THE SOUND AND THE FURY

- repetition of words often an obvious fault of Fs style - beck - sometimes repetition used to adumbrate tone and significance - beck - profuseness of lang linked to thematic struc - beck - persistent lyrical embroidery and coloring - beck - master of colloquialism in dramatic scene - beck - stream of consciousness limited to first two sections - beck - Dilsey, after sermon, moves away from Compsons, back to her family; redemptive - castille - interps of bk have ranged from xtian spirituality to existential nothingness - castille - follows the modernist mythical method - castille - this bk Fs favorite - lilburn - race, suicide, incest, time, history, rel major themes - lilburn - breakdown of fam rels; compsons tragic deterioration - lilburn - each chapter another attempt to know caddy - lilburn - both benjy and luster seek something lost - lilburn - julios threatening of quentin matches quentins threatening of dalton - lilburn - quentin cant accept change - lilburn - jasons barely concealed desire for his niece? - lilburn - jasons pride, rage, isolation contrast with dilsey and congregation in section 4 - lilburn - caddy the only sibling whose voice is never directly heard - lilburn - abt death of family and corresponding decay of society - longley - caddys tragedy: cant find anyone capable of loving as she can - longley - blocked love central theme - longley - shegogs sermon an effective presentation of an oral genre - hein - shegog uses biblical technique of inversion - hein - struc of sermon mirrors struc and presentation of novel - hein - impt thing abt the sermon is the collective ceremony of its utterance - hein - thadious davis attacks its crude presentation of negro dialect - hein - sermon demonstrates the transformative powers of lang - hein - sermon recapitualtes in reverse the narrative strategies of the novel itself - hein - the sermon implicitly interrogates modernism - hein - benjys mental state changes considerably; becomes more withdrawn - roggenbuck - Fs later comments abt the novel have influenced its interpretation - burton - even postmodernist interps of the novel have tended to rely on F - burton - 4 narrators challenge idea that one vantage pt can disclose whole truth - burton - few critics since 1970s have shared Cowleys vw that the novel is unified - burton - jason is mother-obsessed - moore - quentin commits suicide bec he feels guilty abt destroying caddys chance for a normal life bauer - juxt of past, present, future - martin - certain key words and phrases repeated - martin - fire emphd in benjy section; used to soothe him; also mirror and shadow - martin - other impt words in benjy sec: window, bright, smoke, blur, lights, lightening bug - martin - shadow dominates quention section - martin - quentin a fine example of the human heart in conflict with itself, Fs main concern - martin

- q cant tolerate any degree of disorder - martin - rarely is q portrayed in full light - martin - no dominant word or phrase in jason sec, where narrative is as simple as char - martin - door emphd in dilsey sec - martin - finally, in dilseys sec, we get detailed phys descriptions of the others - martin - conflict betwe Compson self-absorption and xtian self-sacrifice - yarup - passive moral evil of mrs. Compson - yarup - q lives in past; tries to make present conform to its standards; fails; commits suicide - dobbs - q affected by the Lost Cause and his fathers cynicism - dobbs - benson argues q reps an emotional self-portrait of F - dobbs - novel shows how families shape individuals - storhoff - compsons are an alcoholic family - storhoff - family systems theory provides a better expl of the compsons than freudianism - storhoff - jason a family scapegoat whose misbehavior provides self-esteem to q and c - storhoff - jason assumes role of hero in alcoholic family - storhoff - caddys presence implied thruout final section even tho shes absent - visser - Fs inability to envision female chars and bestow them with sexuality - waldron - Fs narrators take paradoxical atts toward women; creatures of instinct who trouble men waldron - deja vu prominently emphd, as in Eliots Waste Land - McGann - some see F as a nihilist, his phil one of despair - messerli - chars like quentin fail bec they cant accept change - messerli - each char relates to time in a totally diff way - messerli

SPARKNOTES - father: gentlemanly but cynical and fatalistic; concerned with ideal of fam honor but not in practice - mother: hypochondria, self-pity, self-absorbed, neurotically insecure - caddy: escapes by being disowned - quentin obsessed with past; jason obsessed with present and future - dilsey lives by family, faith, prsl honor same values Compsons once lived by - corruption of southern aristocratic values - household devoid of love - if benjy is x fig, may rep impotence of x in modern world; or mod world fails to recognize him - motif: time not objective, constant, simple - dilsey only char whos at peace with time - each char orders his life diffly - water a symbol of purification - watch a symbol of the past and of time passing CLASSIC NOTE -stream of consciousness - benhys section at first seems to signify nothing - caddy muddying her dress a metaphor for her sexual fall - children prefigure adults

- q not just obsessed with fam honor but with sisters purity - time-words and shadow images esp impt in q sec - jason and mom manipulative and passive-aggressive - book progresses from chaos to order, from timelessness to chronology, sensation to logic - progression from private to public - jason sane but, like brothers, tries to control his life thru strictly confined order - each brother remains irrationally connected to the past - benj, like x, the only pure person, incapable of evil - Q2, like X, lives misunderstood life; disappears on Easter - last sec doesnt satisfactorily bring fam story to a close BARRONS - themes: passing of time, fall of family, fall of the the south, emptiness of modern life - one reader counted 53 refs to shadows - figuring out what is going on absorbs the reader; you become a detective, hunting for clues - meaning of life; does life have a meaning; dilsey the only one with clear purpose - war between good and evil - stream of con; interior monologue; free association - Benjy thinks in simple sentences, limited vocab unlike Q - imagery and symbolism: water, shadows, watches, sisters, honeysuckle, trees - Jasons language slangy, vulgar - accurate reproduction of black dialect - limited pts of vw: perspectives not entirely trustworthy CLIFFS -shadow: shadow of the past; shadowed actions; shadowed chars; shadows of real actions (q) - water: purification; return to the womb; death - each brother has diff att to time - b sec comes first bec earliest chronologically; vivid, fresh; creates curiosity, later satisfied - b reps id of family; most elemental; therefore shd come first - if j sec had come first, our vw of caddy wd have been distorted TWAYNE - two tasks: take us inside chars; advance the plot - any truth is far more complex than it appears on the surface to be - by opening with benjy, f gives us an initially simple view which he then complicates - in Q sec, undergraduate erudition; inner debate F ENCYC - does the switch to 3rd person in sec 4 acknowledge that he cdnt inhabit Dilsey, or suggest distance? - why is Caddy not given a section? Patriarchy of South or of F? - debate abt whether the appendix shd be considered a fifth section VOLPE - benjy reacts to sensual stimuli; otherwise he is limited to memory

- scenes from past indicated by presence of versh or t.p. - bs memory stimulated by phys sensation - limits of bs mind actually make sec 1 easier than sec 2 - juxt of certain scenes in sec 1 signif - unlike b, q makes judgments, estabs rels, derives signif - sec 3 simplest; j ignorant, superficial, thoughts easy to follow - j no objective reporter; cant accept him at face value

- bs sec contains all the scenes and themes devd later - metaphys nov concerned with time; soc nov depicting deterioration of fam and south - tragic sense of loss; sim to waste land - mod man as self-centered; commercial values have replaced humanistic ones - qs vws abt old south are romantic, adolescent - qs vw of imm past of childhood as innocent, idealistic - poetic; emph on emotions; inter monol, symbols, images, allusions, e.g. allusion to easter story - human compassion is what mod man has lost - despair and nihilism suggested by title - loss of love central cause of decay - qs is an adolescent mind is stasis; emotionally unstable; tries to keep intact his youthful world - blands are prob closer to plantation aris than qs idealization of it - Spoade the only other student who seems mature - Mrs. C in constant retreat from reality - Q, C, and B dont grow up associating love with their mother - thus Qs attraction to C stronger than usual - Qs emotional instability rel to Mrs Cs failure to provide her children with love - Q fears that sexual feelings threaten his rel with caddy - q centers all his idealism on caddy - honeysuckle a symbol of qs incestuous desire, of sex, and of sexual maturity - q wants to SAY he committed incest in order to isolate himself and caddy - qs weakness due to emotional insecurity and char weakness lack of vitality, inner strength - Mr C tells q its useless to impose moral values on life; cant measure up, values meaningless - no absolutes; nothing stable - q kills himself to stop time, the ultimate reality - q struggles to keep his own sister, then cant get rid of sister - qs ironic iding of himself as upholder of lost values is reflected in his iding himself w/ jesus - despite his weakness and self-involvement, q is a sympathetic char - j is the only one of the brothers who achieves functioning adulthood - j may very well rank as one of most hateful villains in world lit - with his complete lack of feeling, j fits readily into mod soc - one cause of lack of meaning in js life is his complete alienation from past, isolation from others - self-love becomes self-destructive - j becomes an exagd reflection of his mother - when emotions are distorted, as in j, result is sterile existence - sec 3 a bitter invective vs. mod soc - source of dilseys strength is her humanity - dilseys mature acceptance of pleasures and pains of existence - dilsey a symbol of hope but is isolated from complexities of society