In Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury[1], time and the past appear as crucial but complex themes. As a novel built around past events that took place before the time of the narration, the past seems to be very much alive in the narration of the three Compson brothers. However, beneath the surface lies a contrasting sense of the futility of this connection to the past, as well as the idea that time waits for no one, leaving behind those caught in the past. Faulkner's use of a stream-of-consciousness narrative style allows the passage of time to be expressed differently across the four sections of the novel, suggesting that, although physical time waits for no one, it perhaps exists another type of time that is experienced differently for everyone. each individual. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay On the surface, The Sound and the Fury seems to revolve around the very notion that the past is neither dead nor past, as l That's the plot. motivated entirely by events that happened years before. For the most part, the present exists solely as a product of a past that the characters cannot or will not leave behind. Jean-Paul Sartre explains this notion in his essay “Of the Sound and the Fury”. Time in Faulkner's work. He suggests that in Faulkner's novel, “the present, nameless and ephemeral, is powerless before [the past]. It is full of gaps, and, through these gaps, things from the past, fixed, immobile and silent like judges or gazes, come to invade it”[2]. Certainly, the helplessness Sartre speaks of seems to define the stories of the three Compson boys, each obsessed with the past in different ways. One brother is obsessed with denying it, another is obsessed with holding on to it, and the third seems completely incapable of understanding the concept of temporal division. Regarding the "gaps"[3] of the present "invaded[d]"[4] by the past, the entire novel takes place over three days, but thanks to the constant use of flashbacks, the entire story of the Compson family is remembered. The reader spends much more time looking at the past than the present, supporting Sartre's suggestion that the present is "full of gaps"[5], as the narrative of present time is interspersed with the re-emergence constant of the past. Certainly, one could argue that if the past were truly dead, it could not appear so conspicuously and repeatedly throughout the present of the story. At the center of this feeling that the past is not past is the character of Caddy Compson. Even though she flees well before the moment of the narration, her presence saturates the entire novel. It is one of the “things of the past”[6] of which Sartre speaks, and it certainly seems to “invade”[7] the present. She exists for us only through the memories of her three brothers, but these memories of her are so widespread that Catherine Morley sees fit to call Caddy "the absent heart at the center of The Sound and the Fury".[8] . Indeed, Faulkner himself actually named Caddy Compson his "sweetheart", and the original image and inspiration for The Sound and the Fury. The very fact that Faulkner constructs an entire novel around a young girl whose image exists only in the past embodies the overflow of the past into the present, for the entire text seems dedicated to keeping the past alive. Caddy embodies the past and represents the influence it continues to exert on the present. Each of the Compson brothers is obsessed with Caddy and her perceived fall from grace, to the extent that their own present seems to be structured around things that have already happened. Morleyargues that "Caddy Compson's imprint on each of the Compson brothers is indelible",[9] reflecting the way in which the past can be seen as irrevocably tainting the present, bleeding through the barriers between different moments to blur constructions of a chronological timeline. The section of the story that most clearly emphasizes the past rather than the present is that of Benjy Compson. Certainly, the things Benjy sees and hears in the present cause his stream of consciousness to seamlessly switch between events of the past and events of the present. This is evident when Benjy hears today's golfers call their golf caddy, which instantly brings Benjy back to memories of his sister as the word brings to mind the name "Caddy". Additionally, he stands at her door today, waiting for Caddy to return home as she did before she disappeared eighteen years earlier, demonstrating his lack of understanding that she has become a part of his past. Peter Conn highlights Benjy's apparent inability to leave his memories behind by suggesting that "the present is reduced to the point of disappearance, serving as little more than a transparent theatrical canvas through which the past can still be perceived"[ 10]. Benjy's castration symbolizes his inability to separate his future from his past, as he is rendered physically incapable of reproducing. He is trapped in a state of timelessness, unable to move forward, and the creation of a new life presents the possibility of change and transition from a child-like figure to a father. The fact that his disability delays this possibility can be seen as part of what prevents him from freeing himself from this psychological timelessness. According to James L. Roberts “For Benjy, all time merges into a single sensual experience. It makes no distinction between an event that occurred only a few hours ago and an event that occurred years ago”[11]. Indeed, Roberts's point of view draws on the way Benjy's stream of consciousness shifts from one time period to the next without implicitly informing the reader of these temporal jumps. Thomas L. McHaney supports and develops this notion by suggesting that "the person who reads The Sound and the Fury for the first time therefore initially has difficulty distinguishing the past from the present"[12]. Indeed, Benjy's mental state renders him incapable of understanding the passage of time, and through his use as a narrator, it allows Faulkner to draw the reader into the same timeless perspective as Benjy. a little as alive in Quentin's narration as he seems to be in Benjy's. Like Benjy, Quentin's current experiences often trigger memories of the past, sending his mind back in time. For example, the little Italian girl he meets reminds him so much of his sister Caddy that he even calls her “sister”. In reality, Quentin seems to view all women as "sisters", emphasizing his concern for Caddy and his desperation to right his wrongs by impregnating a surrogate sister. Quentin is obsessed with his sister's past actions, as he is unable to accept her sexual "sin" or lost virginity, and carries this burden with him even into the present. Throughout his tale, he constantly remembers the words of his father, who philosophized that time heals all ills, including Caddy's painful memories. He is desperate to stop the progression of time so that he never has to forget his past with Caddy and the emotions it evoked in him. The idea that the past is not necessarily past is reinforced in Quentin's narration as he remembers more of his father's words. He laments that “Father said clocks kill time. He said that timeis dead as long as it is powered by small wheels; only when the clock stops does time come alive” (71). For Quentin, this opens up the possibility of reclaiming his past by destroying the divisions of a chronological timeline. Unlike Quentin and his battle to preserve the past, Jason Compson's character at first seems determined to deny its very existence. . He seems to live solely in the present, with his motivation and attention to detail rooted in his schemes to deceive others for his own short-term gain. However, contrary to his desire to ignore his history, he actually manages to color the person he is in the present. He is, just like his two brothers, obsessed with Caddy, except that the obsession is of another kind. Unlike Benjy, who longs for his sister to come back to him, and Quentin, who desperately wants to save Caddy from her moral and sexual downfall, Jason blames Caddy for all his and his family's misfortunes, carrying with him his bitterness from the pass. in the present. In his eyes, Caddy's sexual and moral differences in the past caused him to lose a job at Herbert Head's bank, leaving him with no ambition for the future and nothing but resentment for his past and those who were part of it. What's more, Quentin seems unable to stop himself from seeing incarnations of the past in the present. This is particularly evident when Caddy's daughter, Miss Quentin, becomes the target of Jason's cruelty as she appears to embody the same sexuality as her mother, leading Jason to associate her with his past. Gene D. Phillips highlights Caddy's redirection of his anger toward his daughter by stating that "In the years that followed, Jason cruelly transferred his contempt and hostility toward his sister onto the motherless and fatherless daughter Caddy abandoned." [13]. Even as he attempts to put the past behind him, he attempts to control his sister's sexuality by controlling the proceeds of Caddy's illegitimate affair. Given the importance of the past to the central characters, it is certainly tempting to argue that the past in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is anything but dead. However, one could also consider that the past is dead and what endures is the family's psychological inability to accept this fact. Michael Cotsell supports this notion by asserting that "in Faulkner's contemporary novels there is the repeated sense of the persistence of the past and yet it is a real irrelevance"[14]. Indeed, this is particularly evident in Quentin's story. As previously suggested, Quentin certainly seems trapped by his past, allowing it to consume his present. However, it could also be argued that he is actually a character actively fighting to keep the past alive, only to ultimately suffer inevitable defeat. This defeat is symbolized by his attempt to destroy his watch. He tears the hands off the clock face in an ultimately futile attempt to enter a state of timelessness, only to find himself constantly haunted by the phantom sound of time passing. It signifies the unhindered flow of time, as it leaves the past in the past, and embodies the helplessness of any man attempting to keep the past alive. This supports Cotsell's idea that the past is ultimately irrelevant, because no matter how deep Quentin sinks into memories of his past, he can never go back. His attempts to stop time are perhaps as futile as his and Benjy's insistence on clinging desperately to the past, it reduced to a mere shadow cast over the present. His suicide is his last attempt to ease the passage of time, because only by distancing himself from realitythat he can silence the ticking of the clock, literally and figuratively. His statement that he cannot live in both "Massachusetts and Mississippi" (147) means that he realizes that if he wants to avoid losing his grip on the past, his only option is to die. His decision to commit suicide is an action that ironically solidifies his position as a part of the past as he moves away from both the present and the future. Caddy may be the heart of the story, but it's important to note that she's the only main character who isn't given a narrative opportunity. If Caddy is an incarnation of the past, this implies that the past is actually dead, either physically or mentally. His memory remains alive through the memories and stories of his three brothers. Caddy's vision varies greatly from one narrative section to the next, as we see her through the different lenses of each of her brother's streams of consciousness. The Caddy as described by Benjy is an idealized image and the subject of his desire, which contrasts sharply with the antagonistic Caddy described by Jason. Indeed, we never see a completely unbiased view of Caddy, or of the Compson family's past in general. This seems to contradict Sartre's notion that the present is "powerless"[15] in the face of the past, the latter being manipulated and reworked according to the attitude of the present narrator. In this sense, Caddy represents the death of the past since her memory is only kept alive in the minds of her brothers. In addition to existing as a symbol of the Compson family's past, the character of Caddy takes on a broader meaning as she can also be seen as representing the decline of the American South. Her loss of virginity outside of marriage is symbolic of the corruption of Southern values, and her failure to reconcile with her family suggests that these outdated Southern values ​​have no place in a modern world. Perhaps for Faulkner, the past of the American South is as dead as the glorious past of the Compson family. Faulkner's use of an omniscient and impartial narrator in the final section effectively removes the reader from the streams of consciousness of the Compson boys and restores the existence of the Compson family. chronological time. This is emphasized through the character of Dilsey, who acts as a sort of anchor to time, and on whom the final section largely focuses. Terrell L. Tebbetts states that “Dilsey knows what time it is. How different it is from Quentin and his lamented conviction that since no clock can tell time correctly, there is no time”[16]. Indeed, the action of telling the time and the appearance of clocks and watches appears as a common motif in the stories of Quentin and Dilsey, but it appears in two very different ways. As previously mentioned, Quentin seems to struggle against the time indicated by the clock, constantly trying to intervene or escape its incessant passage. In contrast, Dilsey is the only character who measures time using his physical and chronological timeline. The omniscient narrator draws attention to the kitchen clock and notes the fact that when the clock strikes, Dilsey is unmistakably aware that it is 8 o'clock. She readily accepts that this is true, without trying to fight against time itself. It is not only the passage of time that Dilsey can see clearly, but also the passage of the Compson family's own history. She is not blinded by her desire to correct the situation, her insistence on denying their history or her inability to recognize the division between past and present, which allows her to function as a mediator between the external time and the internal time of the familythat she has. been with well before the beginning of the narration of the novel. She recognizes the timeline and understands that the Compson family name is fading further into a bygone era. This is evident when we see her say, “I sowed the first and the last…I sowed the beginning, and now I see the end” (253). His distinction between the beginning and the end of these events demarcates his ability to separate past, present and future, and to accept the temporality of all things. Just like Caddy, and then Quentin, the remaining family members will inevitably disappear into the past as well. Perhaps then, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury depicts the past as both dead and alive simultaneously by dividing the passage of time into two different types. First, there is the outer passage of time, encompassing the physical reality around us and its chronological order. In this timeline, the past is the past. Time constantly flows, never stopping to allow the past to catch up, regardless of the situation.attempts at human intervention. On the other hand, there is the passage of internal time, which exists in the minds and thoughts of individual characters. This timeline is completely different from the first, with the past and present being less clearly defined. Stephanie K. Evers highlights the distinction between the passage of internal and external time in Benjy's narrative by asserting that “Certainly, natural time passes; that is, Benjy is getting older and the world around him is changing. However, Benjy does not recognize the divisions of this era”[17]. Benjy, in many ways, achieves that inner timelessness Quentin so desperately sought. Quentin is unable to forget the passage of time while Benjy is unable to recognize it because of his mental disability. It is therefore through his state of mind that Benjy seems to “defeat” time in a way that Quentin, who is in a healthier mental state, could not. This highlights the importance of internal time and how it flows differently for each individual without any dependence on external time. The natural time to which Evers refers passes the same for all narrators, it is the way in which they psychologically experience this time that varies. Indeed, Evers underpins a separation between physical and psychological time by noting that, in the final section of the novel, “the narrative advances chronologically. The main reason this is possible is that, unlike Benjy, Quentin, and Jason, the final narrative does not include any person's memories or feelings.[18] In other words, without the interaction of internal time in the final section of the novel, Faulkner manages to juxtapose a panoramic and dispassionate view of the passage of time and the history of the Compson family with the complex pattern of the past and the present highlighted in the first three sections. Mr. Compson emphasizes the importance of internal time over external time when he tells Quentin "you will use it to obtain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which cannot meet your individual needs any better than those of his father” (63). In other words, time can be measured in many more ways than just the clock, because internal time is tailored to each individual and passes differently from one person to another. In conclusion, The Sound and the Fury's past seems to be both dead and alive. , because time itself seems to flow in two distinct but coexisting ways. The external, physical time of the real world flows chronologically, leaving past events behind to make way for the present. This external time is central to the final section of the novel, as the omniscient narrator is unaffected by his own notion of”, 86.