LITERATURE: The Sound and the Fury – Finale

So that’s what’s so hot about Faulkner.  He’s damn good.  Knows the rules and how to break them.  Can suck a reader in with the most godawful opening pages and keep you wanting to know what this nonsense is all about.  Has you inside the head of an idiot, following and almost wishing for his simple world of smell and motion and fire and mirrors.  Except the drooling; I wouldn’t want to spend my life drooling. 

Benjy feels, just from what he sees and hears, and without money, women, job problems to deal with there is still the animal pain of change in his world, without the instinct to know what to do about it.  He sleeps, then spends the day with someone constant by his side.  All he has to do is hush when he is told to.

Mrs. Compson has spent her lifetime building her own crucifix to hang on.  Mr. Compson found his ready-made in finding her.  Quentin is too sensitive to live comfortably within this household; Caddy finds her happiness wherever she can and saves some to share as well; Jason’s just a little prick who grows into a bigger better one when stimulated properly–or at all.  Dilsey bears the burden of her own maternal instinct and only gets her licks in with her words.  Her family, her boys, are born to work hard, so maybe taking care of Benjy ain’t so bad.

Each character becomes more complete as we progress through the novel.  I wondered why Faulkner started with Benjy, making it the most difficult reading, but then again, it is the simplest sketch of their lives:  this is what they do, this is who they are, this is how they smell.  Non-judgemental, Benjy is the perfect narrator who tells what he sees and lets us see it for however we want.  Is Caddy being wild?  We’ll find out.  Is Jason being mean?  Read on.

Faulkner then, through dialogue and character narration shows not tells.  We form our own opinions as the language changes with the points of view.  He plays with narrative structure, starting here then going back and starting up again in another place and time.  But we come full circle back to Benjy.  Having heard the story now, we see him ride away, a broken flower in his hand, and bellering, bellering, until his world is right again with all the pieces of it going by in proper pace and form. 

With this ending, we see the turmoil ended.  Jason bit the bullet and it won’t change a thing except that maybe he’ll hate women even more because Caddy’s girl has outsmarted him and stolen her own money back and taken off.  Benjy, well Benjy’s life will just go on as is until his mother or Dilsey die–or maybe sooner–when he’ll be shipped off to the home for those like him in Jackson.  And Jason will step up to the plate every now and then to demonstate his authority just as he did in the center of town by jumping on the wagon in which Luster tried, at least this once, to show a bit of his own strength towing a scared and desperate Benjy in the rear–to be seen by all in the middle of town on Easter Sunday.  Not cool.

Faulkner has woven such a story in within this novel, mostly by the thoughts and dialogue and little narrative.  He’s left us little mysteries to solve (what did Caddy do?) and gave us answers from the characters themselves.

So very glad I chose this one to read just now.  I’m looking forward to more Faulkner.  Now that I halfway comprehend the dude.