In speaking of stream of consciousness in "The Sound and the Fury," one must take into account a few factors. Amongst them, confusion of chronology and dislocated time sequences are the most important. From Faulkner's point of view, time, more than anything else, is the ordering principle of social relations that, according to its organic connection with social situation and individual consciousness, creates different levels of consciousness. For example, in the case of Benjy, lack of consciousness may lead to a chaotic sense of time that may also paradoxically be linear. Or, time, as is the case with Quentin, may assume a philosophical dimension, a state, which results from his conscious wrestling with the questions of identity, honor and desire. In relation to Jason, the significance of time is locked with the importance of financial success. The flashbacks and transitions from the present to the past in Jason's mind are always associated with events in which he has lost a profit. Consequently, Jason always thinks that he has lost a deal and therefore he is drawn where he thinks he is behind time. But apart from these three conceptions of time, there is another view of time. This view of time, without emphasizing any of them in particular, combines the three different senses of time that are associated with Benjy, Quentin and Jason. It is natural that this complex and multi-dimensional view of time should affect the structure of the novel.
In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner narrates the struggle with time through the point of views of four characters. Benjy, the first narrator, is a castrated idiot who is incapable of speech. His lack of speech is symptomatic of his entrapment in the past and his unawareness of the present...
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... monologue is in such a way as if he was defending himself against a court. To prove his innocence, Jason goes on to condemn and damns anyone who opposes him (Caddy, Quentin, Benjy, Dilsey, etc). Here one can clearly see that Jason and Benjy, ironically, share one quality: they both evaluate any action only as it may affect them personally.
"The Sound and the Fury" is the novel of time and timelessness. Although the concept and the impression of time is used differently in every section, it remains the main issue of the novel, and its relation to the ordering principle of social relations and individual consciousness, creates different levels of consciousness, thus, remains the main concept of the novel.
Bibliography
1- Faulkner, William. THE SOUND AND THE FURY, The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. The Modern Library, New York, 1992, Random House
16. James Hinkle and Robert McCoy, Reading Faulkner: The Unvanquished. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 141.
Over the course of Kurt Vonnegut’s career, an unorthodox handling of time became one of many signature features in his fictional works (Allen 37). Despite The Sirens of Titan (1959) being only his second novel, this trademark is still prevalent. When delving into science fiction, it is often helpful to incorporate ideas from other works within the genre. This concept is exemplified by the “megatext,” an aspect of science fiction that involves the application of a reader’s own knowledge of the genre to a new encounter (Evans xiii). By working within the megatext, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) provides an insightful avenue in exploring the handling of time and its consequences in Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan.
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.
But Pynchon's culture is not one haunted by the ghosts, except for the ghosts in Hamlet and Scooby-Doo. Faulkner's landscape is tortured by the tragedy of the South. In his view, the land is cursed because of two of the white man's presumptions: that he could own other men, and that he could own the land. Focusing on the microcosm of the fallen Compson family, Faulkner details the extent to which various family members are saddled by past loss and how they confront their searing memories. In what has canonized The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner recreat...
A man begins to cry. Not because of sorrow or joy, but because he’s terrified. The man who once enjoyed viewing the firework show that symbolized the freedom of his nation now cowers, because of the hardships he endured to maintain the freedom of his nation. Like many war veterans, the man suffers from PTSD. Billy Pilgrim, a WWII veteran, also suffers from PTSD. While Kurt Vonnegut wrote his novel Slaughterhouse-five before PTSD became an official diagnosis, the protagonist of his story, Billy Pilgrim, displays the disease’s symptoms. Vonnegut uses Billy Pilgrim’s non-linear voyage through time as symbol to reflect his theme of the destructiveness during and after war.
Throughout the Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut displays the clash between free-will and destiny, and portrays the idea of time notion in order to substantiate that there is no free-will in war; it is just destiny. Vonnegut crafts this through irony, symbolism and satire. And he successfully manages to prove that free-will is just a hoax that adopted by people that cannot percept time fully.
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).
The Sound and the Fury is a story of sometimes unclear focus. From section to section we listen to three brothers: Benjy, Quintin and Jason, discuss their lives. We discover the inner workings of their home lives. The narratives disclose that their mother, Caroline Compson is a neglectful, hypochondriac. Mrs. Compson is shown to be a very self centered woman who really doesn't harbor any affection for her family and by this lack sends some of them to find mothering from a different source. “ How can I control any of them when you have always taught them to have no respect for me and my wishes I know you look down on my people but is that any reason for teaching my children my own children I suffered for to have no respect.” (Faulkner, 61) We meet Mr. Compson, the father, who is shown to love his children dearly, though in the case of some does not always like them all. He just happens to be an alcoholic, “Father will be dead in a year they say if he doesn't stop drinking and he wont stop he cant stop....” (Faulkner, 79) who is eventually killed by his addictions. Also introduced and discussed are the various household staff members whom the brothers love as if they were family. The brothers discuss horrors and anxieties that they are dealing with in their personal lives. Benjy's horrors of being unable to communicate, being tormented by his brother, Jason, and eventually being castrated due to a misunderstanding cover section one. In section two, Quintin takes his turn to share the anxieties that time and sexuality (among other things) cause him. The last of the brothers narrations, that of Jason, delve into the cruelty he imparts on others, as well as the bitterness and struggles he rapidly accumulates in raising his niece. All o...
Jason was confounded by how to pass this trial and was saved at the last moment by Aeetes'
The Sirens of Titan gives a great sense of direction and compactness. It is astounding in that the novel with its science fiction nature creates human warmth. Three reasons for this phenomenon present themselves. Vonnegut's skill has been developing in 7 years and the science fiction disposition offers the reader more impassiveness. Also he is more informative in this particular work. Like many other Vonnegut's books, The Sirens of Titan was influenced by Vonnegut's experiences from World War II. Although the war is not the novel's major target, it has a significant affect on it. Winston Niles Rumfoord's believes that "'everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been" (20). In order to escape Dresden with a newer vision, Vonnegut cleverly attempts to rid himself of his youthful philosophy (romanticism and liberalism) by acquiring background from Rumfoord's theory of time and by isolating to define the visual problem caused by Dresden.
Understanding literary elements such as patterns, reader/writer relationships, and character choice are critical in appreciating William Faulkner's Barn Burning. Some literary elements are small and almost inconsequential while others are large and all-encompassing: the mother's broken clock, a small and seemingly insignificant object, is used so carefully, extracting the maximum effect; the subtle, but more frequent use of dialectal words which contain darker, secondary meanings; the way blood is used throughout the story in many different ways, including several direct references in the familial sense; how Faulkner chooses to write about poor, common people (in fact to the extreme) and how this relates to the opinions of Wordsworth and Aristotle; and finally, the relationship between the reader and writer, Faulkner's choice of narrator and point of view, and how this is works successfully.
Edelstein, Arnold. “Billy’s Time Travel in not Science Fictional but Psychological.” Social Issues in Literature: War in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five, edited by Claudia durst Johnson, Gale Cengage Learning, 2011, pp.59-66.
Harris, Charles B. "Time, Uncertainty, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: A Reading of Slaughterhouse-Five." The Centennial Review 3rd ser. 20 (1976): 228-42. Web.
"William Faulkner (1897-1962)." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 97. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. 1-3. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Hempfield High School. 31 March 2010.
William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" (1929) is one of the monuments of High Modernism. It was the dark side of the social scene, that caught Faulkner's imagination and makes him delves deeply into the social structure of the Americans. He shows the fall and the decay of the family as a unit of society, the failure of the family to hold together and its damaging. The Compson family is one of the samples of a disintegrated and ruined American family whose members are characterized by absence of either the parental or the maternal role, lack of respect and constant conflict, which has shaken the balance of their family leading to its disintegration. Compson family Children are living a life of prisoners of family manners and beliefs in