The old saying “The South never dies” appears to be all but accurate in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Each member of the Compson Family is practically a contrary of old southern ideals and beliefs. Caddy’s promiscuity, Benjy’s mental disability, Jason’s vulgar attitude towards his family, Quentin’s crooked obsession with Caddy, Ms. Quentin’s rebellious attitude due to her own upbringing, and Mrs. Compson’s ability to see her children as punishments from God; they all diverge from an idyllic well-ordered Southern family. Mr. Compson was the only member who managed to held on to his Southern Morality for the most part, only straying from the norm after the death of his son, Quentin. Each character in their own way depicts how old Southern ideals of gentility have begun and continue to dissolve. While it may be the underlying reason as to why the principles of the South emerged, it is not enough to think of the South as just a physical setting; when discussing the South one, whether it is inadvertently or not, has the ideals and stereotypes in mind of the old South. Many people do in fact view the South as more of a set of labels and perceptions of that area’s customs rather than as a geographical location. The old South includes much more than just general ideals and simple stereotypes; there is much more to the culture of the South than what can be grouped with those words. The upper classes generally exhibited loyalty and expressed greatly refined manners. The men were painted to be poised, chivalrous and hardworking while the women were expected to be gentile and proper. The South has certainly transcended in its own way to become more of a lifestyle than simply a geographical location. The reader never is able to... ... middle of paper ... ...pair, and victory is only an illusion of philosophers and fools.” (Faulkner. 48) Perhaps Mr. Compson knew that this too was a battle that they could not win but perhaps prolong. With Mr. Compson dead, Mrs. Compson is left as the symbol of the Compson house, which in fact ends up being sadly accurate. The house, the family name, and the values she and her husband tried to instill into their children are all crumbling beneath themselves. “Faulkner’s title echoes the most famous protest against a life without a climax. But Macbeth, by finding his resolving action, diverts his drama from the idiotic tomorrows signifying nothing.” (Warwick Wadlington. 4) Just like Macbeth from which the title originates, the family will turn to nothing and continue to live on no longer without so much as a whimper; taking with it the ideals, values, customs, and culture of the old South.
Dan Greenburg explains in, “Sound and Fury”, how a simple kind words can avoid “a minor act of provocation” (464). In today’s society, people tend to overlook what they say and how they say it to avoid any dramatic event. People have a tendency to put their pride before thinking, which causes theatric event as explain when Dan Greenburg mention, “we carry around a lot of free-floating anger” (463). Holding in anger cause people to overreact an action that could have been handle in different kind of situation. A person should put their emotion a side and think about what kind of consequences their actions can bring. Today, people are always getting in fights in bars or school footballs game which shatters other people’s fun. It makes people
The author points out that southern societies did evolve, however, they resented this evolution. Foner uses the example of Southern Unionists to illustrate this point stating that, “In 1865, Southern Unionism, of whatever kind, did not imply a willingness to extend civil and political equality to the freedmen.” (Foner, 87) This resentment continues throughout the book, and shows that while evolution of Southern society happened, it was met with contentment, and individuals hope that things would go back to the way they used to be, hoping for the plantation slave way of life to return. This is most evident when Foner discusses the Ku Klux Klan, stating that “The Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy.” (Foner,
A key theme in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury is the deterioration of the Compson family. May Brown focuses on this theme and explains that Quentin is the best character to relate the story of a family torn apart by” helplessness, perversion, and selfishness.” In his section, there is a paradoxical mixture of order and chaos which portrays the crumbling world that is the core of this novel.
...lty, or even the normal versus the audacious. But, the entire story seems to be focused on two: those of the poor versus the rich and society versus the outsider. Those two operations allow for, and even demand, a different reading of the text giving us a young Colonel striving to break out of his limitations and become the opposite of what he was. In the end, Faulkner allows him to succeed. After his father's death, the young man runs through the woods, forever leaving his family. The text ends with the powerful line, "he did not look back" (Faulkner 1566).
The Sound and the Fury The first main point that Cleanth Brooks makes is that the story is told through one obsessed consciousness after another. Brooks response to this is that the “readers movement through the book is a progression from murkiness to increasing enlightenment, and this is natural since we start with the mind of an idiot, go on next through the memories and reveries of the Hamlet-like Quentin, and come finally to the observations of the brittle, would-be rationalist Jason. ”1
Prior to presenting the expectations her brothers have of her, Faulkner establishes a series of prerequisites to her downfall as an explanation for their unreasonable and selfish intentions. The Compson encounter little parental support due to the obsessions and selfishness of their parents. Mrs. Compson is depicted as a woman who finds parenting a punishment from God, stating: "I thought that Benjamin was punishment enough for any sins I have committed. I thought he was my punishment for putting aside my pride and marrying a man who held himself above me I don't complain; I loved him above all of them because of it because my duty" (Faulkner 154). She is thus painfully unable to support her children and leaves Caddy with no moral compass to help navigate through the development of a young woman. Mr. Compson, an equally pitiful parent, is obsessed with honor. When his children are unable to live up to his reputation and embody the aristocratic image he wishes for his family to represent, he secludes himself from the rest of the world and drinks himself into a stupor and even...
When American Sniper opened in theaters January 2015, the world was shocked and excited that a film about a war has finally shown the emotional and psychological pain a soldier goes through. To many this was a new concept but, what the public did not realize, was in 2014, a World War II film, Fury was released. Fury is an insightful film about a tank crew surviving through World War II through the emotional and psychological hardships. The film takes place in April 1945, five months before WWII ends (Fury, IMDb). There are many key points to which makes Fury a modern war film from the extent of backstory each character has, to the prescreening prep and training, to the research of the props. Though American Sniper and Fury differ in wars and
William Faulkner uses multiple narrators throughout The Sound and the Fury to depict the life of Caddy Compson without telling the story from her point-of-view. Benjy, a mentally disabled 33 year old, Quentin, a troubled and suicidal Harvard student, and Jason, a racist and greedy man, each give their drastically different sides of Caddy’s story to create an incomplete chronicle of her life. Faulkner’s first chapter explores Caddy’s life through the silent narrator Benjy. As a result of Benjy’s inability to talk, much of how he describes the world is through his heightened sensory awareness. Benjy constantly repeats the fact that, which, to Benjy, symbolizes Caddy’s innocence (Faulkner 6). Later in the novel when, Benjy realizes that Caddy has lost the innocence Benjy once idolized and loved (Faulkner 40).
First, the traditions of “heritage” in the south have isolated people from the most of the American country during the past. This happened because there were a quite a few Post-Civil War traditions in the south that did not change after slavery left from agricultural livelihood. There were many aristocrats that had old money in the south for hundreds of years. Aristocrats had money and considered upper class because of their history with money. The south was mainly agriculture and used slave labor back in the day to do a lot of work farming. Later, the money had left when times have changed with the Civil War, but the deep south kept a lot of older American traditions.
It is well known throughout human society that an individual’s ethics play a vital role in their life. We as readers see this used in many instances through the stories, novels, and poems we often enjoy. William Faulkner’s Barn Burning pays particular attention to the notions of right and wrong. In his short story Barn Burning, Faulkner enables the reader to understand the distinctions between loyalty to one’s family and to the law. Faulkner portrays this throughout his story with the main character whom is a little boy named Colonel Sartoris Snopes. Sarty is caught between the moral and ethical principles of the law or the loyalty to his father’s instructions of helping him in burning a barn. At times loyalty to one’s family can be a heavy burden, which is why it is important to choose loyalty to the law for an opportunity to live with honesty. My goal in this paper is to present a literary analysis of Faulkner’s short story Barn Burning. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to define themes developed by the author to analyze main characters and define what symbols the author uses to support the story.
In class, we watched the documentary titled, “Sound and Fury.” The video mostly focused around two brothers (one hearing and one Deaf) and their families, whom were a mixture of hearing and Deaf. The first family consisted of the hearing parents, Mari and Chris Artinian, and their two twin boys, one of whom was Deaf (Peter Artinian Jr.). The next family was made up of two Deaf parents Nita and Peter Artinian Sr., along with oldest child Heather, whom is Deaf and her two brothers. The two grandparents of both father’s Peter and were also included in the film.
Imagine a historian, author of an award-winning dissertation and several books. He is an experienced lecturer and respected scholar; he is at the forefront of his field. His research methodology sets the bar for other academicians. He is so highly esteemed, in fact, that an article he has prepared is to be presented to and discussed by the United States’ oldest and largest society of professional historians. These are precisely the circumstances in which Ulrich B. Phillips wrote his 1928 essay, “The Central Theme of Southern History.” In this treatise he set forth a thesis which on its face is not revolutionary: that the cause behind which the South stood unified was not slavery, as such, but white supremacy. Over the course of fourteen elegantly written pages, Phillips advances his thesis with evidence from a variety of primary sources gleaned from his years of research. All of his reasoning and experience add weight to his distillation of Southern history into this one fairly simple idea, an idea so deceptively simple that it invites further study.
As the story opens, ten-year-old Colonel Sartoris Snopes (he is named for Colonel John Sartoris, one of the central figures in William Faulkner’s fiction) sits in a makeshift courtroom in a dry goods store and listens as his father is accused of burning a neighbor’s barn. Young Sarty is called to the stand, but because the plaintiff is ultimately unwilling to force him to testify against his own father, the case is closed, and the father, Abner Snopes, is advised to leave that part of the country. As the family—Sarty, his parents, two sisters, an older brother, and an aunt—camp out that night on their way to their next home, Snopes, for whom barn burning seems to have become a habitual means of preserving his integrity in the face of men who
The Sound and the Fury is a compelling novel written by William Faulkner. It was released in 1929, during an era called the Roaring 20s. This was a time during which literature reflected drastic changes in society, as well as the consumerism that emerged from the invention of the automobile. Faulkner, contrastingly, explores the themes of love and morality in this novel. But most importantly, its message of sorrow and moral decay are incomparable to any other novel. In The Sound and the Fury, through the use of Caddy, William Faulkner is able to portray the theme of misfortune: how each of her three brothers (Benjy, Quentin, and Jason) copes with it, ultimately contributing to how the family has gradually disintegrated over the course of the novel.
Set in America in the 1920’s, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury explores the life of a Southern family through the eyes of its youngest members: Benjy, Quentin, and Jason Compson. Throughout the novel, it is clear that the family struggles to adapt to a more modern time; trying to hold firm their beliefs in traditional values: honor, strength, and chivalry for men, and grace and purity for women. This attachment to the past and an inability to move forward will ultimately lead to the family’s downfall. The final section of The Sound and the Fury concludes the novel’s overarching theme of the decline of a once powerful, aristocratic Southern family, through a focus on the importance of and dependence on the family’s black servant,