. I got the impression he was failing out of Harvard, not through lack of effort, but from his inability to grasp what he was taught. He was honestly washing out. Subconsciously? Maybe. But he was failing.

I thought it was interesting that Quentin stopped time by removing the hands from his watch, and yet he couldn't stop the ticking without smashing the rest of the watch. It's further interesting that he wanders about for a day before doing himself in because it is clear he has made up his mind early in the day. He buys a loaf of bread for a hungry little girl. Does the girl represent the innocence of childhood, his sister's lost innocence, his own virginity restored through his father's lie and denial? Beats me. The effort Q puts into finding the girl's home seems out of character. Maybe he relates to being culturally uncomfortable. Harvard is a foreign country to him. He is treated like a foreigner, an outsider. Which in his guilt seems to be appropriate to his sin, the source of his shame. He is the fallen. By drowning himself in the river, he is cleansing himself with the water, cleansing his family of his shame through his death. To him, it must have seemed an appropriate sacrifice.

The Compson family is a mess. I believe Quentin to be the daughter of Caddy and Quentin. I believe Benjy to be the daughter of Mrs. Compson and her brother, Maury. That's why Mrs. Compson refers to Benjy as a punishment, her burden (cross?) to bear. I don't think Benjy was castrated because people misinterpreted his intent. I don't think this family has any sense of sexually moral behavior. They're twisted and this is their twisted tale. Benjy attacked. He was castrated and (did everyone miss this) they cut out his tongue. The best thing they could do for him is to send him to Jackson, but he stays, not as a burden to the family, but to the family retainers. Sending him off to Jackson seems the best thing for Benjy's well-being, but the Mrs. Compson can't do that. Probably the only thing Jason gets right.

Jason Compson is a scumbag. He sits on a moral high horse that his niece is the same type of whore as his sister. Mrs. Compson burns the faux checks seemingly because she believes the money is sourced in prostitution. She burns them as way to deny such tainted money. As suggested earlier, she hides behind her "ailments" to avoid direct confrontation of many of the truths before her. The last of which for her to deny is that the son on which she has invested her most confidence is greedy thief of a scumbag. He drives deliberate wedges between mother and daughter -- Mrs. C to Caddy, Caddy to Quentin. He personnally gains for it by hiding the money, including a thousand dollars he stole from his mother. I don't know about anybody else, but I got a whiff of Judas Iscariot in this guy. Well intended but greedy. Thought he was doing write, but arrogance was his downfall. It just seems kind of odd that he loses his stash on Good Friday. Come Monday, he's got no job.

My thoughts on the title. Sound does not just mean audio. It can mean strong, true, solid. The Fury signifies anger, rage, tempestuousness, madness. To me, the title translates to The Strong and Twisted. The Twisted are comprised of every one of those damned Compson's. They are the fallen, the shadow of an aristocratic class in shambles. Morally bereft, financially ruined, spiritually bankrupt. Ol' Mr. Compson was a clergyman before he drank himself to death. So where is the strength?

Dilsey does everything she can to fill every gap in this hole-riddled, unholy family structure. She is the discipline. She is the love. She is the truth. She is the Christ. She has seen the beginning and the end. She has seen the light. It is her. When she has her moment of clarity, she is old. I don't know if you've had a grandparent or parent that at some points just gets beaten down after a life full of dedication and service, but that is what Dilsey seems to me. She can barely pull herself up the stairs to wait on Mrs. Compson, but she does so out of dedication and loyalty. Without her, the family would have disintegrated years before. And truth be told, she could have left at any time. She is the Sound. The Compsons are the Fury.

This is one of those novels begging me to read it again. I'm going to let it sit and read some other Faulkner. When I do read it again, maybe it will say something else to me.

Two cents please.

[Virgil]

Read it again Pablo. You can't absorb it on read. Read it now that you've read the comments. Getting the specific details are less important than grasping the movement of the novel: from the limited perception of Benjy, to the constrained perception of Quentin, stunted perception of Jason, to the ominiscent perception of the ending, and it's link to Dilsey.

[PabloQ]

I'm a big enough man to admit I'm wrong. I'll admit that I didn't get the fact that Quentin didn't actually carry out his desire for his sister. His obsession with her was such that it certainly seemed as though he had.

The reason I know I have it wrong is I had the chance to glance through The Portable Faulkner. I always thought these volumes were compilations pulled together by publisher's to package diverse samples of an author's work in order to provide an encapsulated view. Apparently this volume is a greatest hits album and Faulkner helped pick the songs. He included a history of the Compsons and he says Quentin never acted on his desires. He further confirmed that Caddy was a ho' and Dilsey is the sound foundation around which the house of Compson crumbles. My bad.

Thanks for the invitation to read it again. I'm going to confound myself with some other of Faulkner's works and I may come back to it. For now, I'm going to move on.

[mayneverhave]

I'm a big enough man to admit I'm wrong. I'll admit that I didn't get the fact that Quentin didn't actually carry out his desire for his sister. His obsession with her was such that it certainly seemed as though he had.

It's understandable to misread a dense book like this, even with plot points. The first time I read the novel I used outside sources to aid my reading so in some sense I cheated.

It's important to note what Quentin says about his confession of incest to his father. Something along the lines of (and I'm pulling this from memory): "if I said I commited incest then it would be like I did", and from that "we would burn in hell, just us two". Those are far from exact quotes, but I don't feel like getting my copy off the shelf.

The point is is that Quentin's ideal world involves him as the protector of Caddy - the chivalric older brother that he wishes he could be. In reality, his sister ends up being stronger than him, more sexually experienced, and when he attempts to stand up to Dalton Ames, Dalton in many ways acts in the chivalric way Quentin wishes he could.

By telling his father they had incenst, Quentin thinks that this is a heinous sin in which they would be reserved a special spot in hell, just the two of them. Jason Compson (his father), and his nihilistic, all values and meanings are constructions attitude, are what I think is truly responsible for Quentin's suicide, as the last thing the neurotic kid needs is a father that tells him humans a "stuffed dolls, accumlations of dust."



On another note - I'm kinda bummed I missed this thread originally, as I was not even yet on this forum. Perhaps we can resurrect it.

[dfloyd]

Much better than As I Lay Dying, but not as good as Absolam! Absolam!