The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Essay

To Dilsey, 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 “idiot”, 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. Furthermore, Benjy knows what time is, since he feels Caddy’s loss when he no longer “smells trees”. 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

     William Faulkner is one of America's most talked about writers and his work should be included in any literary canon for several reasons. After reading a few of his short stories, it becomes clear that Faulkner's works have uniqueness to them. One of the qualities that make William Faulkner's writings different is his close connection with the South. Gwendolyn Charbnier states, 'Besides the sociological factors that influence Faulkner's work, biographical factors are of great importance…'; (20). Faulkner's magnificent imagination led him to create a fictional Mississippi county named Yoknapatawpha, which includes every detail from square mileage of the county to the break down of

Time is one of the biggest inconsistencies in our world. Sometimes a second may seem like an hour, and a day may seem like a minute. Our relative perception of time is based solely on the circumstances surrounding that moment. For Elie, one of the first instances where time became a major factor in the

One of the notable coping methods that Faulkner analyzes in his novel is that of denial and negotiation. Various characters utilize denial to escape the pain of the death of their mother, and this technique is best exemplified

    Analyzing character in a Faulkner novel is like trying to reach the bottom of a bottomless pit because Faulkner's characters often lack ration, speak in telegraphed stream-of-consciousness, and rarely if ever lend themselves to ready analysis.  This is particularly true in As I Lay Dying, a novel of a fragmented and dysfunctional family told through fragmented chapters.  Each character reveals their perspective in different chapters, but the perspectives are true to life in that though they all reveal information

Faulkner grew up in Mississippi in the beginning of the twentieth century ('William Faulkner'; 699). He was the son to Murray C. and Maud Butler Faulkner (Hoffman 13). Growing up in the South in the early 1900's meant being exposed to harsh racism. He watched the blacks endure unbelievable amounts of cruelty and was amazed at how the blacks conducted themselves with such dignity. He witnessed, first hand, what discrimination is and could not comprehend why this goes on. In many of Faulkner's works I found that he portrayed blacks as quite,easy-going, well-tempered people. He attempted to show them as heroes. It is my belief that Faulkner writes about the south because that is the subject that has affected his life most.

Most notable to J.B. Priestley, who was heavily influenced by this work, was John William Dunne’s “An Experiment with Time”. In Dunne’s work, he talks about that all time is happening at once so that every moment is proceeding right now. However, humans experience time in linear fashion. To comprehend time, we must clearly separate past, present, and future. Dunne also explores the theory that only when we dream, time is no longer limited to linear concrete interpretation that we experience in our waking hours. The idea of nonlinear time in dreams relates to Strindberg’s A Dream Play and some sections of Time and the Conways. However, Dunne was not taken seriously by his contemporaries due to his lack

The theme of William Faulkner's Barn Burning is Colonel Sartoris Snope's desire to break away from the oppressive conditions of his family life. He is pulled between his family and his morality. In this essay, I will discuss Sarty's struggle between the two sides of his conflict and the point at which it becomes resolved.

Although Frankie indirectly suffers due to his father’s actions, the two can enjoy their time together. This relationship implores the reader to frame the world as Frankie does because doing so allows one to improve his/her life. The fact that the overarching theme of the passage is love allows one to conclude that the author has achieved the goals of Faulkner’s mission because the reader can endure and prevail by following McCourt’s message.

For Benjy time blends together and his memories of the past often foreshadow the bleak future. His memory of Caddy with muddy clothes that she easily sheds suggests she may grow up to be rebellious and promiscuous. When Caddy runs away it is very similar to the events that lead her daughter, Quentin to run away and cause history to repeat itself. When the family goes on their daily carriage ride around the graves in the square, Luster enters a different way and this causes Benjy great distress. Benjy likes to go counter clockwise, or backwards which could indicate a fear of moving ahead in time. By erratically shifting between time periods, Benjy allows himself to become lost in memories with no hope of ever moving forward. Time fuses and creates a world for Benjy where time is irrelevant.

Loyalty is a powerful force. Oftentimes it blindsides us and causes us to support things we would not normally. Even do things that we despise. William Faulkner’s Barn Burning illustrates just such a case. Presenting a young boy’s progression from a loyal child, to an independent man as a conflict of loyalty and morals. This boy, Sarty, battles his own forming morals versus his father’s decisions, which leads to his development from child to adult. Faulkner writes his characters progression in five stages: blind loyalty, repressed disagreements, open questioning, and attempted reasoning with his father, before finally taking action to contradict his father.

The birth of the modernist movement in American literature was the result of the post-World War I social breakdown. Writers adopted a disjointed fragmented style of writing that rebelled against traditional literature. One such writer is William Faulkner, whose individual style is characterized by his use of “stream of consciousness” and writing from multiple points of view.

Benjy constantly thinks of his sister Caddie who has long since left the family home but because he has no concept of time, he has no idea that she has been gone for many years. The third section is narrated by the greedy and neurotic brother, Jason. To Jason time is all about the present and he grabs every second as it goes by much as he does with the money that his sister Caddie sends to him in order to provide for her daughter who is under his care. The fourth and final section in the book, unlike all the others, is not told by one of the children but rather by an unspecified narrator. In this section time is shown as much closer to what ordinary people perceive it to be.

By focusing on the figure of Caddy, Bleikasten’s essay works to understand the ambiguous nature of modern literature, Faulkner’s personal interest in Caddy, and the role she plays as a fictional character in relation to both her fictional brothers and her actual readers. To Bleikasten, Caddy seems to function on multiple levels: as a desired creation; as a fulfillment of what was lacking in Faulkner’s life; and/or as a thematic, dichotomous absence/presence.

“In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.” This quote by Benjamin Franklin is a mirror to Emily’s story as it begins with her death and then the reader is abruptly brought into the tax remission she received after the death of her father. This interesting yet confusing vignette is about a girl named Emily Grierson and her inconsiderate relation with the town, a man she loved, Homer Baron, and her Father. For Readers of Faulkner, it is truly apparent that his stories do not follow the pattern of the conventional beginning to the end of the story. This method of disorderly sequence of events along with the descriptive style tends to lead this story as if we are