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A review by mghoshlisbin
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
5.0
A magnificent read, but one that is by no means easy. You may find that disclaimer in any review of the novel. I do not feel the need to write a more coherent rendering of my own notes into a review, as I did not do so for Absalom, Absalom either, but I should have an organized space for the way I felt over the course of the novel.
Chapter 1 - Benjy/Maury
* Complete lack of temporal and spatial stability. Faulkner seems to switch the perspective years using italics, but this is not always consistent. Throughout the current novel, Benjy is focuses his order through sounds/smells/the grounding aspect of nature (caddy smells like trees) and through his relationship to Caddy. He seems to be completely ruled by order or chaos, chaos indicated through the moments when he moans. (It is interesting to me that his clarity and sensitivity are attached to the two more excitatory romantic notions: sex/love and death).
* There are moments of intense clarity which I think bring together the power of his perspective:
* Import moment: When all three Compton brothers look up and see Caddy’s muddy underwear when she’s climbing the tree. It seems to me that Caddy is emblematic of a wildness, a freedom of belief, whereas both Quentin and Benjy are ruled by their intellect and by their relationship to time. I think this is the moment that takes all three of them off the edge in different ways - I think it is the sheer animalism of her; though she pays the price, she is not tethered to the social demands or intellectual/emotional deficiencies/limitations of her brothers. And she, in turn, becomes alien to them.
Chapter 2 - Quentin
* Quentin, in particular (chapter 2) seems to be wholly controlled by his dedication to Southern purity, which he holds Caddy accountable for. He is obsessed with her, reifies her as the ultimate representative of his grounding principles. Her marriage to Herbert, her loss of virginity, of her “camphor” smell, makes him lose his grasp on the real and unreal. He becomes untethered to his rigid moral foreground. This, I think is made even more complicated, by his father’s disinterest in virginity or virginity as a construct that means nothing and creates meaningless harm in fools like Quentin (116).
* “And father said it's because you are a virgin: don't you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is negative state in therefore contrary in nature. It's nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That's just words and he said So is virginity and I said You don't know. You can't know and he said Yes. And on the instant when we come to realize the tragedy is second hand” (116).
* The cold pragmatism of his father seems to be incredibly disjointed for Quentin, disavowal of his beliefs in Southern purity, his foregrounding pole of morals.
* “it seems to me that I can hear whispers secret surges smelled a beating heart of blood under wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and sea eagle done for a little while. [… ] he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself in any act otherwise you could not be in earnest and I you don't believe I am serious and he Eitan you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldn't have felt driven to the experience of telling me you hadn't committed incest otherwise and I I wasn't lying I wasn't lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exercise it with truth and I it was the isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though it had never been (176).
* I could probably spend hours analyzing this single page, but I believe this is a roll credits moment - the pinnacle of the sound and the fury. At once Quentin finds the intersection between the experiences of Benjy, himself, and Jason, in a furious passage, desperate with longing earnestness. The confusion of pronouns between that of himself and his brothers showcases and disjointedness of identity, one which I think cements his later move toward suicide.
Chapter 3 - Jason
* I felt somewhat unprepared for the vitriol in his narration (once a bitch, always a bitch), and his particular hatred for Miss Quentin (Caddy’s illegitimate daughter). I think what surprised me more was the fact that he was willing to burn the 200$ checks from Caddy. His hatred and pride overcame his pragmatism, which was simultaneously disgusting and on brand. Clearly he has resentments toward Ms. Quentin because he believes that Caddy cheated him out of a job and that Ms. Quentin is the reason why.
* It was also particularly startling, in this chapter, that the narration becomes increasingly linear and coherent with each progressive brother. Benjy is completely untethered from temporality and place, Quentin struggles to escape time, to live beyond time, but Jason was completely clear. I might consider that he in completely stuck in the constraints of the present. The authorial section that follows, instinctively Faulkner himself, is also clear.
* Anger toward black people; receptacles for his hatred
* The ways in which he burned the tickets instead of giving them to Luster (why, for what purpose other than to antagonize?).
Chapter 4 - Faulkner
* The role of Dilsey - maternal, caretaker, legitimate care for Benjy. What is the analysis here? She is the one character that cares for everyone.
* Black religiosity; maybe an invocation of genuine religion? Or is this a condemnation from the mouth of Faulkner? (294)
* “‘Never you mind,’ Dilsey said. ‘I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin.’” (297).
Chapter 1 - Benjy/Maury
* Complete lack of temporal and spatial stability. Faulkner seems to switch the perspective years using italics, but this is not always consistent. Throughout the current novel, Benjy is focuses his order through sounds/smells/the grounding aspect of nature (caddy smells like trees) and through his relationship to Caddy. He seems to be completely ruled by order or chaos, chaos indicated through the moments when he moans. (It is interesting to me that his clarity and sensitivity are attached to the two more excitatory romantic notions: sex/love and death).
* There are moments of intense clarity which I think bring together the power of his perspective:
* Import moment: When all three Compton brothers look up and see Caddy’s muddy underwear when she’s climbing the tree. It seems to me that Caddy is emblematic of a wildness, a freedom of belief, whereas both Quentin and Benjy are ruled by their intellect and by their relationship to time. I think this is the moment that takes all three of them off the edge in different ways - I think it is the sheer animalism of her; though she pays the price, she is not tethered to the social demands or intellectual/emotional deficiencies/limitations of her brothers. And she, in turn, becomes alien to them.
Chapter 2 - Quentin
* Quentin, in particular (chapter 2) seems to be wholly controlled by his dedication to Southern purity, which he holds Caddy accountable for. He is obsessed with her, reifies her as the ultimate representative of his grounding principles. Her marriage to Herbert, her loss of virginity, of her “camphor” smell, makes him lose his grasp on the real and unreal. He becomes untethered to his rigid moral foreground. This, I think is made even more complicated, by his father’s disinterest in virginity or virginity as a construct that means nothing and creates meaningless harm in fools like Quentin (116).
* “And father said it's because you are a virgin: don't you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is negative state in therefore contrary in nature. It's nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That's just words and he said So is virginity and I said You don't know. You can't know and he said Yes. And on the instant when we come to realize the tragedy is second hand” (116).
* The cold pragmatism of his father seems to be incredibly disjointed for Quentin, disavowal of his beliefs in Southern purity, his foregrounding pole of morals.
* “it seems to me that I can hear whispers secret surges smelled a beating heart of blood under wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and sea eagle done for a little while. [… ] he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself in any act otherwise you could not be in earnest and I you don't believe I am serious and he Eitan you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldn't have felt driven to the experience of telling me you hadn't committed incest otherwise and I I wasn't lying I wasn't lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exercise it with truth and I it was the isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though it had never been (176).
* I could probably spend hours analyzing this single page, but I believe this is a roll credits moment - the pinnacle of the sound and the fury. At once Quentin finds the intersection between the experiences of Benjy, himself, and Jason, in a furious passage, desperate with longing earnestness. The confusion of pronouns between that of himself and his brothers showcases and disjointedness of identity, one which I think cements his later move toward suicide.
Chapter 3 - Jason
* I felt somewhat unprepared for the vitriol in his narration (once a bitch, always a bitch), and his particular hatred for Miss Quentin (Caddy’s illegitimate daughter). I think what surprised me more was the fact that he was willing to burn the 200$ checks from Caddy. His hatred and pride overcame his pragmatism, which was simultaneously disgusting and on brand. Clearly he has resentments toward Ms. Quentin because he believes that Caddy cheated him out of a job and that Ms. Quentin is the reason why.
* It was also particularly startling, in this chapter, that the narration becomes increasingly linear and coherent with each progressive brother. Benjy is completely untethered from temporality and place, Quentin struggles to escape time, to live beyond time, but Jason was completely clear. I might consider that he in completely stuck in the constraints of the present. The authorial section that follows, instinctively Faulkner himself, is also clear.
* Anger toward black people; receptacles for his hatred
* The ways in which he burned the tickets instead of giving them to Luster (why, for what purpose other than to antagonize?).
Chapter 4 - Faulkner
* The role of Dilsey - maternal, caretaker, legitimate care for Benjy. What is the analysis here? She is the one character that cares for everyone.
* Black religiosity; maybe an invocation of genuine religion? Or is this a condemnation from the mouth of Faulkner? (294)
* “‘Never you mind,’ Dilsey said. ‘I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin.’” (297).