Boomdaddy back here for the last time! I just finished reading the last chapter, narrated by Dilsey in a third person narrative that almost seems to resemble Faulkner as the narrator himself. It is the easiest chapter to understand by far in the novel because it is the most straightforward and impartial of all the chapters. Dilsey merely relays the events to the reader in a very coherent way.

After finishing The Sound and the Fury, I realize now that the coherence of the chapters seems to have a deeper meaning within the novel. Each chapter progressively gets easier to read and understand. This shows that the complications within the Compson family are beginning to clear up. Miss Quentin leaves her abusive household and claims the money from her mother, Caddy, that Jason had been hoarding for himself.

The narratives of each chapter also pose a cycle for the Compson family in the novel, starting with Benjy and ending Benjy. Benjy seems to finally calm down at the end of the novel, showing the cycle idea that the story starts in turmoil with Benjy but ends in serenity with Benjy. This idea is also reinforced by the fact that it is Easter Sunday in the novel, the day of Jesus Christ's resurrection or rebirth.

Upon finishing the book, the Macbeth quote, "[life] is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing", makes much more sense. Each of the Compsons can be compared to the idiot, especially the narrators, because they tell the tale. However, Caddy, seems to be central to the Compsons idiocy as each of the first three narrators obsesses over her in some way or another, causing their insanity.

This shows the meaning of the novel as well. The Compson family resolves some of its problems but they all "signify nothing" as if to show that our problems are quite meaningless in the whole aspect of life itself.

Boomdaddy out!

Boomdaddy back here to talk about The Sound and the Fury again. This time I will be discussing the Jason chapter.

By far, this chapter was the easiest to read. Jason has a very straight-forward narration style with much fewer references to the past. He mostly stays in the present time. While Jason is the easiest narrator to understand, he is also the easiest narrator to hate. Make that: easiest character ti hate in the entire story. He is a harsh, cruel man and makes for the ideal bigot. He even lets you know right away what he is about with the first line of the chapter, "Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say" (Faulkner). In the first paragraph alone, he lets the reader know his hatred for women and African Americans.

He is also very individualistic and wants nothing more than to make his image perfect in his mind, no matter who he hurts in the process. For example, he wants to put Benjy in the insane asylum as soon as he can because he thinks that Benjy ruins his image and embarrasses him. He is also ashamed of Caddy for leaving him to care for her illegitimate child, Miss Quentin, and losing his job offer at Herbert Head's bank when him and Caddy got divorced. Jason also refuses to give his tickets to Luster to go to a show and burns them right in front of him so he cannot go. He takes advantage of these characters especially because of the way they have "tarnished" his image.

However mean and twisted, Jason is quite clever. While Caddy believes that she is sending child support fund to Miss Quentin, Jason is embezzling the money from Caddy and uses it to pay for his mistress/prostitute. He has a mistress to curb his sexual needs, but otherwise, he did not look for human interaction at all.

Jason's intuition could be used to do some good in the world if he was not such a complete jerk. He has such an intelligent mind that it is just wasteful to spew such garbage and prejudice remarks. And to think, he was still Mrs. Compson's favorite child.

Boomdaddy is back! Just read the Quentin chapter in The Sound and the Fury and it was just as difficult to read as the Benjy chapter, if not more difficult. Faulkner pulled a fast one on us and decided to change narrators. And if you thought it would be harder to understand a mentally challenged narrator, you would be mistaken. A suicidal narrator is actually just as difficult. Although, the second perspective does shed more light on the Compson family.

Quentin is much more educated than Benjy, I mean he is attending Harvard, so he provides better syntax in his narration. But his storytelling is all over the place. His stream-of-consciousness style is quite hard to follow and he uses the flashback literary device similar to Benjy but refers back to the same ideas. This style threw me off a little just as the Benjy chapter did. He recalls all these memories,

The narration suggests a lot about Quentin’s mental state. He seems quite scattered and unsure of himself all the time. Everything he tries to do fails. He tries to protect Caddy from bad men and even tells his father he had incest with her. But everything he tries to do doesn’t have any success. As the chapter progresses, he seems more and more suicidal, and as it was spoiled for me by my very own teacher, Mrs. Oles, Quentin does eventually commit suicide. However, it is quite apparent in the chapter without the spoilers. He stares off a bridge into the water, sees his shadow, and wishes he could find a way to drown it. If that isn’t evidence enough that he does not want to live anymore, I don’t know what is.

On to the next chapter for Boomdaddy. Wish me luck!

Hey, it's Boomdaddy again! After reading the first chapter in The Sound and the Fury, it is very eye opening as to how Faulkner writes. He starts the novel with a very difficult chapter to read, told from the view of the mentally challenged Benjy. I think he begins with this very difficult chapter, full of flashbacks and syntax errors, to prepare the reader for the rest of the book as the book seems to be written similarly (stream of consciousness) throughout but with different narrators. I think Faulkner used the mentally challenged character to exaggerate his writing technique in the novel.

In the novel, Benjy seems to be almost like the bastard child of the Compson household. Most people in the household, beside Caddy and Luster, cannot stand his presence. They all see as good-for-nothing and a burden. Jason even wants to send him off to an insane asylum after Mrs. Compson dies. 

I think the date of April 7, 1928, just before Easter, and his age of 33, show that Benjy is representative of Jesus Christ. There are many similarities between Jesus and Benjy. They share similar traits and roles within the family/society. Benjy wants to maintain innocence among the characters, especially Caddy, as he gets upset when she is with a man. He also even breaks Miss Quentin as she was kissing the man with the red tie. This relates to Jesus wanting everyone to be moral, good people. Benjy is also the outcast of the family similar to how Jesus was outcast in Jerusalem and crucified. This might even be foreshadowing of Benjy's fate. 

Benjy has a very unique perspective of the world and of his family. He loves his family, yet he seems unable to grasp that most of his family despises him. He only sees the good in the people around him. His flashbacks demonstrate too that he is quite naive but caring toward his family, especially Caddy, and his home in the South. They seem to have a special bond unlike anyone else in the household. She is one of the only people who respects him as a human being. She seems to represent a sort of Mary/disciple character that takes cares of Benjy, even furthering Benjy's symbolism of Jesus.