William Faulkner Essay: The Sound and The Fury

Topic:

7) To what purpose does Faulkner employ 'the monument' ? You might
consider the characterization of Dilsey as monument in contrast to
the statue at the end of the Sound and the Fury, or the museum-like
preservation of objects in the Sartoris 'mausoleum'. 

WARNING: THIS ESSAY IS INTENDED FOR VIEWING BY MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY. SOME EXPLICIT CONTENT IS USED.

       

English 174f: William Faulkner’s Major Works

Midterm Essay 1: Option 

Teaching Fellow: Jesse Benjamin Raber

March 15, 2011,

By Bledar Blake Zenuni

They Endured: Faulkner’s Negro Who Transcends Time

            The characters in The Sound and the Fury are psychologically complex, haunted, prone to spells of vanity and desires, and ultimately tragic. Always one to play the role of the noble Southern gentleman, Quentin Compson III is passionate and neurotic, consumed with the ideal Southern values of chivalry and honor.  Quentin is tormented by his father’s nihilistic philosophy and degradation of women and negroes, as Jason Compson III provides no moral compass to steer Quentin away from the storms of his chaotic thoughts. Rational, cold, and calculating, Jason Compson IV is a cruel and racist man who will stop at nothing to ensure financial success. Caddy Compson, unlike her hypochondriac Mother, Mrs. Compson, is the novel’s maternal figure for her brother Benjy, the mute and mentally handicapped 33-year old, and Quentin’s best friend. Yet Caddy, for all her care giving, commits a heinous sin—by Southern standards of conduct and morality, and in the eyes of the Compson household— by having an affair with Dalton Ames. As a result of indulging in sexual desires, she’s “doomed and knows it.” (Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury, p. 1132).  And then there’s Dilsey. The Compson’s black servant, she’s the matriarch of both the Gibson and Compson families. Dilsey does not allow self-absorption to consume and corrupt her values. She is detached from selfishness and attachments to material goods and vanity. She is the one who nurtures all the Compson children, since both Mrs. Compson and Mr. Compson prove themselves to be incapable of displaying love and affection. She is not merely a physical entity, but a commonwealth of the endearing human spirit, Faulkner’s character creation who represents a monument for the preservation of moral virtues of compassion and selflessness in a world consumed by the entropy of time. Faulkner seems to suggest that, because the Compsons are slaves to their temporal desires, they cannot be fully human. However, Dilsey is the only character whose actions exemplify morality, since she is not concerned about self-aggrandizement, but with atonement by “the annealment and the blood of the remembered Lamb.” (Faulkner, p. 1106). In a novel populated by fragmented memories, psychologically traumatized individuals, a household of madness, a breakdown of the South’s economic and social system, and the entropy of time, Faulkner employs Dilsey as a monument, a figure who represents the preservation of hope and humanity. As one who has “seed the beginning, en…de ending, her actions seem to transcend time itself, since she is the only character who espouses order and restoration in the midst of pandemonium.

A monument is a symbol of stability, literally and figuratively. A marker typically of stone or concrete, it stands as a testament to the memory of a great individual or the preservation of a specific episode in history. Figuratively, it is an outstanding, enduring, and memorable example of an ideal or virtue. In The Sound and the Fury, Dilsey Compson is such an outstanding example of the virtues of selflessness and perseverance in the face of adversity. She is the most positive character in the novel. Her section is the fourth and final one and takes place on Easter Sunday, a time of resurrection. In this section, it is evident that Dilsey draws a great deal of strength from her faith. As Dilsey, Benjy and Luster walk home back from the church, an emotional Dilsey continues to weep after leaving the sermon:

“Dilsey made no sound, her face did not quiver as the tears took their sunken and devious courses, walking with her head up, making no effort to dry them away even” (Faulkner, p. 1106).

When Luster advises her to stop, since they’ll be “passing white folks soon,” Dilsey issues the enigmatic response “I’ve seed de beginning, en now I see de endin” (Faulkner, p.1106.) She keenly observes that she’s the only member of the household who has seen both the glory and the decline of the Compsons.  Furthermore, while all the other characters grow weak by looking inside their own psyches for support, Dilsey is the only one who gains her strength by looking outward. In contrast to Quentin and Jason, who expend their faculties to achieve great honor and great wealth, respectively, Dilsey’s energies are focused to being a faithful servant to the family and to her Lord.  In the church scene, Dilsey weeps for herself and for the Compsons, because, in the words of the pastor, she “sees de darkness en de death everlasting upon de generations” (Faulkner, 1105). While the Compsons crumble around her, Dilsey emerges as the only character who has successfully resurrected the values that the Compsons have long abandoned—hard work, endurance, love of family, and religious faith. As a monument-like figure, Dilsey’s humanity is proven by the course of her actions: maternal care of Benjy and Miss Quentin, and her patience in putting up with Jason’s cruelty.           

Dilsey not only endures the humiliation of Jason’s and Miss Quentin’s insults, but reciprocates with an equal and opposing reaction: love. Miss Quentin’s relationship with Dilsey is Faulkner’s most dramatic rendering of the duality between the mother-figure and child, the black servant, and the white child master. Miss Quentin’s contradictory feelings toward the black servant prevent her from receiving the maternal comfort she seeks. Dilsey defends Quentin against Jason’s insinuations:

“Hush your mouth, Jason, Dilsey said. She went and put her arms around Quentin. ‘Sit down, honey,’ Dilsey said. ‘He ough to be shamed of himself, through what aint your fault up to you.’ (Faulkner, p. 891).

But Quentin responds by pushing Dilsey away. And in Jason’s section, Quentin, stung when Jason calls her a “damned little slut,” calls to Dilsey for comfort:

“ ‘Dilsey,’ she says, ‘Dilsey I want my mother.’ Dilsey went to her. “Now, now,” se says, “He   aint gwine so much as lay his hand on you while Ise here.” (Faulkner, p. 1025).

Yet, when Dilsey touches Quentin, she is immediately rebuffed. Quentin knocks her hand down and cries out, “You damn old nigger” (Faulkner, p. 1030). Repeatedly, Dilsey is mistreated like this by Miss Quentin and by Jason, yet never once does she lose heart and fail to show the child maternal love. Dilsey is the only mother-figure Miss Quentin has ever known, but her ingrained perception that Dilsey is nothing more than a lowly black servant won’t ever enable her to openly accept Dilsey’s affections. As a result, she turns to cruelty, a method of treatment she has observed from Jason. Nevertheless Dilsey’s pride is not broken, her stature does not crumble. Like a proud, erect stone statue, she brushes the insults away with grace, and even continues to treat Miss Quentin in the same motherly way as before.

Dilsey is just as caring with Benjy as she is with the child Miss Quentin. To her, Benjy is innocent and in need of protection. Besides Caddy, the Gibsons are Benjy’s true caretakers and family. Dilsey’s actions prove that she is a devoted mother figure to the man-child, Benjy. Dilsey willingly employs her son and grandson, T.P and Luster, respectively, to be Benjy’s personal caretakers. Furthermore, on Benjy’s birthday, Dilsey purchases the cake with her own money. Dilsey lights the candles on the cake and tells Luster and Benjy to eat it before Jason sees and makes a fuss about an expense he has not paid for. Dilsey is more familiar with Benjy’s tendencies than anyone else, even Caddy. She is the only one who knows that Benjy will break into a state of hysteria if the left turn is taken at the monument of the Confederate soldier at the end of the square. She instructs Luster to take the right turn, since she knows that it’s a symbolic sense of order and security for Benjy. Associations define Benjy’s world, and the right turn at the monument at the end is Benjy’s association of order and temporality. Furthermore, Benjy knows what time is, since he feels Caddy’s loss when he no longer “smells trees,” (Faulkner, p. 1048). But, being mute and not possessing will nor deliberation, Benjy is unable to act, and helpless before the intrusions of the past. The past defines order and sequence in Benjy’s consciousness, and when the pattern is broken the loss is unbearable. After Caddy’s departure, Benjy unintentionally scares away a girl after he reaches out to grab her because she smelled “like trees,” (Faulkner, p. 1056). In The Sound and the Fury, Benjy is lost in time, as associations are fragmented, the past defines order, and a break from traditional patterns results in ceaseless nervous breakdowns. Dilsey, on the other hand, lives in the present; to her the past is irrelevant, time itself does not cause irreparable loss and tragedy, but provides the potential for reparation and salvation.  This is exemplified not only in her loyalty to Benjy and the Compson household after Caddy’s departure and Quentin’s suicide, but in the contrast her personality and actions portray to Quentin’s characterizations of blacks.

For Quentin Compson, a “nigger is not a person, so much so as a form of behavior, a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among.” (Faulkner, p.1016). By this definition, Dilsey is simply an “obverse reflection,” of the Compsons, a black maid whose behavior is modeled from the flaws and virtues of the Compsons, a sort of social chameleon without an intrinsic personality of her own. This thought process, however, most clearly reveals that Quentin’s personality, his pattern of thought and behavior are rigidly shaped by an escape mechanism involving the fragmentation of the self in temporality. Quentin seems to be almost obsessed with blacks, constantly thinking about their relationships to other blacks and whites, and the place they hold in society, both in Jefferson and in the North. Throughout his section, Quentin returns time and time again to “niggers”. When getting on northern street cars, he notices immediately whether or not “niggers” are aboard; when in the Compson household, he acutely observes the black servants, and when he goes off to Harvard one of the first few thoughts that come to his mind is “I used to think that a Southerner had to be always conscious of niggers” (Faulkner, p. 977). Despite his preoccupation with blacks, he is unaware of their psychology and personality. The irony lies in the discrepancy between what he believes about himself and his world, and what his thoughts and actions reveal. Quentin’s constant dwelling on blacks represents his unacknowledged awareness of the “other.” To him, the “obverse reflection” is the “other,” an individual whom he labels as a “negro,” or “nigger” when in Jefferson, and whom he must “remember to think of as a colored person,” when in the North. Put another way, Quentin’s cognitive dissonance presents itself when he begins to experience an alternative possibility of life in a divided world—the world in which Quentin, the southern gentleman is transformed to Quentin the Harvard undergraduate, transposed from Jefferson, where “niggers” live, to Massachusetts, where “colored people” live. The duality of a divided world in The Sound and The Fury is exemplified in Quentin’s section, since when in the North, Quentin must train himself to think of blacks as colored “people,” no longer “forms of behavior,” or “obverse reflections.” The blacks populating Quentin’s section become strategic figures for what is missing in Quentin’s white world and a subtle projection of his own internal state: his family’s history of service to the South and his father’s nihilism ultimately are sour ingredients in the recipe of Quentin’s psychology. He’s personality is defined by the past: his grandfather’s honor and service to the South, the antebellum South of his strong, brave, and courageous ancestors fighting for the preservation of their way of life and family values. In the end, Quentin tries to reenact the code of conduct of that time, getting trapped by the very own lofty ideals he tries to honor. In a word, Quentin’s perception of blacks and the duality of his world are based in temporality. He does not strive for the spiritual values of compassion and selflessness that Dilsey does, but for the temporal values of nobility, family honor, and knightly chivalry. His life ultimately ends in tragedy as he succumbs to his false sense of honor and loyalty and commits suicide. In contrast, the “other,” or the “obverse reflection of the white” man lives in the present, adhering to spiritual values without regression. It is through Dilsey, that the Compson household is redeemed, not through Quentin’s honor and his suicide. Since Dilsey’s section is the most lucid, the world in which Dilsey lives is an objective world, a world not governed by the loss of a war for preserving honor and the Southern way, but by the state of the present and the promise of salvation of the future. Whereas Quentin’s world is the projection of a distempered spirit, Dilsey’s world is an objective world in which an unbroken spirit who has “seed de beginin en de end,” endures with the promise of future salvation in her consciousness.           

The Sound and the Fury  is a tour-de-force that seems to be constructed in incoherent parts, with episodes and characters’ memories shuffled and reshuffled in no particular order. The novel begins with the mind of an “idiot,” traverses through the murky musings and memories of the Hamlet-like Quentin, roams over the deeds of the rationalist, but ruthless, Jason, and finally rolls into the tunnel of clarity and enlightenment. Throughout this whole ordeal of traversing the same territory in circling motion, one finds that each character is a subject to time, an actor in a role defined by their own psyche and neurosis. Since all the Compsons act in accordance with their temporal whims, they suffer misfortune and, ultimately, tragedy. Perhaps one of the messages of the novel, if it has one at all, is that ‘man’s misfortunes are confided in time.’ If this is so, then the following question could be raised: how can a Faulkner character be defined as “human,” if time and time again, his psychological dispositions substantiate the sum of his actions? Yet, in Dilsey’s section, time does not decay and ruin the idea that man is bound by time. In this section we are led to believe that man is able to transcend time and to endure the slings, arrows, and parting shots of outrageous fortune. Dilsey’s language, her whole way of being in the world, is manifestly transcendent. For her, it is not a misfortune to be in time, because, as she discovers in Easter service, man’s destiny is caught up in the “ricklickshun en de blood of de Lamb!” (Faulkner, p. 1105).  Twenty-one years after he wrote The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner spoke about man’s place in the world, stating:

“I decline to accept the end of man,” he said. “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal… because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” (William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1949).

Not only does Faulkner relay a message of continuity of human morality and hope, but Faulkner also employs the words, “endurance,” and “sacrifice.” It can be no coincidence for Faulkner, consciously or subconsciously, that in the appendix of The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner writes just two words for Dilsey’s character biography: “They Endured.” (Faulkner, p. 1141). Does this mean that Faulkner really did see Dilsey, the “nigger,” as the redeeming figure of the Compson household? If so, then what can one make of Faulkner’s comments two years after the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education, that before he’d see Federal troops in Oxford, Mississippi he’d “go out in the streets with a gun and shoot every Negro in sight.” Perhaps it is too difficult to draw any conclusion from such questions or the author’s personal statements. All we one can conclude, is that, in Faulkner’s cosmos of  Yoknapatawpha county,  violence, chaos, and decadence are themes which resonate, but in the small town of Jefferson, a “nigger,” with a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice, endures.

 

Bibliography:

Faulkner, William: Faulkner: Novels 1926-1929: The Sound and the Fury, pp. 879- 1141, Library of America’s Literary Classics of the United States, New York, NY, 2006