Tag Archives: TSAF

Considering Boundaries and Physical Space in TSAF

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From the first line of the novel, The Sound and the Fury provides a conflicted perspective on boundaries (physical, metaphorical, linguistic, and otherwise). Benjy, a character defined by his inability to communicate, simultaneously operates as a witness to events, represented in his own relationship to the physical geography of the house. Benjy “cant get out” from the fence (Faulkner 52). He is bound by and connected to it, not only physically, but perhaps even metaphorically and temporally. For example, when a group of people passes along the fence, he “tried to say, but they went on, and I went along the fence, trying to say […] I held to the fence, looking after them and trying to say” (52). The fence marks the bounds of Benjy’s ability to connect with others, but he navigates it as much he can, first by following along the line of the boundary before finally clinging to it in his failed attempt to connect. It also represents a particular site of remembrance for him in that it is the place where Caddy has previously left and appeared. As T.P. tells, “He think if he down to the gate, Miss Caddy come back” (51). Limited though he is in this respect, the first line of the novel reveals his means of working around the limitation. It is “through the fence, between the curling flower spaces” that he is able to observe (3, emphasis mine). Much like his role within the family saga, Benjy, constrained by his own limitations of language and understanding, is still able to watch and witness, and even to relate events to the reader, in his own way.

Unlike Benjy, Quentin is resolute in his respect of boundaries, and seems to be defined by them. His attendance at Harvard hinges upon the fragmentation and sale of family land. His relationship to time is marked by a desire to recognize each passing moment, to the point where unity is wholly disintegrated. He witnesses its passage not only in “the shadow” sunlight casts or in hearing time pass, but also in his own thoughts, “counting to sixty and folding down one finger and thinking of the other fourteen fingers waiting to be folded down” (88). This isn’t limited to time, but rather, informs of Quentin’s overall view and experience of the world. For example, in his perception of the races, he views “a nigger […] [as] a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among” (86). His view of them is not just of their inferiority, but rather of their imperfect opposition—lesser reflections of something higher. Notably, in a conversational fragment, Quentin associates Caddy with them, asking her, “Why must you do like nigger women do in the pasture the ditches the dark woods hot hidden furious in the dark woods” (92). There is an implication of racial muddying in his accusation, one associated with the transversal of a boundary, moving from the safe site of the house to the “dark woods,” from white to its “obverse reflection.” Perhaps he views Caddy’s soiling not just in terms of the impurity of sexuality and womanhood, but also, in some way, as a loss of racial purity as well (maybe due to her large number of sexual partners, and her inability to positively identify her child’s father?).

Unlike her brothers, it is Caddy who straddles and crosses boundaries (in both directions). It is not just that she unilaterally moves from one domain to the other, but that she continually loops back and forth, unable to be pinned down or contained. Caroline laments that “there is no halfway ground […] a woman is either a lady or not,” and yet, Caddy seems to represent that halfway ground. She represents a site of “lady”hood in that she has necessarily lost it. Further, her wedding is a key event in all of their lives, which does not seem to really take place, and her position in the text is defined by the bombast of her presence and the severity of her absence. Throughout the novel, she is frequently represented hovering in physical interstitial spaces—doorways, windows, gates, even mirrors. She uncatches Benjy from the fence; Quentin views her “in the mirror […] running” and then, “running out of the mirror”; and she often appears in the specific narrow space of doorways rather than inside rooms (4, 44, 81, 89, 124). She moves between and among, directions along which Benjy “sees” that constitute spaces (or breaks) Quentin seems apprehensive to recognize as a legitimate position.

chronology for TSAF

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I feel a bit ambivalent about sharing this up front, since part of the experience of reading Faulkner for the first time is experiencing the build-in frustrations and disorientations (what Philip Weinstein calls the process of “unknowing” in modernist work), but to help your sense of “when” you are in the first two sections especially, here’s a chronology derived from the novel:

CHRONOLOGY: The Sound and the Fury

1890 Quentin born.
1892 Caddy born
1894 Jason born
1895 April 7, Benjy born.
1898 Damuddy’s funeral. Caddy in the pear tree with her muddy drawers.
1900 Benjy’s name is changed.
1900-01 Natalie episode.
1906 Caddy in swing with Charlie. Episode with Benjy and Caddy and the use of perfume.
1908 Benjy, now 13, must sleep alone. “You too big to sleep with folks.”
December 23: Uncle Maury – Mrs. Patterson affair. Benjy and Caddy deliver a message to Mrs. Patterson which is intercepted by Mr. Patterson. Uncle Maury appears with a black eye and a bloody mouth.

1909 Caddy loses virginity. Benjy’s knowing.
Fall: Quentin enters Harvard.
1910 April 25: Caddy’s wedding. Benjy and T.P. drunk.
April- May: Benjy at the gate. He attacks the Burgess girl and is castrated.
June 2 : Quentin’s suicide.
1911 Quentin’s birth ( Caddy’s daughter)
1912 Death of Mr. Compson. Dan howling.
1912-1914 Trips to cemetery begin. T.P. driving carriage with Mrs. Compson, Benjy.
1915: Roskus dies. Luster sees his ghost.
1928: April 6-8: Time present. Golfers, the lost quarter, Benjy’s birthday.
April 6: “Jason’s section”, April 8: “Dilsey’s section”.

On Alcohol

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Alcohol struck me as a common thread throughout many of the novels we read this semester, particularly in TSAF, LIA, AA and GDM.  It is of course closely linked to Faulkner himself. In his literature, it seems to be consistently connected to masculinity and agency although in different ways depending on the characters. 

For example, in TSAF Mr. Compson appears to use alcohol as an escape from the reality of his declining family.  His wife indicates that alcohol consumption is a form of suicide for him and she accuses Dilsey of enabling him:  “Don’t you know what the doctor says?  Why must you encourage him to drink?  That’s what’s the matter with him now.  Look at me, I suffer too, but I’m not so weak that I must kill myself with whiskey” (TSAF 207).  Mr. Compson’s reliance on alcohol has an emasculating effect.  Jason connects his father’s alcohol abuse to Caddy’s pregnancy out of wedlock and subsequent failed marriage: 

“…and not letting her daughter’s name be spoken on the place until after a while Father wouldn’t even come down town anymore but just sat there all day with the decanter I could see the bottom of his nightshirt and his bare legs and hear the decanter clinking until final T.P. had to pour it for him and she says You have no respect for your Father’s memory and I says I don’t know why not it sure is preserved well enough to last only if I’m crazy too God knows what I’ll do about it just to look at water makes me sick and I’d just as soon swallow gasoline as a glass of whiskey and Lorraine telling them he may not drink but if you dont believe he’s a man I can tell you how to find out” (TSAF 240).

While Jason’s stream of consciousness shifts a few times in this passage, the sequence links the family shame brought on by Caddie, to Mr. Compson’s antisocial and addictive behavior.  It is also clear that Jason does not drink, most likely because he has lost respect for his father because of his dependency.  However, Jason’s abstinence calls his masculinity into question, something Lorraine is more than willing to vouch for.  There is also the scene in which T.P. and Benji drink sarsaparilla, while Caddie gets married, another instance of alcohol as a form of escape connected to Caddie’s lost virginity.  If virginity is the ultimate definition of femininity and whiskey drinking is the ultimate masculine pastime, TSAF seems to illustrate the destructive forces of adhering to extreme constructs of gender.

Sutpen and Jason are similar in their opinions of their fathers.  Sutpen’s father seems to be perpetually drunk, “snoring with alcohol” in the cart on the way to Tidewater, “filling the room with alcohol snoring” in the cabin in Tidewater.  Sutpen also credits an “alcohol fog” for his father’s decision to send him to school” (AA 187, 198, 200).  Gretchen Martin points out that the Sutpen’s experienced an extreme culture shift in leaving the backcountry for plantation life, claiming that “men like Sutpen’s father resented the dependence created by this [plantation] economic system” (Martin 5).  While Martin focuses on Sutpen’s father’s laziness, his resentment for leaving a more independent lifestyle as a yeoman could also be attributed to Sutpen’s father’s alcohol consumption. 

Even Sutpen himself remarks on the cultural change of plantation life:  “He had learned the difference not only between white men and black ones, but he was learning that there was a difference between white men and white men not to be measured by lifting anvils or gouging eyes or how much whiskey you could drink then get up and walk out of the room” (AA 189).  Plantation society not only renders the Sutpen men dependent but also comes with a new set of standards for masculinity.  Gone is idea that masculinity is defined by physical strength, bravery or the ability to hold your liquor.  That definition is replaced with the image of the plantation owner who wears shoes even when he doesn’t need them and has a slave that basically breathes for him.  The independent yeoman is replaced with the seemingly vulnerable and dependent slave owner.  Sutpen becomes increasingly affiliated with alcohol consumption as the novel progresses.  At first described as someone so committed to his design that he did not have “not only the money to spare for drink and conviviality but the time and inclination as well,” he is frequently described drinking with Wash Jones upon returning from the war (AA 31).

Continuing in this vein are the entrepreneurs Lucas Beauchamp and George Wilkins. For the black men of “The Fire and the Hearth” in GDM, rather than a loss of agency as illustrated in TSAF and AA, the production of alcohol functions as a way to operate outside of the limited options they are given through share cropping.  In fact, it is through his alcohol production that we first see to what extent Beauchamp value’s his autonomy.  He is determined to maintain his monopoly of whiskey production:

“It was not that he had anything against George personally, despite the mental exasperation and the physical travail he was having to undergo when he should have been home in bed asleep.  If George had just stuck to farming the land which Edmonds had allotted him he would just as soon Nat married George as anyone else, sooner than most of the nigger bucks he knew.  But he was not going to let George Wilkins or anyone else move not only into the section where he had lived for going on seventy years but onto the very place he had been born on and set up competition in a business which he had established and nursed carefully and discreetly for twenty of them, ever since he had fired up for his first run not a mile from Zack Edmonds’ kitchen door” (GDM 43).

It is clear that he is not motivated by money since “he already had more money in the bank than he would ever spend” (GDM 42).  The moonshine business allows Beauchamp to earn money outside of the oppressive share-cropping system while outsmarting his white counterpart, Edmonds, inheritor of LQCM.  Of course moonshining is illegal, so Beauchamp is also circumventing not only the oppressive economic system in the South, but he is also challenging the legal system, and with a bit of a leap, Jim Crow laws as well.

Since TSAF focuses intensely on a family in the changing South, it makes sense that alcohol functions with more private and familial implications here.  Mr. Compson loses his independence in his addiction and the family seems to deteriorate at the same rate as his addition worsens.  In AA, white male aristocratic identity is being challenged, and alcohol abuse seems quite linked to that loss of self and the loss of independence inherent in plantation society.  Lastly in GDM, a novel that seems to subversively seek black agency, alcohol emerges as a function of that new found agency. While not mentioned here, Joe Christmas in LIA is also in the illegal alcohol business. It could be argued that LIA is a novel about crossing boundaries and their consequences, in which case, Joe Christmas’ gender bending could also be tied to his willingness to break the law, which he does through the illegal sale of alcohol.

Please note that all pagination is based on Google Books additions.

Martin, Gretchen. “Vanquished by a Different Set of Rules: Labor vs. Leisure in William Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom!” The Mississippi Quarterly 61.3 (2008): 397. Web.

Similarities between the Compson and the Bundren Family

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As I Lay Dying has many analogous ideas and themes to The Sound and The Fury. Many of the contrasting ideas and themes are metaphoric representations of the protagonist through different objects, time unable to move forward, and similar character roles each family member play. In As I Lay Dying there are various accounts of human- animal interconnections that relate Addie to a fish and a horse. Similar to The Sound and the Fury, Caddie is symbolized to Benjy as fire, a caddie in golf, and a slipper. Faulkner uses these projections to symbolize that Caddie and Addie are always internally present within their family despite Addie’s death and Caddie’s lack of presence.  On pages 53, 67, and 84, Vardaman’s narrative focuses on the dead fish to embody Addie’s existence. Vardaman’s paranoia arises as he becomes unable to articulate and differentiate Addie’s existence from the fish’s existence and concludes someone killed Addie while she has been dead in her bed for ten days (54). Through Vardaman’s narrative, Addie is able to remain present in society only if the fish is devoured by each family member thus each family member will embody a part of Addie’s spirit (66-67), an example of animal magnetism;  “A magnetic charm or appeal” (Merriam Webster) towards the perseverance of Addie’s existence.   Furthermore, instead of an embodiment as a fish, Jewel perceives his mother as a horse. On pages 135-136, Jewel purchases a horse with his own money saved from “cleaning up forty acres of new ground Quick laid out last spring,” he also tells Anse the horse will never eat anything that belongs to him which shows Jewel’s separation in the family as well as his affection for the horse. By comparing his mother to a horse, we come to the realization Jewel isn’t cruel or mean hearted as Cora perceives him to be (21), instead he’s misperceived.

“Without stopping it overends and rears again, pauses, then crashes slowly forward and through the curtain. This time Jewel is riding upon it, clinging to it, until it crashes down and flings him forward and clear and Mack leaps forward into a thin smell of scorching meat and slaps at the widening crimson-edged holes that bloom like flowers in his undershirt” (222).

The movement of the river rushing the casket downstream compares to a wild horse attempting to thrust Jewel off it. From the beginning of the novel it is clear Jewel treats his horse with tough love, caring for it through derogatory movements (13), but for Jewel to risk his life to safe the casket would emphasis his care for his mother is a mere reflection for his care of his horse. Thus, for Jewel to state his mother is a horse only further indicates his feelings towards his mother is more personable and more profound which leads to the question if Jewel is not able to perceive his mother as a horse would he have rescued his mother from the river?

Time unable to progress forward is made clear from each family member’s inability to cope with Addie’s death. After Addie’s death each family member develops onset of problems: existence for Darl, sexuality for Dewey Dell, and the parallels of reality for Vardaman and Jewel. This exemplifies Addie’s death only hinders each family member’s ability to progress in life.  On page 146, “It is as though the space between us were time; an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between,” implicitly draws upon the burden of Addie’s death as an entropic effect not only on her children but on time as well. The idea that separation of Addie and her children is not a spatial factor but a temporal factor implies Addie’s death disrupted the continuous rhythm of time moving forward, instead, time is now hindered and doubling backwards into the past. A disastrous foreshadowing for the Bundren family once Addie died. This is very much contrasts to Quentin’s narrative in The Sound and the Fury; his constant battle to irrevocably attempt to escape time and his past leads him to commit suicide since the progression of time and the memories from the past are inescapable.

Lastly, from Addie’s narrative it is clear Jewel is the “black sheep” of the family due to an erroneous affair Addie has with Whitfield. Addie favors Jewel and firmly believes Jewel will be her salvation saving her from water and fire (168), similarly to Mrs. Compson with Jason in The Sound and the Fury, she believes Jason will rescue her from the downfall of the family’s name as she constantly reminds him he is a Bascomb and not a Compson. Dewey Dell relates to Caddy as they both are impregnated out of wedlock and is at a threshold between womanhood, Benjy and Darl would relate to one another due to their observant personas but Darl is able to comprehend what he sees, every character but Anse would relate to Quentin due to them repressing time and their inability to cope with their past, and finally, Anse and Mr. Compson are both not present/ active father figures in the story since Mr. Compson’s most indicative role in The Sound and The Fury is to leave Quentin at a threshold between time and the meaning of life in comparison to Anse who sells Jewel’s horse

The Easter Pear Tree

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Mary Rubi

Dilsey saw the beginning and she now sees the end. Dead, buried, mad, old and defeated, the Compsons are near extinction. The image of Caddie and her soiled underwear climbing up a pear tree is replaced by her daughter Quentin climbing down the pear tree from her bedroom window. The round fertile pear tree becomes a symbol of duality, of feminine fertility and loss. Caddie climbs up the tree to annoy her brothers, to rebel, and to see a better view of the farm. The view wasn’t very good, so Caddie climbs down and runs away. With Quentin gone, the Compson clan is finished. The family is barren, like a dried up well in the dessert. Their death, however, will return Dilsey back to life. Dilesy has seen the power and the glory, tears run down her worn out face as she listens to the preacher give his Easter sermon. (297) She has remained faithful, catering to the whims of those she served, baking biscuits in exchange for rudeness. With little room for justice, the pain she has endured as the servant to the Compsons will be rewarded through death. Like the pear tree, death for the wicked is different than death for the loyal servant. Death is the only way to cleanse the earth of the Compsons, ending the line ends the continuous cycle of pain. Dilsey will get her reward in heaven. She looks upon the world, and the Compson family with prudent eyes. She knows when Luster is doing mischief, she knows when Jason is going to storm down the stairs, and she knows when Benjy is upset.

When Dilsey returns home, she enters Quentin’s room and picks up the ripped undergarment from the floor. (299) She has spent a lifetime trying to remove the stain of the Compson clan, but to no avail, the window remains open. Returning to the destitute matriarch, Dilsey stands at her bedside and asks whether she needs anything. In a moment of maddening irony, Mrs. Compson bitterly asks for her bible, angrily telling Dilsey that she wants the book within arm’s reach. The bible has always been at the foot of the bed, then kicked off and left on the floor. Mrs. Compson isn’t any more a lady than Candace, and her denial is as caustic as Jason’s behavior. Mrs.Compson has always had the bible within reach; she’s always had the power to curtail her family, and to bring harmony to all the disheveled personalities. But first she would have to have humility, by recognizing her own faults and see that she is more responsible for the demise of her family than anyone else. Dilsey knows this, sees this, and is aware of her role in the Compson family. But the end has come. Dilsey has done her best. And now she can find refuge in knowing she can die to wake up in the Great Gettin’ Up Morning.

Faulkner’s style

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Most of the posts have specifically referred to either a section of the book, or   a particular character or      to a particular event.    What I find most striking is the style of writing.  Forward , back, sideways… sometimes with out punctuation    sometimes with regional dialect, with the narrator changing from moment to moment nt….. sometimes like James Joyce (Quentin and the little girl)…. moving characters back and forth as easily as as my 7 year old nephew moves moves toys…. themes like suicide, incest, family dynamics, family honor, parental neglect, drunkenness , mental retardation being  addressed st the same time (sometimes in the same paragraph) wow!  it is remarkable that Faulkner can juggle so many themes   and so many narrative.  What is truly astounding is that the man never seems    to drop the ball.    What concentration!  What discipline!  (It may sound trite.. but what talent!)   Steve

Dilsey’s Silence

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Benjy is confused; Quentin is depressed; Jason is angry; and Dilsey has to deal with all their problems. Faulkner’s final chapter focuses primarily on Dilsey’s role in the home, and how she interacts with the family. His shift to the third-person narrative is no surprise – if Faulkner were to give Dilsey a voice and allow the reader to follow her stream of consciousness, it would disrupt the social hierarchy that he thematizes in his analysis of southern living. As such, Dilsey is quoted often in this section and the third-person narrator is sympathetic to her plight.

Last week we discussed Faulkner’s thematic interest in the concept of failure, specifically addressing how each narrator fails to tell the story (or successfully portray the image of the girl with the muddy bottom in narrative form) in his respective section. It occurred to me as I read the would-be Dilsey chapter that she doesn’t actually have a chance to fail at telling this story, yet she does have a section devoted to her point of view. For instance, we may not be privy to Dilsey’s specific thoughts when she makes the great traverse up the stairs to tend to Mrs. Compson’s needs, but the narrator’s description of Dilsey’s Sisyphean struggle certainly provides insight as to what she may be thinking after “she began to mount the stairs, toiling heavily” only to find out there was no reason for her efforts: “Dilsey said nothing. She turned slowly and descended, lowering her body from step to step, as a small child does, her hand against the wall” (271-272). Even without access to Dilsey’s thoughts, the reader senses her struggle and in this case Dilsey’s silence reveals much more about her character and her relationship with Mrs. Compson than words might have.

Dilsey’s silence replaces Benjy’s moaning, Quentin’s talking to himself, and Jason’s yelling at everyone. Her character avoids those types of flaws by simply keeping her mouth shut, and upholds her duty in the Compson household using the same technique when it comes to Mrs. Compson. In her silence, Faulkner places Dilsey beyond failure in this novel, and Jason crudely points out that failing is a white man’s problem when he thinks back on an angry conversation he has with Dilsey, stating: “You’re a nigger. You’re lucky, do you know it? I’ll swap with you any day because it takes a white man not to have anymore sense than to worry about what a little slut of a girl does” (243). Jason feigns envy here for the lack of pressure on African Americans in the South at that time, choosing not to acknowledge the lack of rights and tiring work Dilsey was assigned as a black female in the south. At that moment he can only think of his personal failure to reclaim his family’s good name and wealth that was lost to his father’s alcoholism, Quentin’s suicide, and Caddy’s fornication.

So Dilsey cannot fail, but Jason’s ironic statement illuminates the fact that failure is actually a privilege of sorts. As a white man with a voice and the potential to succeed, it is Jason’s right to fail. Dilsey is the only prominent character in the novel that upholds her responsibilities and maintains her unjust social role as “mammy” of the Compson household through her silence. Dilsey talks back to Jason on occasion, and voices her opinion among her children and Benjy, but when it comes to Mrs. Compson, “Dilsey [says] nothing” (272). Because Dilsey’s role is so undesirable, I believe that “success” is too strong a word for her character. If failure is impossible, success must be impossible as well; one who has nothing to lose loses nothing.

Through Dilsey’s character, Faulkner demonstrates that even failure is a privilege that is not granted to all. While no one wants to fail, the very act of failing is a right to protect because where there is failure there is the potential for success. Faulkner’s own life is a great testament to this concept, as his “failure” of a novel, The Sound and the Fury, actually turned into his most  celebrated success.

Jason myths: “fleeing niece” = “golden fleece”?

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It’s obvious Faulkner isn’t just telling the story of one Southern family’s downfall; rather he seems to be using a family to tell the story of the South’s downfall. We can see this in two ways: first, in how his characters operate not just within the family sphere but the reader is made aware, particularly in Jason’s chapter, of the forces — economic, historic, cultural and so on — converging on the Compson family. But I was interested in looking at the second, which is how Faulkner expands the scope of tiny universe by drawing parallels to mythology, particularly through Jason, perhaps named for he “of the Argonauts.”

Both Jasons have been disinherited from a throne (or thrones) each believes to be rightfully his. In Greek Jason’s case, his uncle Pelias usurps the throne from Jason’s father Iolcus, and when the hero comes of age he rises up to take it back from his uncle, only to be sent by that uncle on series of difficult tasks, including a long, dangerous journey to claim the Golden Fleece. Seeing how difficult the tasks are Jason grows depressed. Jason Compson suffers similar depression and feelings of impotence as he has been disinherited of power in two ways: he has ascended to the head of the Compson family household, only to find that the throne is not worth holding, that the power associated with it has been lost. Second, he repeatedly refers to a lost opportunity for work at the bank — the people in his life altogether “merely symbolised the job in the bank of which he had been deprived before he ever got it.” (306) His greed gives the bank an obvious resonance as a throne-like seat of power.

Jason Compson’s professional failure, along with his failure to sit atop a successful family, ultimately turns into a kind of savage impotence: Near the end of the final chapter, when Jason is pursuing Quentin and the man in the red tie, the narrator twice in quick succession refers to Jason’s sense of impotence. (Eg his “injury and impotence” and “outrage and impotence.” [303]) His sense of impotence manifests in a series of delusions about having an army behind him — an army that also recalls the Greek Jason’s Argonauts: “ ‘I’m Jason Compson. See if you can stop me. See if you can elect a man to office that can stop me,’ he said, thinking of himself entering the courthouse with a file of soldiers and dragging the sheriff out,” (306) and later on the page, “his file of soldiers with the manacled sheriff in the rear, dragging Omnipotence down from his throne, if necessary; of the embattled legions of both hell and heaven through which he tore his way and put his hands at last on his fleeing niece.” Note here how “fleeing niece” seems like a verbal play on “fleece,” as in Golden Fleece.

In addition to expanding the tiny Compson universe in Jefferson, Miss., linking the jerk Jason Compson with the Greek Jason serves to highlight the former’s impotence, to paint starkly the forces that turned this thwarted heir to power into a vindictive man-child.

Surviving the Compsons

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Jason has little affection for his family. He provides economically for them, there’s enough flour in the pantry and he keeps a roof above their head but he resents his responsibility as head of the household. His vignette is by far more logical than Benjy or Quentin’s narrative, he may lack feelings but at the very least he provides factual information. The brazen swirl of colors and emotions that make the past two stories so enjoyable makes Jason’s narrative a refreshing breeze. Caddy’s story really is the center theme in each narrative, from her first teenage kiss to her banishment from her family. Before Jason, it was easy to sympathize with the headstrong Candace, but after Jason it is a slightly more difficult task. Once a bitch, always a bitch. Once a mad Compson, always a mad Compson. He doesn’t begrudge Candace, he clearly doesn’t think much of her or really care about her in anyway. He doesn’t love her in the same dimension that Benjy or Quentin loved her.  Jason, however, does care about keeping face as best as he can. He’s the only Compson that is not mad, crippled or dead and it shames him to think that the whole town is laughing at his family. So he does what any man in his position would do, to work hard and to dare anyone that might cross him. He tortures Candace and the young Quentin, not because they whore around the town, but because their indiscreet with their behavior. Jason says repeatedly that he doesn’t care whether Quentin runs around with every jelly bean in town, he cares that every townsfolk knows that they can call his niece for a backseat romp. Jason is not a prude, he has a girl on the side, Miss Lorraine, but she lives in another town and wouldn’t dare call him up at work on pain of death. Jason believes in keeping women in line, whether that means beating them or ridiculing them at the dinner table, Jason has more important things to do than concern himself with feminine feelings.

Jason sees what needs to be done; with efficiency and precision Jason does what he does for survival and to keep food on his plate. He may be cruel, his words may be harsh, and yes, he might find pleasure in making his women folk upset, but he has been thrust into the role as the patriarch. He despises Mrs. Compson and Dilsey’s efforts to cajole Benjy and Quentin, and in his own rebellion he has become colder than a cod in a hail storm.  Madness runs in his Compson veins, as well as anyone else, but he has learned to dilute the insanity in acts of cruelty. From burning the circus tickets to calling names, Jason is certainly not without fault but he has discovered how to survive in the madness around him. With his family background, the best Jason can do for himself is learn how to survive.

Jason: Sex & Money

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Someone once said that a man’s problems almost always fall under two categories: finance and romance. With Jason’s chapter we shift towards a money-focused perspective and one that is refreshingly objective, albeit cold and detached. However, we soon realize that, for him, finance and romance are psychologically intertwined.

My experience of reading this novel was like being immersed in a dense fog that slowly began to dissolve as I kept reading. From a narration point of view, it was like being thrown behind a camera that was zoomed in all the way, and then gradually zoomed outward until I could see all of the details, the characters, and the action in focus from a kind of aerial view. Benjy’s narration is so internalized that his world is our world. By the time we get to Dilsey, we are hovering above the family, its dark past, its current struggles and its murky future from a more objective and clearer place. So it is with time: the present is all we know; we are in it and there is no escape. But as we move forward through time and look back, the past begins to clarify, based on what we know now. As the old saying goes, “Hindsight is 20-20.” Faulkner’s novel moves in many directions but steadily takes us from the past to the present and into the future.

It is with Jason’s character that we make this all-important shift in perspective. The novel begins to take on a traditional linear, action-based, plot-driven quality that we are used to (and, by now, yearning for). Jason is unique in his ability to take action. None of the other characters act decisively, except perhaps for Dilsey, who is more of a spiritual mother of the house. What is interesting to note is that both Jason’s sexuality and masculinity are connected to money. He has commodified these primal elements of himself, in an attempt to exchange and control their nature. An obvious example of this is his interactions with women, which are limited to prostitutes. Jason is bitter with the men around him, a tough exterior put on to hide the insecure and impotent interior.

All of the men in this novel are castrated, either literally (in Benjy’s case) or metaphorically. Jason has built so much of his self-value on the money he has stashed away, that when Miss Quentin robs him it is felt to same degree as an actual castration. However there is more than Jason’s self-value in this money, for we learn that it is money sent by Caddy for Miss Quentin. Therefore the money Jason is stealing represents the only way Caddy has of acting as a mother to her daughter. Jason’s role, then, becomes one of blocking the maternal forces that feebly try to manifest themselves, the irony being that he is his mother’s favorite child. He goes into a blind rage when he discovers that he has been robbed, and the action intensifies when he sets out to hunt down Miss Quentin with a manic quality reminiscent of Dmitri Karamazov trailing Grushenka in Dostoevsky’s novel. But Jason’s underlying infatuation with Miss Quentin precedes this robbery. He stalks her the way an ex-boyfriend might, and his detective work is rewarded when he spots her with the man with the red tie. The tie itself becomes a kind of symbol for Miss Quentin’s budding sexuality, a menstrual streak worn proudly by the man on his shirt.

But despite all this, Jason is as impotent as Benjy. We see this when he threateningly tries to provoke the sheriff into helping him find Miss Quentin: Jason told him, his sense of injury and impotence feeding upon its own sound, so that after a time he forgot his haste in the violent cumulation of his self justification and his outrage. And again: He repeated his story, harshly recapitulant, seeming to get an actual pleasure out of his outrage and impotence.  (303) Faulkner underlines the masochistic element of Jason’s character, while at the same time exposing its hollowness. A question for the class: why does Jason get an “actual pleasure” from his own impotence, once he’s lost his money, especially considering how domineering and power-hungry he is?