Faulkner’s works center around the Reconstruction, an important era for racial relations but also for economics. Faulkner’s criticisms of the South failing to adjust to the dismantling of slavery can also be interpreted as a criticism of capitalism, seeing as American capitalism was built on slave labor. Critiques of capitalism are central to the plots of each of faulkners books (I will be focusing on the first 3 we’ve read). In The Sound and The Fury the Compson’s failure to adjust and being stuck in time is speaking of an antiquated system thats stuck in time and how capitalism will not be able to survive. Jason shorting the market and being a symbol of the evils of greed as a whole speaks on the immorality of capitalism. As I Lay Dying centers around the misfortunes that come to a family because of the greed of Anse. The isolation the family feels can be interpreted as the alienation of the proletariat. Light in August focuses so deeply on the mill being the center of the town and that the very livelihood of every member of the town is so connected to their labor at the mill. 

Bibliography

Atkinson, Ted. Faulkner and the Great Depression: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Cultural Politics. First Edition (1st printing), University of Georgia Press, 2006.

The great depression brought on many critiques of capitalism as it was on of capitalism’s greatest failures. Faulkner was one of the many writers of the era influenced by the crumbling economy around him. 

Godden, Richard. William Faulkner: An Economy of Complex Words (20/21). Princeton University Press, 2007.

Focuses on forms of labor specifically and the economy of plantation systems in relation to capitalism. 

Matthews, John. William Faulkner: Seeing Through the South. 1st ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

A historical context to Faulkner’s writings about a south that is losing its glory and it’s guilt of the past. 

Trefzer, Annette, and Ann Abadie. Global Faulkner (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha) (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series). University Press of Mississippi, 2006.

Particularly the chapter “The Fetish of Surplus Value; or, What the Ledgers Say”. A lot at markets, profit, gambling and other issues of the greed of capitalism especially relevant to Jason. 

Watson, Jay, and Ann Abadie. Faulkner’s Geographies (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series). Reprint, University Press of Mississippi, 2017. 

Connects historical southern events such as beacon’s rebellion to the evolution of capitalism. Also links the invention of the white race to the class system which is the base of capitalism. 

For my search i used the OneSearch tool to look up Faulkner and browsed through titles until I saw something that might be relevant to economics and then skimmed the table of contents for a sense of what the book is about. I found when I include economics as a key word it left out a lot of books that were helpful just because they didn’t have that word particularly i.e a book about the plantation system is still dealing with economics but would get filtered out by the search. Since the Great Depression lent itself to communist theories and literature such as the most notable Grapes of Wrath, a lot of historical analyses of Faulkner’s works lend themselves very well to finding the critiques of capitalism in his works.

Christmas fetishizes his formative years by living out his traumatic experiences from the  eyes of the oppressor. This is first made apparent in the barn where Christmas’s friends are having their right of passage. This journey looks different for Christmas because to him becoming a man means only reclaiming the violence that his foster father put on to him. The adult in Christmas’s life beats him and so to stop being a child and taking pain he must instead cause this pain. Christmas stops thinking as “Something is going to happen to me” (ALIA  p109) and starts thinking “I’m going to do something”. This desire was made apparent when described “there was something in him trying to get out, like when he had used to think of toothpaste”. (ALIA  p103) Violence was engraved into Christmas and the satisfaction and sense of relief Christmas received from not being the victim for once got associated in his mind with a sexual desire. 

Christmas doesn’t always seek control though. The afore mentioned toothpaste incident was Christmas’s first ever look into sex so he associated the feelings of shame and belittlement with sexual desire as well. Which is why he frequently enjoys disclosing his race to prostitutes so they can berate him and he can feel shame and they can feel it with him and he can process his trauma.

It was this side of him which was infatuated with Joana and the race play they would engage in when she would make him sneak into her window, “and her wild hands and her breathing: ‘Negro! Negro Negro’. The part of Joe that was rooted in violence and toxic masculinity although, was starting to grow resentful to this, starting the acts of violence that would act as a foreshadowing, stating “he made a woman of her at last”. (ALIA p216)

He also states “Now she hates me. I have taught her that at last”, which is a nod to his relationship to Mrs. McEachern. Because Christmas was never shown proper love he was always on edge when good deeds would be done for him because he was expecting something bad to follow and so he hated Mrs. McEachern because he thought she was trying to catch him off guard and ruin his hard exterior. This inability to give and accept love transferred over to feeling relief in the thought of sabotaging his relationship with Joana. He wants to make her hate him because then at least he has the power to cause it to happen himself instead of waiting for it like an inevitability. 

Darl is an intelligent character who is ostracized by a society that would burn witches if the lord told them to. The act of insanity for which Darl is sent off to an asylum is actually very reasonable compared to the entirely unreasonable quest the family is on. This journey is clearly beyond the Bundren family’s ability as seen by the perilous obstacles they encounter. The request for a poor family to travel for multiple days to bury someone a state away is absolutely unreasonable and impractical. The most extreme and tragic result of Addie’s request was the loss of Cash’s leg which was broken along the way and rotted until it was unusable. The family also had to trade a horse to acquire donkeys to cross the river, while not as severe of a consequence as Cash’s decaying leg, for a family living in poverty this is no small price as well. Seeing all of this unfold around him I am absolutely able to follow Darl’s logic in wanting the coffin gone so the family could be done with this terrible journey. ‘As I Lay Dying’ presents the Joker-esq question “Is he crazy or was it society that was crazy all along”. 

The premise that the society is crazy is prevalent in many parts of the novel. We see this with the characters’ many hypocrisies like the false pieties of Cora and Whitfield who present christian values but go on to lie, sin, and gossip. The novel’s satirical exaggeration of how incompetent and disconnected from society the family is, in examples like putting the body in the coffin incorrectly, also serve to paint the picture that the society Darl encompasses is crazy. 

The clearest case for the argument that burning down the barn was not only not insane, but not even truly perceived as insane by the family, was made by Cash. “It wasn’t nothing else to do. It was either send him to Jackson, or have Gillespie sue us.” (p232) Cash clearly states that the family is sending Darl to an institution solely to avoid repercussion for their actions and does not actually think Darl is insane. 

I do not think that Darl loses his mind at all. Burning the barn was impulsive and not thought through, but the decision to do so was rational. Wanting to end this perilous journey in which Cash’s leg was currently decaying, was a very practical desire.

While navigating the world as a woman I’ve found that certain men who have a particular dislike of woman have based their view of women on their relationship to their mother. Often times when I talk to someone who thinks women are manipulative, gold diggers, less intelligent and countless other stereotypes, they tend to hold these beliefs most true about their own mothers. Something interesting is happening in The Sound and the Fury although, where the mother was so neglectful, that each son had instead based their views of womanhood on Caddy. This explains why instead of a fixation on their relationship with their mother, which every therapist will vouch that a good amount of the population exhibits, each of the Compson boys have an obsession with Caddy in their own way. 

This is the clearest with Benji, who Caddy babied and took care of more than their mother did. Benji, who is depicted to think like a child, wishes to remain by his mother-figure’s side.

Jason the middle child, got the worst hand out of the Compson children. He was born when conditions were most likely worsening, i.e. mother getting older and more neglectful, father’s alcoholism worsening. This assumption being made solely due to the fact that if behaviors don’t stop they just get worse the longer they go on. The age during which Jason was young and needed attention, the family had to deal with Benji who clearly needed a lot more attention. So Jason not getting attention from his mother or Caddy, gained resentment for women in general, but definitely most focused on Caddy. Jason’s hatred is a direct result of not being shown love as a child. His bitterness is best summed up by the line “I was a kid then. I believed folks when they said they’d do things. I’ve learned better since then” (TSATF p206)

Quintin being the oldest, got the best hand. He is the only one that got to go to college, which shows even though the parents were still neglectful, they gave more to him than any of the other children. Being the oldest, there was no one to compete with for affection as a baby, and when Caddy was born they got along great. His mother constantly being frail and needing saving, made Quintin view women this way as seen in the story with the little girl and remarks he makes about women in passing. Caddy who was so unlike their clearly unpleasant mother, made Quintin idolize her. But he idolized her in the way Quintin was taught to show affection. Quintin’s mother engraved into him that the best thing he can do for a woman is save her and thats all he wanted to do for Caddy. This association is most literal in the flash backs of conversations Quintin has. He remembers Caddy saying she’s sick which is something the mother, being a hypochondriac, always said. “Sick how are you sick” (TSATF p111) Caddy then proceeds to ask Quintin to take care of Benji because thats always been her job. One of the last flash backs Quintin has of Caddy is of her as a caretaker.

While Benji’s mind in The Sound and The Fury can seem disorienting, his visual associations function as a mnemonic device that once understood, pulls us into the novel much more viscerally than any plot driven narrative. First lets look at the definition of a mnemonic device. It is a technique a person can use to help them remember a long list of items or events, a memory aid. The oldest mnemonic device comes from Ancient Greece called the Method of Loci. The user is told to imagine a familiar place, usually their home. The user then, in their mind, fills the various rooms with the items they are trying to remember, associating the word to the location. This, while not intentionally, is how Benji views his life. 

The first key to understanding this section is to know that in his earlier years Benji is not allowed off the Compson estate. This can be assumed from the scene where Benji escapes. (TSATF p52) “How did he get out, father said. Did you leave the gate unlatched when you came in, Jason” This being said, Benji is very familiar with the Compson estate, and all of his memories are tied to locations there. Every cut off in his memory is strung together by another memory happening in the same location. This allows us to tie each point on the timeline to a location and collect several pieces of information. 

We start off with event #1 which starts in a golf course; this is every scene Luster is in. Since the golf course in the opining passage sparks a memory, we can infer it was once part of the Compson estate, and no longer is because it was sold off when the family was in financial destress. (TSATF p4) “Luster said. ‘You snagged on that nail again. Can’t you never crawl through here without snagging on that nail.”

The very next sentence (TSATF p4) “Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through” takes us to the first flashback of what we’ll denote event #2, Christmas day, as derived from (TSATF p4) “you don’t want your hands froze on Christmas, do you”. This is connected to the main arch through the fence which is in both timelines. This is also the day Caddy and Benji deliver the letter to Mrs Patterson. (TSATF p12) “You don’t want your hands froze on Christmas do you” and (TSATF p13) “She took the letter out of her pocket and put it in mine. ‘It’s a Christmas present.’”

The second flashback occurs at the fence as well. Event #3 is Benji waiting for Caddy at the gate a few days before Christmas, as seen in Caddy saying “Christmas is the day after tomorrow.” (TSAF page7) 

The fence is again mentioned the day Benji escapes and chases the girls as previously stated. 

As Luster and Benji in the main arch pass the carriage house, (TSAF p9) “we passed the carriage house”, flashback to event #4 occurs, the day TP takes Benji and his mother for a carriage ride. (TSAF p9) “‘Git in, now and set still until your maw come.’ Dilsey said. She shoved me into the carriage. T.P. held the reins”. We now see the present time line is Luster and Benji walking down memory lane, with the excuse of finding a quarter, as Benji has flashbacks of every place they pass. 

Occassionally, a slightly more complicated tactic happens, where a flashback is linked by the location in another flashback. Since these do not connect to the present at all, which is the easiest timeline to distinguish as it is the only one with Luster, it is sometimes difficult to see that these are two separate flashbacks. This is the case when event #5 occurs, Benji delivering a letter to Mrs. Patterson alone. This is triggered by remembering Mrs. Pattersons house when recalling event #2. These events are almost indistinguishable except for a few small clues. “‘You idiot’, Mrs. Patterson said, I told him never to send you alone again.” (TSATF p13) Beni is delivering a letter but unlike in event #2, he is without Caddy.

The next event #6 is covered the most, other than the present timeline. The day their grandmother dies. The location most associated with this is the tree Caddy climbs, but is introduced with the children playing in the branch, which Benji recalls when passing the branch in the present. (TSATF p17) “I hushed and got in the water and Roskus came and said to come to supper”. 

Event #7 is triggered by the barn, where T.P. and Benji got drunk at Caddy’s wedding and Quentin fought T.P. (TSATF p20) “The cows came jumping out of the barn.” “Quentin kicked T.P. again.” 

The next crucial location is the swing. In the present timeline “Miss Quentin and her beau (are)in the swing” (TSAF p46) which triggers a flashback to Caddy in the swing who wanted to “stay here and talk to Charlie a while”. (TSAF p47)

Locational memory allows us a vivid picture of the Compson manner and helps us interpret all the memories that fill the rooms, poetically strung together like a mental trail of bread crumbs as we follow Benji along his stroll in the present.