The Sound and the Fury, 1929 Three types of inadequate relation to EXPERIENCE (Benjy, Quentin, Jason & other Compsons) in stream of consciousness technique + an adequate one (Dilsey) in classical omniscient narrative technique "I aint done nothing to him." Luster said. "He was playing there, and all of a sudden he started bellering. What you want to get her started for, Dilsey said, Whyn't you keep him out of there. He was just looking at the fire, Caddy said. Mother was telling him his new name. We didn't mean to get her started. I knows you didn't, Dilsey said. Him at one end of the house and her at the other. You let my things alone, now. Dont you touch nothing till I get back. "Aint you shamed of yourself." Dilsey said. "Teasing him." She set the cake on the table. "I aint been teasing him." Luster said. "He was playing with that bottle full of dogfennel and all of a sudden he started up bellering. You heard him." "You aint done nothing to his flowers." Dilsey said. "I aint touched his graveyard." Luster said. What section of the novel does this fragment belong to? Explain stream of consciousness What is / are the referent(s) for the personal pronouns written in green? What is their role? WHEN THE SHADOW OF THE SASH APPEARED ON THE curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excrutiatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. What section of the novel does this fragment belong to? Explain stream of consciousness Discuss / explain the bits in green When I finished my cigar and went up, the light was still on. I could see the empty keyhole, but I couldn't hear a sound. She studied quiet. Maybe she learned that in school. I told Mother goodnight and went on to my room and got the box out and counted it again. I could hear the Great American Gelding snoring away like a planing mill. I read somewhere they'd fix men that way to give them women's voices. But maybe he didn't know what they'd done to him. I dont reckon he even knew what he had been trying to do, or why Mr Burgess knocked him out with the fence picket. And if they'd just sent him on to Jackson while he was under the ether, he'd never have known the difference. () Well, like I say they never started soon enough with their cutting, and they quit too quick. I know at least two more that needed something like that, and one of them not over a mile away, either. What section of the novel does this fragment belong to? Explain stream of consciousness Explain the phrases written in green. Eight oclock, Dilsey said. She ceased and tilted her head upward, listening. But there was no sound save the clock and the fire. She opened the oven and looked at the pan of bread, then stooping she paused while someone descended the stairs. She heard the feet cross the diningroom, then the swing door opened and Luster entered, followed by a big man who appeared to have been shaped of some substance whose particles would not or did not cohere to one another or to the frame which supported it. His skin was dead looking and hairless; dropsical too, he moved with a shambling gait like a trained bear. His hair was pale and fine. It had been brushed smoothly down upon his brow like that of children in daguerrotypes. His eyes were clear, of the pale sweet blue of cornflowers, his thick mouth hung open, drooling a little. What section of the novel does this fragment belong to? What kind of narrative is there in this excerpt? Who is the big man? Comment on the phrases / sentences written in green. Doomed and knew it, accepted the doom without either seeking or fleeing it. Loved her brother despite him, loved not only him but loved in him that bitter prophet and inflexible corruptless judge of what he considered the family's honor and its doom, as he thought he loved but really hated in her what he considered the frail doomed vessel of its pride and the foul instrument of its disgrace; not only this, she loved him not only in spite of but because of the fact that he himself was incapable of love, accepting the fact that he must value above all not her but the virginity of which she was custodian and on which she placed no value whatever: the frail physical stricture which to her was no more than a hangnail would have been. Knew the brother loved death best of all and was not jealous, would (and perhaps in the calculation and deliberation of her marriage did) have handed him the hypothetical hemlock. Was two months pregnant with another man's child which regardless of what its sex would be she had already named Quentin after the brother whom they both (she and the brother) knew was already the same as dead, when she married (1910). What section of the novel does this fragment belong to? What kind of narrative is there in this excerpt? What are the referents for he, she and Quentin? Source of dramatic tension and focal point of various perspectives: Caddys surrender to Dalton Ames The sequence of events is not caused by her acts but by the significance which each of her brothers attributes to it As a result: the four sections appear quite unrelated even though they repeat certain incidents and are concerned with the same problem: Caddys loss of virginity. Each of the sections is static, but through their reading the plot reveals progressively. There is no development of either character or plot in the traditional manner. The consciousness of a character is the agent illuminating and being illuminated by the central situation fixing the structure while leaving the central situation ambiguous forcing the reader to reconstruct the story and to apprehend its significance for himself The reader recovers the story while he is grasping the relation of Benjy, Quentin, and Jason to it. with respect to the plot the 4 sections are inextricably connected, but with respect to the central situation they are quite distinct and self-sufficient. As related to the central focus, each of the 1st 3 sections presents a version of the same facts which is at once the truth and a complete distortion of the truth; e.g: I went along the fence, to the gate, where the girls passed with their booksatchels. "You, Benjy." Luster said. "Come back here." You cant do no good looking through the gate, T. P. said. Miss Caddy done gone long ways away. Done got married and left you. You cant do no good, holding to the gate and crying. She cant hear you. What is it he wants, T. P. Mother said. Cant you play with him and keep him quiet. He want to go down yonder and look through the gate, T. P. said. Well, he cannot do it, Mother said. It's raining. You will just have to play with him and keep him quiet. You, Benjamin. Aint nothing going to quiet him, T. P. said. He think if he down to the gate, Miss Caddy come back. Nonsense, Mother said. I could hear them talking. I went out the door and I couldn't hear them, and I went down to the gate, where the girls passed with their booksatchels. They looked at me, walking fast, with their heads turned. I tried to say, but they went on, and I went along the fence, trying to say, and they went faster. Then they were running and I came to the corner of the fence and I couldn't go any further, and I held to the fence, looking after them and trying to say. Benjys voice silenced in terms of plot; his missing Caddy will lead to his running after one of the girls; the daughters family & his own family would misinterpret his intentions taken to Jackson (see slide 11 & Jasons perception and interpretation of the event. The month of brides, the voice that breathed She ran right out of the mirror, out of the banked scent. Roses. Roses. Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson announce the marriage of. Roses. Not virgins like dogwood, milkweed. I said I have committed incest, Father I said. Roses. Cunning and serene. If you attend Harvard one year, but dont see the boat-race, there should be a refund. Let Jason have it. Give Jason a year at Harvard. Quentins version of Caddys story ONCE A BITCH ALWAYS A BITCH, WHAT I SAY. I SAYS you're lucky if her playing out of school is all that worries you. I says she ought to be down there in that kitchen right now, instead of up there in her room, gobbing paint on her face and waiting for six niggers that cant even stand up out of a chair unless they've got a pan full of bread and meat to balance them, to fix breakfast for her. And Mother says, "But to have the school authorities think that I have no control over her, that I cant--" "Well," I says, "You cant, can you? You never have tried to do anything with her," I says, "How do you expect to begin this late, when she's seventeen years old?" () "Sure," I says, "I never had time to be. I never had time to go to Harvard like Quentin or drink myself into the ground like Father. I had to work. But of course if you want me to follow her around and see what she does, I can quit the store and get a job where I can work at night. Then I can watch her during the day and you can use Ben for the night shift." Jasons version of Caddys story via Quentins (Caddys daughter) "They deliberately shut me out of their lives," she says, "It was always her and Quentin. They were always conspiring against me. Against you too, though you were too young to realise it. They always looked on you and me as outsiders, like they did your Uncle Maury. I always told your father that they were allowed too much freedom, to be together too much. When Quentin started to school we had to let her go the next year, so she could be with him. She couldn't bear for any of you to do anything she couldn't. It was vanity in her, vanity and false pride. And then when her troubles began I knew that Quentin would feel that he had to do something just as bad. But I didn't believe that he would have been so selfish as to--I didn't dream that he--" "Maybe he knew it was going to be a girl," I says, "And that one more of them would be more than he could stand. Their mothers version via Jasons; what is it that Quentin (Caddys brother) did and proved to be selfish? each of the 1st 3 sections presents a version of the same facts which is at once the truth and a complete distortion of the truth the theme of the novel, as revealed by its structure, is: the relation between the act and mans apprehension of the act, between the event and the interpretation. It is a matter of shifting perspective: for each man creates his own truth. This does not mean that there is no truth, or that truth is unknowable. It only means that truth is a matter of the hearts response and the minds logic MODERNISM Dilseys responses seem to be nearest to it, as humanly round and really moral. each of the 1st 3 sections presents a well demarcated and isolated world built around one of these splinters of truth communication is difficult, if not impossible: Caddy (with everything entailed by this character and its doings), who is central to all three, means something different to each. For Benjy: smell of trees (Benjys perception is sensorial) innocence & maternal protection. For Quentin: honor ( an abstract and emotional perceiver of morality) For Jason: money (or the means to obtain it: logic and social communication are his antennae)