In William Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and The Fury, he explicitly engenders Caroline Compson in order to allow her character to make a strong impression on any reader. With that engenderment it causes a seemingly abortive meaning of her importance to the novel. Granting that she appears as a negative character throughout the novel, if looked at closer, she makes a noticeable gyration at receiving sympathy from readers, due to her vast confusions of what is expected of her. Even though, Caroline is a non-sympathetic character who exhibits a demeanor of selfishness, egotistical behaviors and the lack of affection, with a different perspective, one might extract more compassion and understanding towards her by realizing a perplexity to which she was foreseen to be.
William Faulkner purposely fabricates Caroline Compson to be portrayed as a non maternalistic character in The Sound and The Fury. A colossal moment, in which it is shown, is the sense of selfishness that is exercised by her. The way she portrays selfishness is her use of guilt specifically towards her family and the Gibson family, with intentions of receiving remorse from them. “It’s all my fault. I’ll be gone soon…” (Faulkner 39). Caroline’s goal in this quote is to obtain reassurance from everyone around her to make sure she is still wanted and to increment her lack of self-esteem. Mrs. Compson also verifies to the readers that she feels that giving birth to her son, Benjamin, was a punishment from a vengeful God, “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...
... middle of paper ...
...uld have. Mrs. Compson will always be trapped in what role she should have in life and sadly that is all she cares about. She will never find her true soul nor did Caroline want to inquest for it, she just expects to be cared for and wanted by others that will never be able to fulfil her true desires.
Works Cited
Castille, Philip Dubuisson. “Dilsey’s Easter conversion in Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury.” EBSCOhost. Web. 8 May. 2013.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury. Ed. David Minter. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc: 1994. Print.
Padgett, John B. William Faulkner on the Web. University of Mississippi, 2001. Web. 5 May. 2014.
Weinstein, Phillip M. “If I could Say Mother”: Constructing the Unsayable About Faulknerian Maternity.” In Faulkner, William The Sound and The Fury. Ed. David Minter. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc: 1994. Print.
Faulkner, William. "Barn Burning." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 3th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 1554-66.
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, the characters and theme are developed through irony, suspense, and symbolism.
The southern culture places much value on community, courtesy, and the standard of morality: the Bible. But under this facade of civility lie slanderous gossip, impure motives, and hidden iniquity. Faulkner’s character, Cora Tull, is a prime example of this. Though she openly admits that she has no right to pass judgment on Addie Bundren because, “It is the Lord’s place to judge,” Cora Tull later hypocritically states, “I realized out of the vanity of her heart she (Addie) had spoken sacrilege.” Cora’s desire for Addie’s repentance blinds her from seeing her own sin. On the other hand, Mrs. Turpin, a character in O’Connor’s “Revelation,” struggles with this same sin but in a different manner. Mrs. Turpin appears to politely encounter strangers with kindness but, alas, her kindness is corrupted. Though Mrs. Turpin’s sincere smiles and courteous small talk make her appear to truly care about others around h...
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature and Its Writers. 6th ed. Boston, New York:
...ation, she is his ultimate view of womanhood. He creates this woman who he builds up to perfection, only to bring her back down. By placing Caddy Compson as the anchor character of the book, Faulkner gives a voice to his own feelings about women.
She ‘possessed a mind of uncommon mould’ which was also ‘soft and benevolent’; she is compared to a ‘fair exotic’ flower which is sheltered by Alphonse; she drew ‘inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow’ on Victor, and her ‘tender caresses’ are some of his ‘first recollections’. She is the idealised mother, a figure that Shelley viewed wistfully, as her own mother died when she was ten days old to be replaced by a disinterested stepmother. Caroline’s parenting provides the care that Frankenstein might well have lacked, had he been left to his father alone – his father dismisses Agrippa’s work without explanation, thereby setting Victor on his course towards ‘destruction’. This is the first introduction of a theme that continues throughout the book, that of the necessity for female figures in parenting and in society. Without a mother figure and left only with Frankenstein who subsumes both parental roles, the creature’s life is blighted by his imperfection and lack of companionship. However, Caroline is also the trigger to Alfonse’s chivalry, thus presenting him in an improved light and allowing his character to develop at the expense of her own weakness. This is a feminist comment from Shelley, whose mother Mary Wollenstonecraft was a notorious feminist and an important influence.
Caroline was born into a wealthy family in Massachusetts, the daughter of a psychoanalyst and his self-contained painter-wife. She reflects in her memoir that being in her friends’ houses during her school years, she noted that her family was different from the others: they never hug each other,
William Faulkner’s life was defined by his inability to conduct himself as a true Southern gentleman. He never achieved affluence, strength, chivalry or honor. Therefore, the myth of Southern masculinity eluded him. Faulkner shied away from violence, he never proved himself in battle. He was not a hard worker, nor was he an excellent family man. Seemingly worst of all, he did not follow in the footsteps of his father and the “Old Colonel.” The code of Southern gentility highly praises family tradition. As a born and bred Southerner I can attest to this fact. Every man in my family for ten generations has been a plumber. It is the utmost honor for a man to follow his father’s example. Faulkner, unfortunately, was incapable of really living like his father. Therefore, I believe Faulkner’s collective failures are rooted in the fact that he could not live up to the standards set by the men in his family.
Hewson, Marc. ""My children were of me alone": Maternal Influence in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying." Mississippi Quarterly 53.4 (2000): n. pag. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr 2011.
Faulkner, Howard, and Theresa L. Stowell. "Richard Wright." Critical Survey Of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-9. Literary Reference Center. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.
Brooks, Cleanth. "William Faulkner: Visions of Good and Evil." Faulkner, New Perspectives. Ed. Richard H. Brodhead. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, 1983.
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).
By focusing on the figure of Caddy, Bleikasten’s essay works to understand the ambiguous nature of modern literature, Faulkner’s personal interest in Caddy, and the role she plays as a fictional character in relation to both her fictional brothers and her actual readers. To Bleikasten, Caddy seems to function on multiple levels: as a desired creation; as a fulfillment of what was lacking in Faulkner’s life; and/or as a thematic, dichotomous absence/presence.
Born on September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was an American author who made readers understand the Southern life. His parents, Murry and Maud Falkner, named him after his great grandfather, William Clark Faulkner (William Faulkner: Olemiss). Faulkner‘s mother taught him what was right from wrong, to be loyal to one’s family, and the politics of sexuality and race, which would later be written about in some of Faulkner’s works (William Faulkner: Olemiss). Faulkner was a high school dropout and only attended one semester of college at the University of Mississippi, but he was still able to become a well known author (William Faulkner: Olemiss). Faulkner was famous for displaying the South’s culture and the faults in society (William Faulkner: Biography). The famous novelist’s struggles in the early years of his career, his inspiration of his home, and his legacy that impacted are what make William Faulkner one of the most memorable authors in American history.
...e turning point of the story of Mother Savage. She understood that the four soldiers she had living in her cottage were enemies, but she had absolutely no problem. “She liked them well enough, too, those four enemies of hers; for country people do not as a rule feel patriotic hatred-those feelings are reserved for the upper classes” (page 66). After receiving the letter informing her son’s death, Mother Savage could only think of how tragic the scene was at the time her son was brutally killed by Prussian soldiers during battle: