FAULKNER AND MOURNING:
THE HUMAN HEART IN CONFLICT WITH ITSELF
ANNE ELIZABETH JACKSON
B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1983
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in the Department
of
English
@
Anne Elizabeth Jackson 1986
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
March 1986
All rights reserved. This work may not be
reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy
or other means, without permission of the author.
APPROVAL
NAME:
DEGREE:
Anne E. Jackson
M.A.
English
TITLE OF THESIS:
Faul kner and Mourning:
With I t s e l f
EXAMININGCOMMITTEE:
The Human Heart in Conflict
Chairperson: Professor C.H. De Roo
Profegsor Steve Black
Senior Supervisor
Professor of English, SFU
Professor Edgar Harden
Professor of Engl ish, SFU
Professor Peter Buitenhuis
Professor of English, SFU
Professfi ATan Aberbach
External Examiner
Assistant Professof of .-History, SFU
Date Approved:
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T i t l e o f 7 hes i s / P r o j c c t / E x l e n d e d Essay
a u lk n e r and Mourning:
-F-
Author:
on
T----h e Human Heart I n...- C o n f l i c t-. w i t h I s e l f
iii
ABSTRACT
The
great
narrative
of
of
Faulkner's
intensity, range
language,
which
power
and
reflects
his
portrayal
a
in his
of characterization, generosity
complexity
with
complexity
extricates
lies
of
vision--a complexity
the human experience with all its ambiguity,
contradictions, and
formidable
writing
all
the
persistent
its
fascination.
following
underlying
paper
thread:
From this
detects
a
and
compelling
of humankind's reaction to the unive'rsal trauma of
loss.
The
which,
effect
upon
plantation
Quentin
of
of death on the psyche emerges as a pattern
examination,
Negro,
serves to unify the worlds of the
Rider, of "Pantaloon in Black"; Benjy and
from the aristocratic, decadent white Compson family
The
Sound
Darl,
Jewel
Dying
.
in
intensity
failure
attitudes
childhood
and the poor white Bundrens,
As I Lay
suffer through clearly identifiable phases of
the
and
in
the Fury;
and Vardaman, of the hill country, in
All
mourning
and
pattern
terms
of
face
of loss.
Several factors affect the
of their mourning and its success or
of a healing force, and these include the
society;
inadequate
parents;
and
loss
in
which interferes with growing up and can radically
affect response to later loss.
b
Biographical
Faulkner
the
deeply
twenties
writing,
the
evidence
substantiates the assertion that
understood
the
processes of mourning.
In
and thirties, at the time of his most prolific
Faulkner experienced loss first-hand in the form of
sudden
deaths
of
his
baby
daughter
Alabama and his
younger
brother Dean.
His much-loved "Mammy Callie" died in
1940.
These
and
deaths
the
death
of
his
grandmother
"Damuddy" when he was a child became enduring memories which
profoundly
affected the content of his work, and undoubtedly
added to his knowledge of the results of loss.
A
whose
review
classic
guideline
Raphael,
for
paper,
"Mourning
in
1983,
keen insights.
of
Faulkner,
devastating
his
to
and
Melancholia" became a
subsequent workers in the field, to Beverley
writing
Faulkner's
responses
of the ideas of analysts, ranging from Freud,
demonstrates
effects
of
validity
of
A detailed investigation into the
characters, however,
transcend
the
and
loss
beyond the powers of humankind.
recover
reveals
from
the
that, for
sometimes
is an ability which is almost
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I
am grateful to Dr. S.A.
Black,
of
Simon
Fraser
University, for his ideas and
encouragement.
The
assistance of Dr. P.M.
Buitenhuis and Dr. E.F. Harden
is also much appreciated.
Especial thanks are due to my
husband,
Robert W. Jackson,
for
his time, patience and
understanding.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Approval Page
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Faulkner and Mourning:
The Human Heart in Conflict with Itself
Notes
Bibliography
ii
iii
v
pervasive
A
fiction and
work.
His
the
human
portrayal
death,
beings
of
the
reveals
mourn.
in
1942, and
the
I Lay Dyinq
be
loss
haunts William Faulkner's
human
reaction
to
loss,
the depth of his understanding
difficult, and sometimes tortuous processes by which
"Pantaloon
As
of
is expressed in themes and prose throughout his
particularly
of
sense
an
Detailed
Black"
from
novels
Go
studies
Down,
of the short story
Moses
The Sound and the Fury
published in
of 1929 and
of 1930 show that Faulkner considers loss to
affliction
from
which
full
recovery
is
almost
has
not
thoroughly
In
Faulkner's
impossible.
To
date,
literary
criticism
investigated
this aspect of Faulkner's work.
Rhetoric
of
Loss,
loss
Faulkner's novels
in
loss, which
she
Gail L. Mortimer examines the subject of
believes
underlying
Faulkner's
permeates
the
and
explores
is the central emotional reality
fiction,
thinking
and
which, in her opinion,
expressed
prose. 1
Andre Bleikasten observes in
Failure
that
of
through
love
love",2 and
process
of
The Sound and the Fury
that
of
everywhere
in
his
The Most Splendid
is about loss, "loss
loss of self, loss of self through loss of
mourning
Faulkner's
specifically
is
a
possible
key to the
creation, and a motif readily traced
in -the novels themselves.)
focuses
the need to deny
on
But neither of these authors
Faulkner's extraordinary knowledge
the range of human reaction to loss by death evidenced by
his writing, which is the subject of this analysis.
Faulkner's
to
loss
and
understanding
bereavement
experience.
which
deep
As
a
is
of humankind's response
based,
in
part, on personal
child and a young man he suffered losses
undoubtedly
profoundly
affected
his writing and the
course of his career.
The
Butler,
death of his maternal grandmother, Leila Dean Swift
on June 1, 1907, was a traumatic event in his life.
Damuddy, as
moved
into
she
was
known
enriched
the
took
especial
interest
daughter,
Maud.
miniature
was
passed,
was
taken
her
first
and
She
his
artistic
talents
and
ill with cancer in 1907,
for
could
was
who resembled her
William to draw, paint, build
became
grandsons
of the children, and she
William,
use
Memphis
Her
treatment, but as the days
see how thin and shrunken she
anxious to see them, though she had
strength to talk, and she died in the twilight of the
day
funeral
most
to
in
taught
Damuddy
becoming.
little
experience
She
villages,
imagination.
and
the Falkner grandchildren,
their home in 1902, when Faulkner was five.
presence
an
to
of
service
probably
effects
June.
of
in
did
She
was
buried the next day after a
the Falkner parlour, which the children
not
Damuddy's
attend.
lengthy
The
ordeal
grim
must
and
unsettling
only have been
increased
when the three boys were sent to the home of their
paternal
grandparents
fumigated
to
It
becomes
while
their
own
home
was
being
expunge the lingering traces of illness. 5
quite
clear
that
the
death of Damuddy made a
b
lasting
that
impression
the
on her favorite grandchild, William, and
effects of this bereavement on his later life were
far-reaching.
The
in
central
1929,
focuses
grandmother,
when
on
also
The Sound and the Fury, written
the
of the Compson children's
death
called Damuddy.
It was written at a time
Faulkner was suffering from a deep sense of loss due to
the
rejection
hoped
would
translator
told
of
make
a
name for him.
several
z novel that Faulkner
In addition, his French
years
later that Faulkner had
he was struggling with difficulties of an intimate
during
did
Flags in the Dust,
revealed
him
nature
he
image of
not
connected
the
writing of
reveal
what
The Sound and The Fury,
they
were.
Possibly
but
they were
with the reappearance of Estelle Oldham in Oxford.
Estelle
was
his
Cornell
Franklin
Immediately
childhood
in
1918
sweetheart, whose
had
been
prior to the writing of
a
marriage to
bitter blow. 6
The Sound and The Fury,
getting
through
the days had become a problem to Faulkner.
At
moments
he sang morbid songs, thinking about how he
odd
might
die,
know,
after
pine
box
might
all
about
The
Sound
in
he
a
where
he
might be buried.
"You
said to a friend, "they put you in a
few
days the worms have you.
Someone
for a day or two and after that they've forgotten
you.
that
significant
wondering
all,"
and
cry
suggests
or
"'His emotional condition at this time
Faulkner
that
and
As
was profoundly disturbed, and it is
I
The Fury,
Lay Dying,
written shortly after
revolves around death--a mother's
death,
and
the behaviour of her family during and after the
event.
Faulkner
of
the
named
suffered
next
ten years.
Alabama,
grieved
and
began
an
over
the
incubator--the
more losses during the course
His much longed-for baby daughter,
died in 1931 at the age of nine days, and he
deeply
premature
three
his
loss.
The
baby
was two months
doctor had said that she did not need an
hospital
did
not
possess
one,
As Alabama
to weaken, Faulkner drove to Memphis and returned with
incubator, but his daughter died before he came home,
carried
the
as
funeral
the
recalled
small casket in his arms and held it on his lap
that
husband
He
cortege
it
cry.
was
drove
to
the
cemetery.
Estelle
the first time she had ever seen her
Convinced of the doctor's negligence, Faulkner
bought
and gave an incubator to a rival doctor's hospital to
ensure
that
persisted
no other child would needlessly die.
for
several months until he was once more able to
find a degree of solace in writing.
In
a
8
1935, Faulkner's youngest brother Dean was killed in
'plane crash.
Faulkner's
Faulkner
Dean's
encouragement
'plane that
his
His grief
he
tried
had
to
interest
in
flying
was
due to
and example, and it was Faulkner's
finally
bought.
For
several
weeks
comfort Dean's pregnant wife Louise, and
mother, and at the same time deal with his own grief and
guilt--he
night.
Faulkner
told
Louise
that
he
dreamt
the accident every
After attempts to drown his grief in whiskey failed,
began
writing
again,
and
was eventually able to
find a measure of relief from emotional stress. 9
Caroline
Barr--"Mammy
servant
and
Faulkner
spoke
of
the
After
but
nursemaid, died
in
the
Falkners' Negro
At
1940.
her
funeral
of the devotion she had given his family and
affection and security she had given his childhood.
her death, Faulkner had little heart or time for work,
eventually
lack
in
the
undoubtedly
The
Callie",
Sound
began writing again.
lives
of
the
Falkner
Mammie Callie filled a
children,
and she is
the figure on which the characters of Dilsey in
and
The
Fury
and Molly Beauchamp in
Go Down,
are based. 10
Moses
In
addition
observation
loss.
personal
enriched
Helen
recognized
to
Baird,
that
experience, acute powers
Faulkner's
knowledge
his
companion of the twenties,
Faulkner
close
used
stillness
of
reaction
and
silence as
b
preludes
lived,
he
to
making
wrote
observation
life,
of
writing,
notes
as he observed.
of
fiction
and
experience".l2
Faulkner
writers
and that he stood outside the life he
listened
as
a
In the twenties
compound
At
of
"imagination,
this period of his
intently to the talk of the colony
and artists in New Orleans about the writings of
Conrad, Eliot
and Joyce, and the ideas of Freud, Frazer and
Bergson. 13
Thus,
prolonged
understand
through
personal
observation,
the
human
experience
coupled
with
a
and
careful
deep
experience, Faulkner
desire
and
to
assimilated
knowledge which enabled him to write about the human process
of
mourning.
that
review
A
of the research in this area shows
Faulkner's perceptions
are
consistent with those of
modern-day workers in the field.
John
of
Bowlby,
in
his paper of 1961 entitled "Processes
Mourning", outlines the phases of mourning, which consist
of
denial,
personality
anger,
and
"grief-work",
healthy
an
deceased,
has
leads
a
includes
person
guilt,
eventual
the
of
taken
disorganization
reorganization
systematic
discarding
to
fear,
examination
of
the
provided that
and
eventual
memories and emotional ties with the
place.
The completion of "grief-work"
new and different state in which reorganization
both
on
the image of the deceased and a new object or
which
pathological
to
mourning
place,
and
in
normal
processes
focus.
in
which
Bowlby
which
He
describes
"grief-work" does not take
exaggerations
occur.
also
and caricatures of the
points out that in the young,
mourning
is specially apt to take a pathological course, and
suggests
that
are
also
those
who sustain losses when they are young
apt not only to develop disturbances of personality, but
to
become
pathological
prone
mourning
to
respond
and
so
to
to
further
develop
loss
by
psychiatric
illness. 14
Bowlby
clearly
originated
"Mourning
reaction
some
with
defines
Freud
in
and Melancholia".
to
the
abstraction
many
his
of
classic
the
ideas which
paper
of
1917,
Freud writes of mourning as the
loss
of a loved person, or to the loss of
which
has taken the place of one, such as
b
fatherland,
mourning,
course,
morbid
and
or
an
ideal.
Freud
distinguishes
a normal state, that should be allowed to take its
from melancholia, which may develop in people with a
pathological
melancholia
occurs,
the
bereaved
to
liberty
disposition.
a
loss
capacity
of
In
both normal mourning
interest
in the outside world
to love a new object is lost, and the
thinks actively only of the dead object.
According
Freud, the "grief-work" of mourning occurs in both normal
mourning
bit
and melancholia, and is a task which is carried out
by
memory
bit,
and
relived
process,
the
under
hope
in
the
involved
mind,
patterns
relatively
free
self-esteem
is
and
and
recognized
uninhibited
accompanied
sense
himself,
of
In the
and behaviour connected with
patterns are developed.
"grief-work"
reproaches
thought
are
Each
in the relationship is painfully
and in due course discarded.
of
relationship
appropriate
great expense of time and energy.
by
as
redundant, and
new
Finally the ego becomes
again.
a
In
melancholia,
devastating
worthlessness,
loss
of
and the bereaved
accuses himself of lacking in interest,
and feels he is incapable of love or any achievement.
Freud
believed
bereaved's
another
has
an
love
and
that
in
the
case of melancholia, the
desire has not been redirected towards
object, as would be the case in normal mourning, but
instead
been withdrawn into the ego and has established
identification of the ego with the lost object.
ego
lost
can
be
Thus the
criticized by a special mental faculty like the
object. So the loss of the object is transformed into a
loss
in
the
lost
object
criticizing
ego,
is
and the conflict between the ego and the
transformed
faculty
of
into
the
ego
The
and
conflict, which
internal
self-punishment,
towards
the
instead
of
and
self-destructive
some
object,
love,
between the
result is a loss of "self-structure",
in
lost
cleavage
and the ego as altered by
indentification.
an
a
may
can
cause
self-hatred,
cases, suicide.
overbalanced
be
a
factor
Ambivalence
towards
hatred,
contributing
to
tendencies, and may be the underlying cause
of guilt and self-castigation.
Freud
also
melancholia
be
caused
by
expenditure
be
to
develop
the
after
accompanied
may
be
comments
the
remarkable
tendency
of energy suddenly available for
the cessation of "grief-work".
Mania may
a completely opposite symtomatology,
in
of
into mania, which he believed could
volume
by
absent
on
melancholia,
or
it
may
It
appear
intermittently,
In
both
away
from
the
death,
normal
reality"
and
may
hallucinatory
mourning
and
melancholia, a "turning
may occur, in which the bereaved denies
cling
experiences.
eventually
be
faced
David
M.
Moriarty
to
the dead person by means of
Normally,
reality
will
the phase of denial has run its
course, and the defense is no longer needed. 15
on
personality
Ones,
death
published
after
writes about the effects of a death
development, and his book
in
1967, deals
The Loss of Loved
with the damage that the
of a loved one does to the maturation processes of the
b
personalities
of
illness.
notes
He
opinion
that
emotional
children
age,
children
loss
that
in
but
aware
the
philosophies,
way,
childhood
of
concept
and
in
adult mental
studies
leads
According
support the
to disturbances in
to
Moriarty,
young
the fact of death from a very early
of
meanings
Consequently, young
manifested
statistical
development.
are
as
human
death
with its attendant
and results is yet unknown to them.
children
react
to death in a confused
do not think of death as permanent until about age
nine. 16
of
Sex
and
the
child,
together
by
the
because
death
because
are unconsciously connected in the mind
and
Moriarty
they
believes
they
this
fulfillment
may
grouped
are subjects which are often avoided
parents when talking to the child.
of
are
avoidance, due
bring
death,
to
Fear may develop
the ideas that sexual
or dying may become a sexual
goal. 1 7
Moriarty
often
is
convinced
precipitates
illness, and
illness
he
depends
various
holds
on
the
the
that
the
types
of
death of a loved one
disabling
emotional
view of Freud that the kind of
vulnerability
premorbid
He
stresses
confronted
the
body of the dead person they may react
by
denying their loss.
deceased
are
often
if
the
personality.
with
that
of
children
are
Imaginary replacements for the
necessary
for
their
emotional
survival. 2 0
The
components of
"grief-work"
are
set out by Colin
Murray
Parkes
Life,
published
acknowledges
of
the
in
One
lost
and
tries
in
the
Freud and Bowlby, Parkes
existence of a preoccupation with thoughts
is
suggests, like Bowlby, that this
He
connected
with an urge to search for that
the loss experience is repeatedly recollected.
to
make
sense of the loss and fit it into one's
"assumptive world".
patterns
Studies of Grief in Adult
Like
1972.
person.
preoccupation
person,
Bereavement
of
In
thought
normal
and
mourning,
behaviour
new appropriate
will
eventually
be
developed, but
defenses
realization
loss in order to buy time for "grief-work".
of
are necessary against the complete
Therefore, bereavement is often followed by denial, numbness
and difficulty in accepting the fact of death. 21
Parkes
notes
Melancholia"
on
Freud's
seemingly
dead
which
forms
acknowledges
that
be
this
of
irrational
Freud,
"Mourning and
leads to guilt, and, in pathological
to
Freud's
ideas
phenomenon
relates these impulses to
anger of the bereaved towards the
grief,
described
loss
like
inevitably
of
in
the sadistic impulses present in ambivalent
relationships, and,
the
comments
self-destructiveness. 2 2
on identification, but believes
and the phenomenon of "self-loss" can
but not fully explained.
someone
He
outside
of
oneself
He questions why the
can give rise to the
experience of an interior loss. 2 3
There
is
great
expression
of
aggression, and
that
anger
is
a
variation
normal
among
Parkes
human
beings in the
feels, like Bowlby,
component of grief.
However, he
notes
that the degrees of anger, guilt and self-reproach are
greatest
in
bereaved
persons
who
go
on
to
develop
psychiatric illness.24
In
Griefs and Discontents, published in 1965, Gregory
~ochlin
the validity
"Mourning and Melancholia". 25
In
acknowledges
his
Belief",
towards
is
chapter
he
of
Freud's
ideas
in
entitled "Fears of Death and Religious
writes
of
man's
resistance
in
his attitude
death: men consistently refuse to believe that death
final; and
makes
a
mania
could
in
his
discussion
of the loss complex, he
connection between denial and mania, asserting that
not
be present without denial, which functions
as a defense against the reality of death. 26
Rochlin
that
life
agrees
ends
- -I
with Moriarty that young children learn
but
do
not entertain adult conceptions of
dying. L
In
Beverley
which
The
Raphael
she
workers,
Anatomy
has
of
Bereavement,
published in 1983,
discusses psychological mourning processes
developed
including
from
Freud,
the
Parkes
contribution of
and
Bowlby. 28
many
The
"grief-work" described by Freud is interpreted by Raphael in
interesting
reversing
into
she
building
the
this
phase
of mourning as a
relationship.
All
the
"bits"
of
all the many layers that were internalized into
multi-dimensional
reviewed,
sees
or undoing of the various processes that have gone
interaction,
the
terms:
image
of
the
loved
one
are
now
and the emotional components that made it valuable
or
painful
are slowly sorted through. Raphael suggests that
this process is perhaps the reverse of love. 2 9
chapter
A
response
points
of
that
stresses
the
the
is
and
many
grieve
bereaved child and the
conflicting
and
mourn
potential
clear,
views about
and
about
of
however,
the
childhood
that
adequate
surrogate or other care are of great
child's
that
is
death,
are
to
It
continuity
in
death
to
pathogenic
bereavement. 3 0
help
there
capacity
possible
family
devoted
the child to death at various ages, and Raphael
out
children's
is
mourning
process. 31
Raphael
the realization of the possibility of his own
a prominent factor in the. child's understanding of
and
this realization dawns from about eight years of
'
age onward. 32
Raphael's
mourning
are
comments
of
on
particular
the
adolescent's
interest.
grief
and
She notes that, for
b
the
adolescent,
world--his
body's
developing
thought
adulthood
make
and
death
psychic
period
seem
major
the
factor
includes
family. 3 3
the
an
anathema;
development,
processes,
impossible.
changes
upheaval
is
is
the
the
everything in his
excitement
enticing
of
world
his
of
power--emphasize life, change and growth, and
developmental
'
death
of
in
a
the
adolescence
bereavement.
background
is
There
that
are
which
This
a
great
add
to
many
the
developmental
influences mourning, and a
individual's social development which
gradual establishment of independence from his
Denial
to
of
Raphael,
grief is prevalent in adolescents, according
and the bereaved may become "bossy", presenting
himself
as in control and powerful.
defense
and it may constitute in part an identification with
the
dead
person
Identification
mourning
is
is
way
keep
very
process,
unconscious
the
to
to
dead person.
alive the "adult" in the child.
much
who
This behaviour may be a
a
often
part
of
clings
the adolescent's
in
a
subtle
and
the mannerisms, ideals and behaviour of
Because the relationship with the deceased
being kept alive within the mind of the adolescent, he is
temporarily
protected
identification
from
the
pain
of
mourning.
When
is prolonged and exaggerated, however, it can
present a block to normal mourning. 3 4
The
and
identity
Raphael
of
notes
the
adolescent is a very real issue,
that
the
pattern
of
response
to
bereavement
will be affected by the individual's ideas about
who
now
he
is
he is "fatherless" or "motherless'' or
without the one who has died. 35
Anger
response
adult,
the
plays
to
and
deserted
some way,
of
Raphael
by
or
a
death
the
deceased
doctor
that
the
notes
child,
that
powerful
the
there
part
in
the
adolescent and the
is a sense of being
dead person. Anger may be directed towards
because
those
particularly
felt
of
this
"desertion", or towards the
to be responsible for the death.
the bereaved himself may feel responsible.
inevitably
is
linked
to
anger,
due
to
the
unconscious
fantasies of destructiveness and killing.
In
Guilt
bereaved's
36
The
latter
emotions
towards
the
intense
ambivalence
actively
are
connected
with
deceased noted by Freud.
nurtured
to
the
ambivalence
Raphael comments that
the level where death fantasies are
towards
the dead person produces extreme
guilt. 3 7
Much
ability
his
of
to
the credibility of Faulkner's work lies in his
portray the life of the mind with accuracy.
understanding
specifically
of
death,
humankind's
reveals
a
response
most
to
But
loss,
profound knowledge of
human behaviour.
His
bereaved
settings
of
sometimes
an
characters
often
inadequate
family,
hostile
society, a
exist
factor
or
in
a
the corrupt
decadent
which
and
considerably
influences their reactions to death.
Rider,
The
Sound
mourning
Sound
of "Pantaloon in Black", and Quentin Compson of
and
through
and
The
mourns.
Darl
maintain
mental
Jewel
but
and
at
loss.
Fury
do
they
lives
Bundren,
of
not
pass.
equilibrium
beings
phases of
Benjy Compson, of
The
is unable to
in the face of his loss.
Bundren,
react
the
I Lay Dying,
of
emotional expense.
they
survive
a life in which he perpetua.lly
As
interpretation of
characters as
human
Fury
which
Vardaman
great
Faulkner's
that
The
the
As I Lay Dying,
Both
survive,
A detailed examination of
stages of grief of these
to death reflects his conviction
rarely recover fully from the effects of
b
Go
Down,
Moses
death
of
Down,
Moses
the
Caroline
rare
despite
to
length
the
fidelity
that
was
in 1942, two years after the
Barr--"Mammy Callie".
without
given
him
Down,
Moses,
enter
the
Barr, Faulkner recalled not only
but
rare
the
stint
nobility of her life: that
or
calculation of recompense"; and
the unspoken needs of a small boy, she had
Faulkner
experience
began
of
in
Black"
and love". 38
1n GO
his most concerted effort to
the black people of his fictional
Hence,
Yoknapatawpha. 39
"Pantaloon
Go
Caroline
"immeasurable devotion
of
In dedicating
injustice done her, she had given his family "a
recognizing
county
written
came
to
the
be
short
story
written,
dealing
compassionately with the workings of the Negro mind.
Rider,
death
him
of
by
rents
society.
a
and
a
natural
of
he
every
lives on Roth Edmonds' plantation and
They have been married
Rider is young, audacious, physically powerful,
the
leader.
timber
orphan, he
on
He
cabin with his wife Mannie.
months.
time
"Pantaloon in Black", is unable to mourn the
his wife normally because of the wrongs imposed on
six
head
of
At the age of twenty-four he is the
gang
at
the mill where he works,
An
lived with his aunt until his marriage, at which
becomes the ideal husband, apparently in control of
aspect
of
his life.
For six months he builds a fire
his hearth, just as Lucas Beauchamp, Roth Edmonds' oldest
tenant
for
they
and
the coloured grandson of Carothers McCaslin, did
forty-five
enjoy
years.
domestic
Mannie
bliss.
proves
a devoted wife, and
But the continuity of Rider's
16
wedded
life
is
reason
is
should
dwell
abruptly
No
the circumstances of her death; rather, he
on
in
by Mannie's death.
Faulkner does not intend that the reader
given.
describes
shattered
detail
Rider's
reactions
to
his sudden and
tragic loss.
The
story
furiously
The
opens
with
the
graveyard scene.
Rider is
shovelling earth onto the coffin of his dead wife.
reader
is
reminded
is essentially a Negro
place:
without
order about the barren plot by shards of pottery and
broken
bottles and old brick and other objects insignificant
sight
but
actually
touch, which
is
this
and
of
angry
a
of
"resembled
any other marked off
a profound meaning and fatal to
no white man could have read". (135) Not only
Negro
mystic
violent
by
a
grave
this
burying
to
the
that
in
burying place, it is also a mystic place,
a peculiarly Negro way.
shock,
activity.
and,
as
Rider is in a state
a defense, acts out his anger in
As he leaves the graveyard he is reminded
fellow Negro that he shouldn't return home because his
wife
"...be
wawkin
yit"
(136): another reminder of Negro
mysticism.
In
a
home.
It
touching
is
passage Faulkner writes of Rider's walk
Sunday
evening, that odd hiatus in time when
the
day
the
working week is a memory: "The long week's marks of hoof
and
wheel
Sunday
those
of rest is over and the bustle and companionship of
had
been
shoesW.(137)
"splay-toed
blotted by the strolling and unhurried
Beneath
prints"
the
Sunday
shoe
of Mannie's bare feet.
prints are
His body
b
breasts
the
air
the
objects
her
eyes
by
he
the
had
to
body had vacated" and his eyes touch
and
tree and field and house and hill
lost".(137)
-
Rider's mind is totally occupied
of his dead wife at this point; her presence is
him and connected to and associated with the ground
treads and the air he breathes.
solitary, ostracized
mentions
the
"post
thoughts
real
"her
that
time,
if
they
The author reminds us of
condition of the bereaved when he
there had been churchgoers on the path at
would vcarefully refrain from looking after
him when he had passedn.(137)
Rider
is
indeed
alienated,
both from others and from
himself.
As
there
nothing beyond it, and that the house he renovated
and
is
added
"somebody
large
to
and
cared
elsen.(139)
part
portion
he reaches the gate of his house he feels that
of
of
his
life
Who
is
is all part of the memory of
portion
identity
his
understanding.
A
for
was
of
his life which was a
has gone.
based
What is more, that
on
trust,
there to love now?
love
and
His numbed mind
cannot grapple with the situation.
It
comes
his
dead
led
to
Negro.
the
understand
But
many
surprise when Rider sees the ghost of
in
a
that
We have already been
this phenomenon is expected by the
instances of the physical reappearance of
to the bereaved one have been recorded by both
and whites.
bereaved,
Freud,
no
wife in the kitchen doorway.
deceased
blacks
as
The deceased lives on in the mind of the
defense
his
against
the
brutal
shock of death.
article "Mourning and Melancholia, writes of
+
the
struggle
one:
" so
the
object
of the bereaved to deny the death of the loved
intense
being
hallucinatory
Rider
a turning away from reality ensues,
clung
to
asks to go with her.
anger
is
anger
directed
roughly,
gonter
through
wish-psychosis". 40
loneliness, and
said
that
As
hyar
and
of
time
much more of a certainty.
on
his
of
pain
single
a
ghost fades,
His
"'Come on hyar, now' he
eat
yo supper. Ah aint
Fear accompanies his rage based on
thoughts
as
of
his wife would leave him,
towards Mannie:
have no -'".(141)
the
medium
He feels deep emotional pain and
that
'Come on
the
his own mortality which now looms for the first
As he sleeps in the dawn
way to the mill his snoring "sounded not like groans
but
like someone engaged without arms in prolonged
combatW.(l42)
Rider,
once powerful and magnificent
and in control, is now defenseless in the face of death.
b
He
Mannie
for
he
the
must
gave
his
is
re-evaluate his view of life.
him
respectability, self-respect and a meaning
existence.
not
mill.
Her death demands a readjustment that
able to make,
Again
of the bereaved:
looking
at
himW.(144)
and
workmates,
superhuman
once
Rider
feat
He attempts to resume his work at
Faulkner
society
control,
His marriage to
more
indicates
"heads...
In
a
take
asserts
the
alienation from
carefully refrained from
frenzied
attempt
to regain
his pride of place among his
his
physical
prowess
in
a
of strength: his fellow workers stare as he
hauls a log with his bare hands.
But
this
defense against reality does not blot out his
grief.
He
death
imperfect
and
normal
the
resentment that he has been cheated by
of his hopes for the future; guilt for his imagined or
real
was
harbours
now
and
can
might
of
to
or years.
Freud
This constitutes the
and subsequent experts in the
Rider does not embark on this process.
as
a
alcohol, which
brew
his
against
months
known
Rather,
fuel
These are emotions which are
relationship with his wife--a process which
several
"grief-work"
illicit
be.
should think through and resolve each of these
his
take
field. 41
never
commonly felt in the circumstances, and ideally,
bereaved
aspects
love for his wife; profound sorrow over what
further
ironically
does
growing
him.
denial of the loss, he turns to
he obtains from a white man: the
not drown his sorrows but only serves to
conviction that God and the white man are
He
tries to get even with God and hopes that
b
the
liquor
something
will
hyar
accelerates
visits
his
help
now
"Try
kin
me,
whup
to
his
big
boy.
you". (147)
childhood
Ah gots
The liquor
years.
He
the house of his aunt, the ditch where he played as a
and
and
crept
before
his
aunt,
sensing
calls
him
dat
regression
boy,
name
him:
the
"grassless yard in whose dust he had sprawled
he
learnt to walkW.(l50)
Significantly,
Rider's need to revert to his childhood,
him by his childhood name: "Spoot!
Spoot!"
(151), the
he was called by until Mannie came along and christened
Rider.
mourning
before
He is now succumbing to a state of pathological
which
includes
regression to a point in childhood
normal ambivalence, (i.e. an ability to love and hate
at
the
same time), has taken place.
hates
but
The small child either
loves
or
is not able to combine these emotions.
Rider
is beginning to feel intense hatred, and because he is
unable
to focus the energy he directed towards Mannie on any
other
love
object,
and
he
this
energy
is
begins to hate himself.
now
transformed
into
this
on he makes elaborate, but uncpnscious plans for
point
hatred,
because
From
his own death.
His
aunt
implores
from
this
freedom
situation.
solve
he
white
the
God
his
man.
man
in
the
his
reaches
throat.
At
of
Faulkner
his
mind,
forsaken
To
plans.
She
Rider flees
him
and cannot,
find his identity and
Rider
at the mill.
attractive
extra
Birdsong
human
his
to
gambles
with
dice
for
this
his
point
personality.
described
the
from
the
white
man,
he
reader
In
the
mind
of
who has
Coolly
Birdsong's hand, and, as
pistol,
the
the
He raises the stakes
him and other Negroes numerous times before.
forces
change
in
With both self-hatred and animosity towards
cheating
cheated
he
him
must reject all forms of authority: both God and
white
make
has
problems.
nightwatchman, Birdsong,
to
aids
Rider to kneel and ask for God's help.
therefore,
the
unwittingly
~irdsong's
must question Rider's
first
a
slashes
part
of the story
sensitive, essentially
individual, who has pursued a caring relationship with
much-loved wife.
Now he is a ruthless killer taking his
revenge in murder.
The
extremity
of
Rider's reactions is attributable to
the
intensity
vulnerable
pains
effects
clear.
Rider's
uncle's
for
of
Mannie.
He is unusually
loss, as Faulkner has taken
An orphan, he was reared by a caring
The author pointedly
uncle as "his aunt's husband", lessening
importance
and
indicating
that
life as a surrogate father is minor.
structure
of
the
predominantly
to
need
became his surrogate mother.
to
Rider's
his
the
make
who
refers
the
to
to
aunt
of
Rider's
account,
Mannie,
Negro
family
matriarchal.
life
These
his
role in
Typically, the
of the time would be
circumstances contribute
deep need for a dominating woman in his life and
in
part,
which
for
the
happiness
of
his marriage to
was stable and purposeful and gave meaning to
his existence.
He
fury,
reacts to the loss of Mannie with profound shock and
and,
superhuman
terms
Mannie
exertion, and then to alcohol; unable to come to '
herself,
of
on
of
dominant
writes,
His personality is disorganized and his
is
her.
His anger, directed at first towards
extreme,
Their
and
is
a
response
to
his
relationship had been more like
mother and child, rather than husband and wife, and
survival
choice
tlie
defense and a denial, has turned first to
is shattered.
dependence
his
a
with reality.
identity
that
as
feels
the
name
partner
in
The
bereavement
in
threatened
"Mannie"
their
by
is
her
death.
Faulkner's
appropriate:
she is the
marriage.
As Beverley Raphael
Anatomy of Bereavement,
response,
"Extreme anger in
to the exclusion of all else, is
often associated with pathological dependence on the dead
partner". 42
Regression
of
Rider's
that
to a child-like attitude of hate is evidence
pathological state.
Identification with Mannie,
is, incorporation of her into his "self", rather than a
normal
redirection
intolerable
loss
of
of
his
feelings,
self-structure,
has
producing
caused
an
a sense of
worthlessness and resulting in self-persecution.
He
indeed
lynching.
welcomes
death
and
precipitates
his
own
After he murders Birdsong he returns to his cabin
and
awaits
arrest,
the
sheriff, who
much
to the surprise of the deputy and
expect
him to flee.
As the deputy tells
his wife:
Sitting behind the barred front door
with an open razor on one knee and a
loaded shotgun on the other? No. He
was asleep.
A big pot of field peas et
clean empty on the stove, and him laying
in the backyard asleep in the broad
sun.. (157)
.
He
is secure in the knowledge that he will soon be master of
his destiny.
Rider
has
is
resumed
her
helplessness.
rips
thrown into jail accompanied by his aunt, who
role
of
Imprisonment
mother
in
the
reactivates his
face of Rider's
fury,
and he
the iron cot from the floor it was bolted to, tears the
steel
door
from the wall, exerting incredible strength, but
exclaiming:
"It's awright.
It's awright.
Ah aint trying to
git away". (158)
Violence
and
his
last
does
not
reported
alleviate
Rider's emotional agony,
words are tragic: "Hit look lack Ah
just
cant quit thinking.
Birdsong
his
"kin" catch
wife,
hanging
miles
own
"they
from
from
Look lack Ah just cant quitW,(159)
up with Rider and as the deputy tells
found
the
prisoner on the following day,
the bell-rope in a Negro schoolhouse about two
the sawmi11".(154)
death,
Rider
By planning and ensuring his
regains power and control in the only way
open to him.
In
prison,
Existentialist
Eberhard
own
Reading
Alsen
because
the
Rider
whites
that
Rider's
In
"An
laughter
is ironic
unable to see that by planning his
robbing
Perhaps
draining
"big
his
as
this
hysteria
it
of
significance
as
a
is the case, but first and
is a manic reaction attributable
process
of pathological mourning.
His tears,
glass marbles running across his face and down past
ears
and
making
a kind of plopping sound on the floor
somebody dropping bird eggs"(159), are huge, like Rider
like
himself,
man's
had
and
sin
are
a
metaphor for the enormity of the white
and guilt,
been
physically
But
cries.
a redirection of the stores of energy he has required for
the
he
are
lynching, . h e is
foremost Rider's
and
of Faulkner's 'Pantaloon in Black'",
suggests
punishment. 4 3
to
laughs
born
superb
because
he
He cries out of pity for mankind.
white,
would
is
have
black
living, young and
had everything to live for.
he
subsists
Edmonds'
enduring
constant
from his white supervisors at the mill, and is a
final
injustice
cabin,
Roth
humiliation
the
a
on
where
of
rents
good
plantation
victim
he
Rider,
If
of being disallowed a fair
trial, having killed Birdsong in self-defense.
shame
His sense of
at being black is deeply ingrained and intensifies the
self-hatred he feels at the loss of Mannie.
Faulkner's
old
cuckold
theatre
title,
of
the
"Pantaloon
commedia
in
Black", suggests the
dell'arte
plays,
a form of
which had interested Faulkner as a young man.
44
The
injustice
and sadness in Rider's life is reminiscent of
the
Pantalone, but there the similarity ends.
the
familiar, coloured, clown-like plantation figure, like
Rider is not
Lucas
Beauchamp; rather, he is described as a pure-blooded
Negro
of
and
is
heroic
ready
community.
he
has
Rider's
fact
proportions, who has "sown his wild oats",
to
live
a life as a respected member of his
His prospects for the future are restricted, but
been
made
head
of his timber gang.
The pathos of
story does not lie in the figure of Rider but in the
that
he is a denigrated human being, and, according to
the white man, unfit to live.
Faulkner
of
his
Rider's
with
story, where
emotions
his
whites
demonstrates
man
but
the conversation of the deputy sheriff
In
this
brought
section which
as
consistently
he turns from his moving evocation of
to
wife.
is
this attitude in the second half
to
the
conversation
fore:
a
the bigotry of the
contrast to the first
emphasizes Rider's bereavement not as a black
a member of the human race.
misreads
Rider's
The deputy sheriff
every action, showing him in
the worst possible light:
His wife dies on him.
He's
does he grieve?
All right. But
the biggest and
busiest man at the funeral.
Grabs a
shovel before they even got the box into
the grave they tell me,. ..(l55)
He dehumanizes Negroes in general:
...
they
aint
Them
damn
niggers
human
They look like a man and they
walk on their hind legs like a man, and
they can talk and you can understand
YOU
think
they
are
them
and
understanding
you, at least now and
then.
But when it comes to the normal
human feelings and sentiments of human
beings, they might just as well be a
damn herd of wild buffaloes.(l54)
...
But
Faulkner
profoundest
wife
human
like
any
has
shown
emotion,
other
and
man.
colour
and
unable
to mourn normally.
that
Rider is capable of the
must mourn the loss of his
Tragically, as a result of his
his consequent treatment by the white man, he is
The only way he can come to terms
with his life is to end it.
"Pantaloon
Hearth"
and
in
Black" is placed after "The Fire and the6
before
"The Old People" in
Go Down, Moses
.
All
are placed before "The Bear" and the commissary dialogue
it
contains,
plantation
white
"The
Lucas
miscegenated
character
which
because
man.
coloured
in
the
Fire
Lucas
they
and
the
and
ties.
McCaslin
treatment
and
Beauchamp
family
of
injustices
of
Issac
of
It
the
the Negro by the
Hearth"
provides
repudiates
focuses
on
the
information on the
emphasises
the strength of
his wife Molly, and points out the
suffer
at
the
hands
of
their
white
landowners,
"The
the
Old
People"
civilized--Sam
is
Fathers
concerned with the primitive and
and
his ancestor, Ikkemotubbe,
the
Chickasaw
McCaslin
these
chief
Edmonds,
two
who hunted the land is juxtaposed with
representing
traditions
standards
for
Issac
himself
that
he
that
powers
suggested, connected
majestic
buck
"Pantaloon
in
superstitions
In
this
in
moments
are
Both
From
can
latter
live
story
with
by.
It
primitive
is
occult
the sighting of the
the "initiated" boy Ike, just as Rider in
Black",
endowed
with
the
instinctive
of his race, sees the ghost of his dead wife,
way Faulkner shows that unconscious beliefs surface
stresses
Negro
by
this
society.
McCaslin must extract a set of
interesting
are
in
"civilized"
of
the
deep
emotion.
In
both
stories
Faulkner
ancient and noble traditions of the Indian and
races and the psychic powers that go with them,
These
traditions not to be discarded lightly by the white man.
stories
philosophy
teach that shame is worse than death, and this
is
overtly
" ,..you
People":
dont
have
believe
is
put
end to that...there
an
suffering;
stated
you
by
to
McCaslin
continue
in
"The Old
to bear what you
can always choose to stop that,
is only one thing worse than not
being alive, and that's shameN.(186)
The
Moses ,
of
position
is
Issac
Bear",
of
important,
McCaslin's
He
"Pantaloon
in
Black"
Go Down,
because it leads to an understanding
views
in
the
fourth section of "The
speaks of the Negro: "...they
than we are.
in
will endure.
Stronger than we are,
They
are
better
Their vices
are
vices aped from white men.,,".(294)
not
"endure", he reacts violently to injustice, and endures
Although Rider does
in
the
he
lives.
Negro
mind
of the society, both black and white, in which
Walter
Anomaly
whether
at
Taylor,
in
characterizing
undermined
conceptsm--his full-blooded
than
whites
survive. 4 5
reaction
he
of
Rider,
carefully
has
phrased
Negro male not being "stronger"
Issac's words
They
means
are
the
radical
ability
to
and are a
are spoken out of a sense of guilt.
does
prepare
the
reader
for
The
Issac's
of his legacy, however, because Rider emerges as
vulnerable
whose
Issac's
"stronger"
Rider
repudiation
a
", questions
to the years of miscegenation, incest and injustice
reviews.
story
if
But
"Faulkner's Pantaloon: The
the Heart o f Go Down, Moses
Faulkner,
"inadvertently
in
human
being
mourning
the death of his wife,
mourning becomes suicidal due to the wrongs imposed on
him by society.
Twelve
Faulkner
Fury
years
wrote
.46
before
his
first
writing
major
"Pantaloon
novel,
in
Black",
The Sound and The
Stylistically, "Pantaloon in Black" is simple
and
straightforward compared to the innovative monologues of
The
Sound
both
Fury
and
works.
The Fury
In
1933,
.
But the mourning motif dominates
four years after
The Sound and The
was published, Faulkner added an introduction in which
he explains how he came to write the nove 1:
...
one day it suddenly seemed as if a
door had clapped silently and forever to
between me and all publishers' addresses
and booklists and I said to myself, Now
I can write.
Now I can just write.
Whereupon I, who had three brothers and
no sisters and was destined to lose my
first
daughter in infancy, began to
write about a little girl.
I did not realize then that I was trying
to manufacture the sister which I did
not hazy and the daughter which I was to
lose.. ,
Thus
the
writing
attempt
to
anxiety
about
rejection
the
fill
of
his
personal
Flags
"grief-work"
of
transferring
his
that
to
which
the
producing
life
novel
mourning.
and The Fury
written
himself
work
own
and
Springing from
despair
invite
due to the
comparison with the
cathartic
emotions
from them.
a
is an
the processes at work in
The
innermost
"presupposes
its
Sound
in the Dust,
the
detach
writing
The
a lack in Faulkner's life.
composition of
Faulkner
of
to
effect
paper
of
enabled
Andre Green argues
wound, a loss, a bereavement,
will
fictitious
transform
to
possibility
the
...
point of
Reading
amd
writing are a ceaseless work of mourning"48
The
of
a
seminal
small
looking
image
girl
in
climbing
grandmother's funeral
the
ground,
in
and
is that
on a branch, her drawers muddy,
into the parlour window of her family's house, where
her
Using
The Sound and The Fury
stand
is
taking place,
Below her, on
her three brothers, watching her climb.
this central idea, the events of the story are related
turn by the retarded youngest brother, Benjy; by Quentin,
finally
by
Jason.
omniscient narrator.
personality
takes
The final section is related by an
The sister Caddy has no voice., but her
shape
as
the
story
unfolds.
The
relationships
between the Compson children, particularly the
relationships
of
the brothers to the sister, form the basis
of the conflict in the novel.
In
later years Faulkner described all of his fiction as
self-involved:
which
is
branch
felt
"I
myself
scene
as
a
am
telling
and the world. " 4 9
Faulkner
child
on
of
adult
the
only
"secrets" of
notes
that
seat
her
in
concept
dying
Compson
ideas
David Moriarty, in
the
minds
unconscious
of
The Loss of Loved
children there is "a
connection
between
the
'secrets of the adults '"50 He adds that
fulfillment may
the
Death, like sex, is one
of sexuality and death, the two being connected by the
this
which
of the children from
the adults rarely spoken of, and then
intense
conception of
from
alienation
members of their family.
frequent and
ideas
undoubtedly recalled the emotions he
the
in hushed tones.
Ones,
As he described the
the occasion of his own grandmother's
funeral, particularly
the
the same story over and over
arises
because
sexual
may become a sexual goal "51 The tableau of
children
outside the window crystallizes these
The brothers are looking up at the
Caddy's muddy drawers, symbolic of sexuality and of
promiscuity
enterprising
willingness
abilities
fear
bring death, or even a masochistic trend in
in a single image.
of
sexual
b
and
to
make
in
the years to come.
courageous:
She is adventurous,
qualities
indicated
by
her
scramble onto the branch; and her leadership
her
attractive.
Because
the children are
alienated
mother.
their
both
from
their
parents,
Caddy
fills
the
role
of
But for Benjy and Quentin she is also the object of
sexual desire.
Benjy
and
Death is present in the funeral scene:
Quentin
are
to
be
associated with death
themselves.
Writing
"the
idea
out
of
struck
the
innocence,
had
been
from
about
typified
first-grade
grow
to
the
blind,
children,
self-centeredness of
if one of those children
innocent, that is, an idiot".
home
adulthood
had
lived
and
her
Miss
Annie
brother,
express
reason
A few blocks
Chandler, his
Edwin Chandler, who
no
him
body
speak
has
sense
experiences
other.
has
behind
done
his
years before.
iron
fence
since
.
has developed but not his brain.
Because
or formulate thoughts, he uses his body to
hence
the
constant
crying.
He
cannot
no sense of causality; he is speechless and
of time.
emotion
developed, particularly
memory,
body
chose just such an idiot for the first
emotion,
and
his
The Sound and The Fury
Benjy's
cannot
as
seen
He
narrator of
he
by
teacher
childhood.52
has
of
speak and play simple games but whose mind would never
Faulkner
he
idea
truly
to see how much more I could have got
me
Faulkner's
could
the Compson children, Faulkner recalled:
although
time
Morality has no meaning for him and
intuitively.
His senses are highly
his sense of smell.
He does have a
planes are superimposed one upon the
b
control
over
parts
of
his
body: "my throat made a sound"
(48),
"my hand jerked back" ( 7 2 ) , and he reacts with joy and
tears
to
objects
controls
much
coming
and
going:
of his emotion.
be
presence and absence
He is the infant who has not
learnt
to
a separate person; inner and outer experience
cannot
be differentiated, and he cannot discriminate between
self and not self. 5 3
Benjy's
thirty-third
recorded
monologue
birthday;
opens
the
in the same tense.
with
of
his
childhood
are
His world is full of pain.
The
events
the
of
his
events
narrator of the last section relates:
Then Benjy wailed again, hopeless and
prolonged.
It was nothing. Just sound.
It
might
have
been
all time and
injustice and sorrow become vocal for an
instant, by a conjunction of planets.
(359) .
He
is
a
tragic figure who represents the past, having
no
future other than the possibility of a bleak existence in
an
asylum.
an
unbiased, opaque
novel
The
facts of the past are supplied by Benjy in
fashion, and as the touchstone of the
he produces arbitrarily the pieces of the mosaic which
together form the history of the Compson family.
His
fact
constant
that,
greatly
lacking
anguish
normal
is
perhaps
emotional
attributable to the
development, he
is
preoccupied with death, and does not have the normal
defensive
knowledge
structure that allows~mostof us to live with this
without
being
overwhelmed.
This
morbid
Preoccupation
with
the
other
loss
of
associated
records
Dilsey
his
and
T.P.
This
of
visits,
From the first, Benjy is
and
one
of
to
the
cemetery with his mother,
journey
to
is
which
can result in an over-reaction to
people. 5 4
death,
is
Quentin.
one
with
death
visit
the
the first episodes he
grave
of
Mr. Compson and
one of his many Sunday visits, the final
concludes
the
book.
As
a result of these
jimson weed, placed in a bottle and stuck on a mound
resembling
a
grave,
is
his
favourite
plaything.
Incidentally, this weed, with its unpleasant smell, was used
by
southern
Its
prolific
children
Benjy,
in
contraception and abortion,
growth
in
the
could
a
55
Negroes
pick
child
South
undoubtedly meant that
it at random, but its association with
with no future, is significant.
For Benjy,
life is constant mourning, even while he plays.
He
of
the
relates four death scenes.
events
surrounding
grandmother, Damuddy,
lives
of
painful
preoccupation
by
the
his
Dilsey's
lot
of
the
children's
which profoundly affects the
events in his life which adds to his morbid
with
loss
death
For Benjy, her loss is the first
death.
He does not associate her death
of a person, rather his emotions are stirred
intuition
husband,
and
his
remarks
more than folks thinks.
like
if
loss
of all the children.
the
with
a
the
The first is a depiction
that pointer done.
he could talk.
sensory
about
perceptions.
Roskus,
Benjy and death: "He know
He knowed they time was coming,
He could tell you when hisn coming,
Or yours.
Or mine,"(37)
Benjy speaks of
three
and
more
he
deaths, those of Quentin, his father and Roskus,
senses
rather
than perceives these events.
On the
death of his father, Benjy relates:
I could hear Mother, and feet walking
fast away, and I could smell it. Then
the room came; but my eyes went shut. I
didn't stop.
I could smell it. T.P.
unpinned the bed clothes... But I could
smell it, (39140)
Death
is
Caddy, who
climbing
which
in
is
in
that
and
to
look
in
on
When Caddy is
Damuddy's
funeral,
of
as
he
recalls the event
from him: "Then I saw Caddy with flowers
a
long
veil like shining wind.
Caddy,
The loss of Caddy is for Benjy the supreme loss
life,5 6
wedding
wedding of Benjy's sister,
consciousness
Caddy
hair,
his
the
focal point of his life.
branch
Benjy's
takes
her
with
changes his print to italics to illustrate the time
CaddyW.(46)
of
the
the
Faulkner
change
linked
a
when
Faulkner
loved
understood
one can be.
Estelle
Oldham
how
tragic
the
His brother John remarked
married
Cornell
Franklin,
Faulkner's "world went to pieces". 5 7
The
children's
hypochondriac,
obsessed
are
with
superior
Maury
mother,
self-centered
Caroline
and
Compson,
ineffectual,
is
She
a
is
the notion that her own family, the Bascombs,
to the Compsons, and she idealizes her brother
who lives with the family.
She originally named Benjy
"Maury", after this brother, but when his retardation became
obvious
him
both
Quentin,
she changed his name to Benjy, effectively rejecting
in
Mrs.
name
and
Compson
spirit.
In
a
speech reported by
demonstrates her lack of feeling for
6
all
her
children
Bascomb
except
like herself.
Jason,
who
she
thinks
of as a
She speaks to her husband of dreading
to see the Compson blood surfacing:
who can fight against bad blood...you
must let me go away I cannot stand it
let me have Jason and you keep the
others they're not my flesh and blood
like he is strangers nothing of mine and
I am afraid of them
try to forget that
the others ever were (128/129)
...
Because
he
is
rejected
by
his
mother,
Benjy,
the
helpless
child, turns to Caddy, who has the ability to sense
what
he
needs,
like
trees"
Benjy.
and
and
loves
she
is
him unselfishly.
all that is natural and lovely to
Infant-like, he holds her slipper, his transitional
object, when she is absent.
the
Caddy "smells
bright
fire
and
bright mirror which enlarges his
narrow
world,
Caddy,
Benjy is sentenced to a life of unrelieved suffering.
But
the
tormented
Faulkner
sold
she makes sure he can see them.
Without
he is not aware of Caddy as a separate person; rather he
loves
The
and
the
She knows he loves the cushion,
love
by reminders of her which evoke a feeling of loss.
writes
Fury,
to
that she gives him, and when she leaves, is
pay
of
"Who
loved
for
sister
them
he
The Sound and
three things: the pasture which was
Candace's
Harvard, his
because
Benjy in the Appendix to
wedding and to send Quentin to
Candace,
firelight.
Who lost none of
could not remember his sister but only the
loss of her". ( 4 2 3 / 4 )
Perhaps
Faulkner's
portrayal
of
Benjy
stems in part
from his own personal need for tenderness and understanding
b
at
the
time
Certainly
playing
moved
he
was
writing
understood
The
Benjy's
Sound
and The Fury
isolated
the part of observer in his own life.
into
pressures
ecstasy
novel
he
and
put
and
as
a
world,
.
often
As a child he
out of stillness and silence, resisting the
on
him
to
comply
with
The
others. 5 8
relief
he
associated
with the writing of the
whole,
he
associated
particularly
with
the
writing of Benjy's section. 5 9
The
sexual
Caddy
adverse reactions Benjy experiences towards Caddy's
maturation
to
other
males.
sexual
development
desire
for her.
girl
episode:
intercourse
reflect
if
that
Benjy
senses he will lose
And he would not be so alert to her
sexuality
played no part in his own
Evidence of this is provided by the Burgess
the
occurs
scene
at
of
his
unique attempt at sexual
the very place where he used to meet
b
Caddy when she too came back from school:
They came on.
I opened the gate and
they stopped, turning. I was trying to
say, and I caught her, trying to say,
and she screamed and I was trying to say
and trying, and the bright shapes began
to stop and I tried to get out. I tried
to get it off of my face, but the bright
shapes were going again.(64)
Benjy's
associated
and
with
present,
follows
"bright shapes" are euphoric sensations and are
that
his
and
world with Caddy, and he confuses past
mistakes
the
Burgess
girl for her.
It
if the Burgess girl functions in his mind as a
substitute
for Caddy, then Benjy's sexual aggression must be
viewed
an
as
attempt
at incest. 60
As a result of the
6
loss is reflected in the text:
I got undressed and I looked at myself,
and I began to cry. Hush, Luster said.
Looking for them aint going to do no
good.
They're gone.
You keep on like
this, and we aint going have you no more
I
birthday.
He
put
my gown on.
hushed.. (90)
.
On
several
Caddy's
dress
developing
when
Charlie.
She
Benjy
sexuality.
He
is
profoundly
cries
upset
by
and pulls at her
he discovers her in the swing with her boyfriend
As a result Caddy washes her mouth out with soap.
tells
wont
occasions
Benjy:
anymoreW,(58)
similar
" I wont...I
wont anymore, ever...Hush.
I
Her seduction by Dalton Ames produces a
reaction, and results in Benjy pushing Caddy to the
bathroom.
He reacts violently to Caddy's use of perfume:
I went away and I didn't hush, and she
held the bottle in her hand, looking at
me.
'Oh' she said.
She put the bottle
down and came and put her arms around
me.
'So that was it.,,Of course Caddy
wont. Of course Caddy wont . . . I ( 51)
At
Caddy's
instigation
they
together
give the perfume to
Dilsey.
Each
part
of
sexual
of these events produces a feeling of guilt on the
Caddy
due to the shame she harbours because of her
exploits, and she attempts to alleviate her guilt by
complying
with Benjy's wishes.
shame
which
adds
leave
him.
His' reactions
Benjy intuitively senses her
to his intense anxiety that she will soon
are not moral judgments; rather
they are those of a son jealous of his mother's lovers.
But
~ e n j y can
Perhaps
world
never
grow
up
and
compete with those lovers.
he unconsciously resists growing up so that the safe
where
violated.
recover
Caddy
Benjy
is
both
cannot
mother
develop,
and lover can never be
and
therefore
will not
from the loss of Caddy, a loss that he must continue
to mourn.
In
his
introduction
to
The
Sound
and
The
Fury
Faulkner writes about Benjy's tragic loss of Caddy:
I saw that peaceful glinting of that
branch was to become the dark, harsh
flowing of time sweeping her to where
she
could
not
return
to
comfort
him,...And
that Benjy must never grow
beyond this moment; that for him all
knowing must begin and end with that
fierce, panting, paused and stooping wet
figure which smelled like trees. That
he must never grow up to where the grief
of bereavement 6fould be leavened with
understanding
...
The
as
mourning processes of Quentin Compson can be traced
he
relates
the events of the day of his suicide, in the
second
section
of
interrupted
by
is
which
surface
connected
with
in
The Sound and the Fury
fragmented
thoughts
of
.
His narration
his childhood,
association with present stimuli, and are
his
relationships
with his parents and the
other Compson children.
Quentin,
enters
begin
a
like
Benjy, mourns the loss of Caddy when she
world of sexuality, but his emotional difficulties
before his obsession with Caddy's purity.
Quentin
is
profoundly
affected
by
the
Like Benjy,
death
of
the
children's
fill
grandmother, Damuddy, who, with Dilsey, helped to
the
void
parents.
left
in
their lives by their inadequate
Dilsey "does de bes" she can to fill the vacancies
in
the
effective
just
created
as
lives
action
Benjy
of
the children, but her life combines
with
resignation
relies
on
to
her duty,62 and
Caddy for tenderness, so Quentin
turns to Caddy to satisfy his emotional needs.
The
extent
love
and
book
image
to which Quentin feels the lack of parental
support
which
is illustrated by the memory of a picture
surfaces
during the course of the day he
describes, when he associates the smell of gasoline with the
smell of the camphor used by his sick mother:
.,.Mother lay back in her chair, the
camphor
handkerchief
to her mouth.
Father hadn't moved he still sat beside
her holding her hand,. When I was little
there was a picture in one of our books,
a dark place into which a single weak
ray of light came slanting upon two
faces lifted out of the shadow...It was
torn out, jagged out. I was glad. I'd
have
to turn back to it until the
dungeon
was
Mother herself she and
Father upward into weak light holding
hands and us lost somewhere below even
them without even a ray of light.(214/5)
Quentin's
adding
to
contributes
the
his
Benjy
future
is
lack
cause
tolerate
and
withholds love and affection from him
of
confidence
in
himself.
She
to her husband's alcoholism and cynicism, and is
indirect
cannot
mother
the
of
Caddy's promiscuity, because Caddy
pressures
brought
to
bear on her by
Quentin, and believes that her only hope for the
to
break
away
from her disintegrating family.
Quentin
remembers
Head,
Caddy's
marriage,
a
speech
fiance,
of
Mrs.
connected
Compson's to Herbert
with
their
impending
and punctuates it with anguished thoughts provoked
by
the imminent loss of his sister: "No sister no sister had
no
sister".(ll7)
Feeling
isolated
and
rejected, Quentin
cries, "If I could say Mother, MotherW.(ll7)
At
times
children;
Mr.
for
Compson
shows
compassion
towards
example, Benjy recalls a scene in which Caddy
and
Father
had
been crying, and his Father was comforting him.
head
was
the
chair
held
He
and
on
were in their Mother's chair.
Jason
Caddy's
Father's shoulder, and when Benjy went over to
meW.(88)
Quentin:
Jason
"Father
cannot
his
lifted
me into the chair too, and Caddy
But Mr. Compson's personality deteriorates.
tolerate
Caddy's
"Father will
be
promiscuity,
dead
in
a
and
she
tells
year they say if he
b
doesn't
since
last
between
she
to
drinking and he wont stop he cant stop since I
stop
summer".(l54)
Caddy
and
her
There
is
a
bond
of affection
father, and, aware of his weakness,
pleads with Quentin when she leaves home: "Are you going
look
close
after
to
said"=63
Benjy
But
aristocratic
Mr.
him
a
and
is
existence,
puritanical
Quentin, too, is
obsessed
and
does
with
not
the
value
the
standards of the old Southern
for Quentin represent order and security.
beginning
watch
Compson
of
tradition, which
the
FatherW.(l31)
his father, and he constantly relates what "Father
meaninglessness
At
and
that
of
Quentin's monologue, his father gives
belonged
to
General Compson, Quentin's
grandfather, with the words:
I give you the mausoleum of all hope and
desire; it's rather excrutiatingly apt
that you will use it to gain the reducto
absurdum of all human experience which
can fit your individual needs no better
than
it
fitted
his
or
his
father's.. (93)
.
Quentin
cannot
tolerate
his father's nihilistic philosophy
which adds to his sense of personal failure:
Father was teaching us that all men are
just accumulations dolls stuffed with
sawdust swept up from the trash heaps
where all previous dolls had been thrown
away the sawdust flowing from what wound
in
what side that not for me died
not,. (218)
.
Because
failure
turns
her
to
to
of
his
provide
his
lose
of
his
loved
affected.
emotional
adequate
guidance
grandmother, Damuddy.
death, which,
heart
mother's lack of love and his father's
or example, Quentin
Later, he is to mourn
significantly, Faulkner
story.
Moriarty
ones
in
their
The
loss
to
at the
comments that children who
early
leads
places
childhood are profoundly
a
disturbance
in
their
development, which in turn leads to a personality
change, and the younger the child, the more profound are the
emotional
scars.
This
feelings
harboured
by
sometimes
death
while
need
which
wishes
phenomenon
the
directed
that person was alive.
the
child
occurs
mourning. 6 4
has
later
Quentin
child
is
has
to
guilt
about
the
anger, and
towards
the
dead person
It is also related to the real
for the deceased.
in
related
life
may
As a result, a loss
produce
pathological
never recovered from the loss
of
Damuddy
When
in
his childhood.
His need for her was great.
he loses Caddy, his surrogate mother, later in life, he
suffers an emotional breakdown leading to suicide.
Faulkner
was
five,
deeply
understood Quentin's despair.
his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, from the
Falkner's
family
Murry
Falkner, moved
C.
became
widely
legendary
fifteen
another, he
of
home
town
of Ripley.
from
regarded
grandfather
years
manager
When he
as
job
the
and
a
to
failed
job in Oxford, and
descendant
successful
of
father.
a
After
of shifting around, trying one thing and then
accepted
appointment as secretary and business
of the University of Mississippi.
several
Faulkner's father,
positions
arranged
by
his
In this, the last
father, he served
dutifully
for ten years, only to be dismissed in a political
shuffle.
Much
of
the
time
he
spent
alone,
sitting in
silence, as though he had simply got tired of living.6 5
It
seems
probable
descendant"
ancestors
of
that
famous
Murry
Falkner,
the
"failed
forbears, bore a resentment to those
and the past in general, and it is this resentment
that Faulkner portrays in Mr. Compson.
Murry
and
Falkner had enjoyed taking his sons to the woods,
taught
remained
whose
ride,
track, hunt and fish.
But they
affection.
his sons
of
his
as
an
easy
them,
as
with others, he remained distant and
him
With
cautious.
to
uncertain
remembered
love.
them
Looking
capacity
for
back,
man
None
of
to know or an easy man to
they thought of him as a cold man
affection
was limited. 66
LIke Mr.
Compson
his
of
sense
The Sound and the Fury, Murry Faulkner drank as
of
drunkenness
but
his
was
and resentment deepened.
Maud,
abhorred drinking, and dramatized her
and guilt. 6 7
manner".
Maud was shy
and
as one of her granddaughters would put it
she
was
later,
situations.
Occasional
familiar part of being male and Falkner,
failure, weakness
insecure
years
a
wife,
husband's
and
failure
She
"often
afraid of strange people and
masked her vulnerability with a cold, hard
Outwardly she sometimes appeared arrogant, brusque
and self-assured. 6 8
Faulkner's
onset
of
warring
division
parents.
repeated, he
the
mother
weakness
and
In
bitterness
that
he
associated
the
with the conduct of his
In the father whose failures were many and
saw
who
and
reflects
weakness that was too conspicuous, and in
made
him
perfectly
aware of his father's
and then forced him to choose between that weakness
her strength, he saw fierceness that went too far. 6 9
part
the
modelled
The
fiction
on
Sound
Compsons
these
and
Faulkner's
of
The
parental
the
Fury
Sound
and
the
Fury
are
figures, and it is clear that
reveals
sympathy, which,
fully
because
the direction of
of his own inadequate
parenting, turns towards children. 7 0
So
state
Faulkner
Quentin
on the day of his suicide in
Quentin
is
emotional
a
understood
loss
deprived
scars
which
of
parental
Compson's
emotional
The Sound and the Fury
love,
and
bears
.
the
from the death of Damuddy in his childhood,
Faulkner
empathized with, due to the loss of
b
now
also
his
lost his sister Caddy, who has become the focus of
existence.
LIke
Benjy,
his
attachment
to
her
is
obsessive.
In
the
keeping
Fury,
death
the
not
Section
with
mourning motif in
The Sound and
loss of Caddy's virginity is treated like a
only
by
Jason
3,
the
Quentin,
recalled
but by Mrs. Compson also.
In
that his mother happened to see
one of Caddy's boyfriends kissing her:
and all the next day she went around the
house in a black dress and a veil and
even Father couldn't get her to say a
word except crying and saying her little
daughter was dead.. (286) 71
.
Caddy herself
a death:
treats her loss of virginity as
Else have I thought about I cant even
cry I died last year I told you I had
but I didn't know then what I meant I
didn't know what I was saying
But now
I know I'm dead I tell you ...(153/4)
...
For
Quentin,
the
loss
of
Caddy
starts in process a
period of mcurning just as profound as though she had died.
Faulkner
the
writing
empathized with Quentin's devastation.
of
sweetheart,
The
Sound
Estelle
Oldham,
the
Fury
his childhood
reappeared
Franklin
1918 had been a bitter blow to Faulkner, and as
brother
his
pain
who
since
marriage
put it, his "world went to pieces".
and
to
Oxford,
old
his
Estelle's
in
reactivating
in
wounds.
and
During
Cornell
Mixed with
sense of loss was bitterness towards Estelle,
their earliest years had been the subject of much
of
his
poetry,
imagination.
and
the
emotional
focus
of
his fertile
Shortly after her marriage he joined the Royal
Air Force.7 2
Because
of
Damuddy's
childhood, Quentin
He
cannot
about
fit
his
the world.
become
a
is
death
in
Quentin's
early
unable to mourn normally for Caddy.
loss of her into his set of assumptions
Thoughts of her dominate his life: she has
mother to him, and because he wants to possess her
wholly, his imagined lover too.
At
in
the
his
bedroom
immediately
day.
beginning of the day he narrates, Quentin wakes
reminds
thinks
him
of
about
the
weather, which
the weather on Caddy's wedding'
Faulkner uses italics to indicate Quentin's memories.
"She ran
Roses.
the
right out of the mirror, out of the banked scent.
Roses.
Mr. and Mrs. Jason Richmond Compson announce
marriage
"grief-work",
which,
if
of". (95)
or
He
embarks
on
reminiscence, common
the
to
process
all
of '
who mourn,
followed to its healthy conclusion, would prepare
him
for
in
Bereavement, describes "grief-work" in similar terms as
Freud ,
full
in
"Processes
the
lost
that
acceptance of his loss.
"Mourning
is
of
person
person.
preoccupied
her
and
Colin Murray Parkes,
Melancholia"
and
Bowlby
in
of Mourningw--as a preoccupation with thoughts of
recollection of
.
and
in
which
Parkes
the
with
all
derives from the urge to search for
comments
that
painful
loss experience occurs. 7 3
repetitious
Quentin
thoughts of Caddy and recalls his loss
its
devastating
forms.
However, his
"grief-work"
is exaggerated and distorted to the point where
it becomes harmful to his personality.
Immediately after
his
thoughts
of
Caddy's
wedding,
Quentin's mind turns to his obsessional wish for incest with
his
sister.
He
he
makes
a
confession
to his
"I said I have committed incest, Father I saidW.(95)
father:
The
reasons
his
wish
In
imagines
the
for
to
his
incestuous desires are connected with
retain his exclusive relationship with Caddy.
course
of
his "grief-work", Quentin dwells on this
fantasy, which
is symptomatic of a regression brought about
by
of
the
before
trauma
puberty
his
loss.
when,
as
a
His
mind reverts to a time
child,
he
wished
that
his
mother-figure, Caddy, was also his lover.
Incest with
promiscuity
and
conversation
Caddy seems an ideal way of preventing her
keeping
with
his
incestuous desire:
world
so
for
himself.
father,
Quentin
In an imagined
explains
his
"it was to isolate her out of the loud
that it would have to flee us of necessityW.(220)
He
speaks
of
her
from
them:
been
her
Caddy's
"if
lovers and how he could have "saved"
i could tell you we did it would have
so and then the others wouldnt be so and then the world
would roar awayW,(220)
Narration
his
for
fantasies.,
and/or
killing
occur
directly
virginity:
Quentin
He
both
seems
becomes difficult as he recalls
to contemplate incest with Caddy
himself
after
he
and Caddy, and these thoughts
has
learned
of
her
loss
of
6
then I was crying her hand touched me
she
was
lying
on her back
again
I
looking past my head into the sky
opened my knife...(l89)
...
As
his
words
become
grandmother, the
the
...
present
frenzied
loss
which
he recalls the death of his
fractured his defense against
loss of Caddy: "do you remember the day damuddy
died". ( 1 8 9 )
Quentin's
regression
narcissism, in
form
and
of
which
self-love,
his
love
for Caddy is an ambivalent
similar to the narcissism of an infant;
an identification with his sister, which is a symptom of
both
normal
"Mourning
and
and
melancholia
pathological
from
of
the
features
of
and
some from the process of regression
narcissistic object-choice to primal narcissism. 7 4
completing
another
normal
where
identification
within
Caddie
b
occurs because Quentin, instead
"grief-work" and reaching out towards
love-object, withdraws his desires for Caddy within
himself
they
Quentin
way
to
in
in
to
In
himself
and
Parkes
psychoanalytic
establish
the
himself.
identification. 7 5
written
serve
transforming
Quentin
between
seem
some
As Freud notes in
(pathological mourning) are borrowed from grief
Identification with
the
mourning.
Melancholia",
(normal mourning),
of
to a time before puberty includes
loss
turn,
narcissistic
of Caddy into a loss
a conflict is produced
Quentin
notes
a
that
literature
as
altered
much
has
by
the
been
and elsewhere, about
which people who have suffered a loss sometimes
take
into
themselves
certain aspects of the lost
N
47
person.
He notes that the phenomenon is often described but
it
is
not
fully explained, and remains as mystifying today
as
it
was
to
John
identification with
Donne. 76
Quentin's
narcissistic
Caddy, an ambivalent form of self-love,
is demonstrated in several ways.
As
he
rides
river, which
Bland,
and
saying:
it
streetcar, Quentin
sees the
reminds him of Gerald Bland's shell, then Mrs.
echoes
of
his
own
mother's voice
"What a shame that you should have a mouth like that
be
on
feminized, and
indicated
by
Harvard
ultimately
should
being
a
in
a
his
his
girls
faceW.(l30/1) His features are
attitudes
fights with
are
his
those
of
a
girl,
as
sister's lovers--after
defeated by both Dalton Ames and Gerald Bland, he ends
passing
returns
out
"like
a
girlV.(201)
Additionally, as he
to his rooms at Harvard during the course of the day
b
he
describes, Quentin notices the letter he has left for his
roommate,
endow
Shreve, and recalls the remarks of his friends who
him
with a female role, and speak of Shreve, "Calling
him my husband". (213)77
In
bereaved
attempt
as - he
of
the
order
to
person
to
overcome
must
be
a
loss
reassessed,
make this adjustment.
sees
past
the
identity
Quentin
of
the
does
not
He is lost in a void, and
and smells the river on his last day, he thinks
when
he
lay
in bed and smelt rain water and
honeysuckle:
the whole thing came to symbolize night
and unrest I seemed to be lying neither
asleep nor awake looking down a long
corridor of grey halflight where all
stable
things
had
become
shadowy
paradoxical all I had done shadows all I
had felt suffered taking visible form
antic
and
perverse
mocking without
relevance inherent themselves with the
denial of the significance they should
have affirmed thinking I was I was not
who was not was not who. ..(211)
His
loss
of identity is comparable to the state of Rider in
"Pantaloon in
Black"
like
is
of
Quentin,
his
and
life.
roles
safe
have
to
be
must
place
Rider,
unable to adjust to the new circumstances
faced
and
a new repertoire of problem
be learnt before the bereaved can again feel
and at ease.
taken
the death of his wife.
Parkes remarks that a new set of expectations
must
solutions
after
In healthy mourning, once habituation has
and
the
old
assumptions and ways of thinking
been given up, the individual is free to take stock and
make
a new start.
Making a new start means learning new
b
solutions
and
happenings
fresh
finding
within
place
in
possessions,
and
new
the
ways
to
life-space.
predict
and
control
It also means seeking a
the hierarchy, reassessing one's powers and
finding
out how one is viewed by the rest
of the world. 7 8
Quentin
itself
means
perfect
these
Faulkner
the
beginning
of
unable
change
moments
understood
deep
is
of
and
his
ideas,
to make a new start.
loss,
and he seeks to arrest the
childhood
and
For him, time
David
with
Caddy.
Faulkner
Minter writes that for
moment signalling the end of childhood and the
awareness possessed particular poignancy.
The
nostalgia that informs so much of Faulkner's fiction is
often
associated
of childhood--that is, a world
79
prior to disappointment, division and bitterness.
Anger
Quentin
and
as
mourning
loss
resentment
he
is
with
thinks
is
expressed
of her pregnancy.
towards
Caddy by
This phase of his
reflected in his thoughts as he associates with
the
little
Italian
girl
he significantly calls "sister".
His
fury is directed first towards Caddy, then towards women
in general:
Seen
the
doctor yet have you seen
Because
women so delicate so
Caddy
mysterious
Father
said.
Delicate
equilibrium of periodical filth between
two moons balanced. Moons he said full
and yellow as harvest moons her hips
thighs.
...
And
he
refers
to
his
own feelings of rejection: "Outside
outside of them always but".(159/160)
Gradually
replaced
but
by
when
turned
guilt.
he
playing
threw
it
slipped
results
in
and
and
from
in
his
narrative,
response when Caddy wets her
the stream: "Caddy took her dress off and
Then she didn't have on anything but
drawers,
fell
Benjy,
Quentin's
on the bank.
bodice
that Caddy is lost, his hostility is
jealous and cruel treatment of Caddy as a
relates
dress
a child Quentin was the aggressor,
himself. 80
Quentin's
child, and
As
realizes
against
reports
her
Quentin's feelings of anger towards Caddy are
down
his
and
Quentin
slapped her and she
in the waterW.(20)
early
treatment
of
Quentin's guilt
his
sister.
Significantly, Parkes notes that guilt and anger are thought
particularly likely to follow the dissolution of an
b
ambivalent
relationship, and,
because of their destructive
nature, to lead to pathological forms of grief. 8 1
Guilt
and
Compson, by
loss of self-esteem go hand-in-hand, and Mr.
his
denigration
of
the
past and all that it
stands
for in Quentin's eyes, intensifies Quentin's despair.
Rider,
of
"Pantaloon
worthlessness.
Like
feelings
after
his
internal
conflict.
about
being
man:
all
that
ancestors
When
he
adult
and
he
in
Black" suffers a similar sense of
Quentin,
Rider
does not redirect his
loss, and the result is an intolerable
In
particular,
Quentin feels insecure
and
functioning
in an adult world as a
values in his life is connected with his
with
fantasizes
his
childhood
that
years with his sister.
he confesses incest with Caddy to
his father, he records his father's supposed remarks to him:
And father said its because you are a
virgin: dont you see? Women are never
virgins.
Purity is a negative state and
therefore
contrary
to nature.
It's
YOU
not
nature
is
hurting
Caddy.. (14314)
.
A
speech
of
illustrates
Quentin's
towards
the
end
of his narrative
his sense of utter worthlessness in an unfeeling
world:
the strange thing is that man who is
conceived by accident and whose every
breath is a fresh cast with dice already
someday in very
loaded
against him
disgust he risks everything on a single
blind turn of a card..,he does it only
when
he has realised that even the
despair or remorse or bereavement is not
particularly
important
to
the dark
diceman..,(221)
...
These
are
some
of Quentin's last words before he ends
!
his
life.
In "Mourning and Melancholia", Freud demonstrates
that
human
this
conflict
person,
self
beings dread to give up loved ones.
identifying with
the
idea
of the lost
and in pathological mourning, the person derides the
as
identified
worthless,
energies
with
helpless,
appear
struggle.82
and
by
They handle
the
lost
loved
one
and is self-recriminating.
to
be
absorbed
in
and
feels
All of his
this
internal
Accordingly, Quentin begins to hate himself
seeks
self-punishment.
lovers, Dalton
Ames
and
His
fights with his sister's
Gerald
Bland, which he knows he
cannot win, satisfy this need.
Suicide
self-punishment.
destiny, he
Quentin 's
is
ultimate
expression
of
As he draws closer to his self-determined
experiences the manic sensations noted by Freud
are sometimes peculiar to pathological mourning. 8 3
which
b
Quentin's
that
he
energy
has
is
euphoric
manic
little
mourning
has
expended
great mental energy.
Now
made the decision to end his life, a volume of
available
readiness
reaction
Italian
for
for
his immediate use, resulting in a
all kinds of action.
Evidence of a
occurs during Quentin's association with the
girl.
When
he
is
accused
of assault he
begins to laugh:
...
Then I began to laugh
I tried to stop
the laughter, but I couldnlt...After a
while the laughter ran out.
But my
throat wouldn't quit trying to laugh,
like
retching after your stomach is
empty. ( 1 7 4 1 5 )
Quentin's
laughter
is
reminiscent of the laughter of
52
Rider
of
"Pantaloon in Black" when in prison: in both cases
manic laughter occurs at the end of the mourning process.
In
contrast
recollections
makes
the
of
final
to
the
His
compulsively,
laying
and
books
on
wraps
his
father
now
the
that
Quentin's
his
painful
suicide with manic
and
he
acts
his underwear, packing his trunk,
his cut finger, stacking his
in
paper, puts in it an envelope and
He writes two notes, one to his
Shreve, and
feeling
seals
of
helplessness
tide
of
events--steps
he follow.
and
them.
Mechanical
as Quentin makes an effort to
sense
"good" breakfast
of
key
to
and
With scrupulous attention to detail, he
replace
his
on
demand
one
for
accelerate,
it to his father.
overcome
order
out
images
part of his narration, Quentin
thoughts
table.
trunk
and
actions
first
shaving, tending
a
addresses
fragmented
preparations
precision.
bathing
the
and
impose a kind of
which his obsessions
In the euphoria of mania, he eats a
buys
the
"best" cigar he can.(l02)
desire to control his life is reminiscent of Rider
"Pantaloon
in Black" for whom suicide meant power and an
anguished expression of self-hood.
In
Fury
the
in
Appendix
1945,
which
Faulkner
he added to
writes
of
The Sound and the
Quentin's
desperate
attempts to suspend time and keep his loved one forever:
Who loved not the idea of the incest
which he would not commit, but some
presbyterian
concept
of its eternal
punishment: he, not God, could by that
means cast himself and his sister both
into hell, where he could guard her
forever and keep her for evermore intact
amid the eternal fires. But who loved
death above all, who loved only death,
loved and lived in a deliberate and
almost
perverted
anticipation
of
death,. (411)
.
Faulkner
As I Lay Dying 84 in October, 1929,
began
immediately
after
Fury,
completed
and
recalled
that
tour-de-force",
down
the
he
publication
it
"set
knowing
in
The
Sound and the
January, 1930.
Afterwards he
out
of
deliberately
before
to
write
a
he put pen to paper and set
the first word what the last word would be.
a
half before, writing
a
combination of faith and expectation and even ecstasy, but
"it was
much
not
about
Perhaps
there in
this
The
The Sound and the Fury,
A year and
book
Sound
he had felt
As I Lay Dyinq ,..because I knew too
before
I began to write it. 1185
and the Fury
was a voyage of discovery
b
for
Faulkner in which his ideas about inadequate parents and
their
disadvantaged
children, death
taking
shape.
in
portray
Now,
these
concepts
As
and
I
lay
trace
and
mourning,
Dying,
with
were
he is able to
confidence
the
psychological effects of a mother's death upon her family.
In
As
monologue
points
form
of
Bundren,
I
view
Lay Dying,
Faulkner again uses the interior
of narration, but this time fifteen shifting
are
employed.
The
central figure, Addie
around whose death the novel revolves, is given one
narrative
monologues
neighbours.
segment, placed after her death occurs.
are
those
Members
The other
of her husband, children, friends and
of the family provide the largest part
54
of
the
the
narrative segments: each monologue reveals a part of
action
and
the
family
situation
in
terms
of
the
and
The
-
intelligence, insight and bias of the narrator. 86
Several
Sound
and
similarities
the
life
exists
There
are
upholding
there
each
Fury
for
become
stern
the
honour
in
evident.
The drama of family
the Bundrens as it does for the Compsons.
no
are
As I Lay Dying
between
the
spectres
from
the
past insisting on
of ancestors to haunt the Bundrens as
Compson
family, but, like the Compsons,
Bundren is confronted with personal problems related to
relationships
The
Sound
but
in
the
sister.
within
the
and the Fury,
close-knit family circle.
the mourning motif is predominant,
I Lay Dying,
As
As in
the mother is mourned rather than
Again, inadequate parents corrode the emotional
lives of the children.
The
title
of
writing,
is
taken
Odysseus
in
the
dying
the
the
book,
from
the speech of ghostly Agamemnon to
Eleventh
woman
with
of
dog's
descended
the Odyssey: "As I lay
eyes
into
would not close my
Hades".
*'
on a
for
literal
level, this quotation can apply to the long delay of
Bundren
profound
family
level,
experience
lives
as
the
Book
eyelids
the
me
chosen before Faulkner began
concerned
in
burying
Addie's
body.
On a more
it applies to the difficulties her children
in acknowledging her death and reorganising their
around
intentions
I
a
clear
with
new
from
reality.
the
outset:
Faulkner
his
has
book
made
is
his
vitally
the ways in which the Bundren children mourn
*
their
mother's
death.
support,
the
and
unable
are
Due
children
to
to
lack
of parental love and
suffer from emotional maladjustment,
come to terms with their feelings about
their dead mother and her decaying corpse.
As
Peabody
Dr.
observation which
attends Addie's death-bed, he makes an
reflects
experience
gained
by years of
association with both the living and the dead:
I can remember how when I was young I
believed death to be a phenomenon of the
body; now I know it to be merely a
function of the mind--and that of the
minds
of
the
ones who suffer the
bereavement.(42)
Faulkner
explores
children
and,
the
function
with
of
remarkable
the
minds
insight,
of Addie's
sets
down
the
mourning process of each personality.
Each
child
reacts
differently, but all feel not only
b
the
loss but the threat to self which is an integral part of
bereavement.
Beverley
Bereavement
writes
meanings
of
death
and
all
the
are
aroused
examines
reader
mother's
Jewel,
are
The
Anatomy
of
all the personal and internalized
evoked by the death of a loved one,
by
its
minds
closeness to the self. 8 8
of
confronted
coffin;
the
the
on
Faulkner
eldest son Cash, with whom the
the
first pages as he builds his
sensitive
and
intuitive
son Darl;
the love-child; the only daughter Dewey Dell, and the
youngest
their
that
in
personal vulnerabilities associated with death
the
is
Raphael,
son
mother,
Vardaman.
Each is faced with the dead body of
a powerful aspect of the novel which Faulkner
forces
here
the reader to experience.
on
the
sick-bed
Undoubtedly Faulkner draws
memory of his grandmother, Damuddy's prolonged
and death.
Raphael comments that the altered state
of
death is frightening when first encountered, and the lack
of
breath,
response
the
stillness, the
bring
a
pain
experience.
But,
may
is
be,
death
it
that
painful
experience
of
cuts
as
important
coldness,
the
absence of
to the core of personal
the reality of the dead body
that it be incorporated into the
the bereaved.
There is a peace in the
face of death as well as finality. 8 9
The
but
of
Bundrens surround their mother in her dying moments
they
the
are not prepared emotionally for the actual moment
passage
accept
her
of life.
death
And their inability or refusal to
becomes
an
integral
part of Faulkner's
story
as
the family transport her coffin, through flood and
fire,
to
the
b
of
cemetery at Jefferson,
adequate
children,
parental
like the Compsons of
psychologically
In
Anse
Addie,
love
damaged
Bundren
the
we
and
see
alienated,
and
Because of their lack
guidance,
the
Bundren
The Sound and the Fury,
are
are unable to mourn normally,
again
isolated
the
failed father, and in
mother.
Once
more,
the
children are thrown together within the family circle.
Faulkner
Neither
others
Cash
probes
nor
outside
the relationships within this circle.
Darl
the
attempts
group.
to establish contact with
Jewel
sells
his
horse, his
dearest
possession, so that the family can continue on their
journey.
Dewey Dell allows her brother Darl to come between
herself
and
demands
her
but
offer
configuration
jealousies
lover, Lafe.
nothing
resembles
arise
relationship
if
a
in
that
of
Bundren
parents make
return.
of
member
outside
contemplated--at
The
the
The
Compsons
family
in
that
of the family establishes a
the
circle:
even
incest
is
various levels of consciousness--to satisfy
the emotional needs of the all-devouring family.
In
between
have
the
father
been
Southern
it
has
to
scene".
reflect
the
for
Faulkner
knew,
cases
of incest
daughter, brother and sister appear to
relatively
seemed
struggles
which
and
novelist,
Southern
may
South
frequent.
writes
me
Lytle,
another
in this respect: "For many years
that
In
Andrew
incest was a constant upon the
socio-historical terms, the phenomena
panic
survival
of
a
but
declining social class which
refuses
any influx of outside
b
blood.90
Perhaps
Faulkner
treatment
of
Compsons.
poor
whites,
than
family
the
bore
this
in
mind in his
The Bundrens, however, who are
share the Compsons' attitude that no-one other
members
can be trusted.
Raphael writes of the
normal adolescent:
Social development occurs requiring the
adolescent to accomplish certain social
or psychosocial tasks as demanded by his
culture
and society.
These commonly
include the development of relationships
outside the family, usually with peers,
ultimately
culminating
in
the
development or capacity for establishing
adult dyadic and family relationships of
his own; the growth of independence from
91
the family of origin;
...
The
Bundren
children
do
not
develop
in
this respect as
normal
adolescents, and
their
maladjustment can be traced
directly to their parents.
Anse
Bundren,
father
and
husband, insists throughout
the
journey that he will never be "beholden" to anyone.
yet
he
an
is
skilled at acquiring help from his neighbours in
offhanded
Tull:
"Like
already,
And
way,
fact attested to by his friend Vernon
most folks around here, I done holp him so much
cant
I
a
quit
now1'.(32)
Early
in the novel Darl
comments on his father's aversion to hard work:
There is no sweat stain on his shirt. I
have never seen a sweat stain on his
shirt.
He was sick once from working in
the sun when he was twenty-two years
old, and he tells people that if he ever
sweats, he will die.(16/7)
Throughout, Anse
rigidity.
knee
described
in terms of stasis and
Tull, in his dreams, sees him as a steer standing
deep in a pond, oblivious to the fact that somebody has
turned
As
is
the
Cash
poetic
pond on edge and he hasn't "missed it yetW.(69)
works
on
terms, notes
face,..from
behind
though
from
And
neighbour,
a
the
beyond
coffin, Darl, in characteristically
that
as the rain begins "pa lifts his
his slack-faced astonishment he muses as
time,
Samson,
upon the ultimate outrageW.(72)
speaks
about the kind of man he
believes Anse to be:
I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man
that hates moving, to get set on moving
once he does get started off, the same
as he was set on staying still, like it
aint the moving he hates so much as the
starting and the stopplng.(l08)
Anse
perseveres with the journey to bury Addie not only
because
he gave her his word, but because he wants new teeth
and
new
a
monologue
in
hardworking
get
them
Faulkner
the
the
final
which
he
words
of
describes
the
hypocritical
himself
as
honest,
and the "chosen of the Lord", are "But now I can
teeth.
That
will be a comfort.
endows
Anse
with
alienation
and
wife:
of
Mr.
~ury
.
some
of
the
It wi11".(105)
passivity
Compson, the failed father of
and
The Sound
Both stand aside from life; both find life
too difficult.
Addie
and
As
is an alienated figure, who both in life
death dominates and corrodes the emotions of the family.
a
schoolteacher before
children
"with
to
herself
his
the
She
she teaches.
little
her
marriage,
she
hates
the
She waits for the last child to leave
dirty snuffling noseW(l61), and goes down
spring "where I could be quiet and hate themW.(l61)
feels
her isolation intensely, and in an effort to make
contact with the children she whips them:
I would look forward to the times when
they faulted so I could whip them. When
the switch fell I could feel it upon my
flesh; when it welted and ridged it was
my blood that ran, and I would think
with each blow of the switch: Now you
are aware of me! Now I am something in
your secret and selfish life, who have
marked your blood with my own for ever
and ever. (162)
Addie
wishes
others
and
to
this
escape her isolation by making her mark on
way
of
communication
appears
to
be
a
substitute for the love she is unable to give.
Significantly, Addie
speaks of her own father near the
b
beginning
of
her
reminiscent
of
for
was
living
nihilism
of
radically
reason
becomes
in
Mr.
get
Jason
affects
attitude
to
life,
is one of defeat: "the reason
ready
to
stay dead. .."(l6l)
The
Compson and Addie Bundren's father
As Addie's
living is "getting ready to stay dead", her life
Jefferson
with
death, and she asks Anse to bury her
with
her
by
lying
Bundrens--only
isolation, her
own
family, rather
with
her
Interestingly,
of
The
idolizes the Bascombs, the family she
husband's
family
and
was
into.
In
Sound
than with the
"blood" family can her
permanent death be complete.
Compson
born
His
the lives of their offspring.
obsessed
Caroline
Compson,
to
both
for
narrative.
both
and the Fury
cases,
the
mothers
rejects her
attempt to
achieve a personal identity.
Addie
accepts
the
birth
of
Cash, their first son, a
b
relationship
love
is
patience
so
pain and blood, and comes to love him.
returned
and
by
Cash,
who
builds
her
coffin
Her
with
care, and suffers a broken leg uncomplainingly
that her wish to be buried in Jefferson may be fulfilled.
Because
she
relationship
birth,
is
Anse
as
she
underwent with Cash at his
realises that Anse even "in the night" had not
her
records
unable to have the same kind of masochistic
with
Addie
violated
and
of
isolation.
in
her
She therefore rejects Anse's love,
narrative
that when Darl was born she
asked
Anse to promise to take her back to Jefferson when she
died,
because
Shortly
she
knew
that
her
father had been right.
after this request is noted, ~ d d i esays of Anse: "He
did
no
not
know that he was dead, thenW.(165)
longer
her
alive.
It
She has rejected him, dominated him with
fierce will,
creature.
is
and
now
despises
him
as
a
lifeless
She becomes the dominant partner in the marriage.
not
almost
To her, Anse is
surprising
non-existent,
that
and
Darl
speaks
comments
on
of his father as
"pa's
shabby
and
aimless silhouette". (72)
The
Darl,
him
pain
does
as
and
as
and
relationships
rationalizes
"negatives"
affair
of
the
birth of the second son,
not penetrate Addie's isolation, and she rejects
well
motherless
blood
Anse, with the result that Darl feels both
fatherless.
to
the
that
the
with
Addie
demands
the
birth
of
thus
of
sacrifices human
her
her
fixations.
daughter
She
Dewey Dell
birth of Jewel, her son by her illicit love
the
Reverend
Whitfield,
and
Vardaman,
her
b
youngest
son,
she
deprived
Anse
of.
between
herself
to
herself
her
and
Reverend
causes
her
recalls
are
child
she has
divided in her mind
Her sons, Jewel and Cash, belong
But
Whitfield
of
which Jewel is the
in seeking punishment to satisfy her
of mind, Addie alienates herself from her family,
jealousy
preoccupation with
of
children
the
Anse, and the three others "are his and not
evidence.
own. peace
replaces
By this means, Addie seeks punishment for
"sin" with
living
Her
and Anse.
and
mine". (1681g2
believes,
own
that
and
her
hatred
amongst
them.
In
her
obsession she retreats into a world
where she can find protection from reality, and
when
Cora
Tull
told
her she was not a true
mother,
line,
she would think how "words go straight up in a thin
quick
and
harmless". (165)
Addie
is
self-centred,
self-pitying and self-castigating.
Because
Jewel
and
mother
his
of
their
Vardaman
normally.
mother
therefore
which
confused, unstable upbringing, Darl,
are
unable to mourn the death of their
Darl, like Quentin Compson, is rejected by
and
feels
uncertain
of
essentially
his
own
fatherless, and
is
identity, a state of mind
leads to pathological mourning, and in Darl's case, to
madness.
Jewel
and
the
deny
totems.
As
bereavement
and
loss
the
of
Vardaman
suffer identity crises also,
of
their mother by substituting animal
novel
progresses, Faulkner interprets the
each
child
as
it affects their particular
personal world.
Darl,
opening
his
the
narrator
of
the action, relates the
monologue, in which he is noticeably contrasted with
brother,
poetic
chief
where
Jewel.
Jewel
apparently wooden. 9 3
Darl reveals himself as circuitous and
is
straight-forward, single-minded and
Darl describes the cottonhouse:
Square...it
leans
in
empty
and
shimmering
dilapidation
in
the
When we reach it I turn and
sunlight
follow the path which circles the house.
steps in a single stride through
Jewel
the
window.
Still staring straight
ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into
his wooden face, he crosses the floor in
four strides with the rigid gravity of a
cigar store Indian dressed in patched
overalls and endued with life from the
hips down. ( 4 )
...
...
..
Like
Quentin
Compson, Darl
is romantic, introverted,
and
obsessed
with
the
death
end
of his short first monologue.
his
of
descriptive
family
relationships.
He cannot accept
mother, and this fact is revealed at the
style, he
In his characteristically
speaks of the boards of his mother's
coffin, which Cash is sawing:
Between
the shadowy spaces they are
yellow as gold, like soft gold, bearing
on their flanks in smooth undulations
the marks of the adze blade:...Addie
Bundren could not want a better one, a
better box to lie in. It will give her
confidence and comfort.(4/5)
Darl's
words
betray
bereavement.
the
a
Parkes
his
unwillingness
to
face
his
comments on the frequent mitigation of
pain of grieving by a disbelief in the fact of loss, and
numbness
Gregory
human
an
and
difficulty
Rochlin, in
in
accepting
Griefs and Discontents
death,94 and
comments on the
need to maintain what has been correctly designated as
"obstinate disbelief
condition
Rochlin
of
and a refusal to accept a cardinal
existencew--namely, that
death
is
final.
also
notes that where the end of life is concerned,
there
appears
to be a universal characteristic, acquired in
early
childhood
life,
to disbelieve it. 9 5
to
buy
muse
his
persistent
in
most people throughout
Parkes explains that in order
time for the "grief-work" of mourning the individual
defend
loss.96
and
himself against the complete realization of his
Darl's exaggerated persistence in the denial of
mother's death becomes the most outstanding and the most
devastating
feature
of
his mourning process.
Although his
b
mother
rejected
him
during her lifetime, without her he is
unable to prove his personal existence.
Cara
does
not
further
Both
look
Tull
go
death,
twofold:
Addie
mention
on
a
and
his
are uncertain whether Darl and
lumber trip while the family awaits
then
His reasons
he is jealous of Jewel, his mother's
to
ensure that Jewel will not attend
secondly, if
actually
of
where his mother lay dying:
Darl insists that they go.
wants
death
has
room
Anse
firstly
deathbed;
mother's
and
but
favourite, and
her
the
of his refusal to believe that she will die.
should
Addie's
into
proof
Vernon
Jewel
are
Tull records that Darl passes through the hall and
he
does
not witness his
he does not have to face the fact that
died.
Significantly, Darl avoids all
mother's sickroom.
Rather, he describes in
detail how the house tilts and how voices rise in it:
I enter the hall, hearing the voices
Tilting a
before I reach the door.
little down the hill, as our house does,
a breeze draws through the hall all the
time,
upslanting.
A feather dropped
near the front door will rise and brush
along the ceiling, slanting backward,
until
it
reaches
the
down-turning
current
at
the back door: so with
voices.
As you enter the hall, they
sound as though they were speaking out
of the air about your head.(l9)
To
Darl,
his
mother's
dreamlike and unreal.
He
He cannot tolerate reality.
is both poetic and intuitive, and in two of the most
remarkable
his
death and all associated with it is
chapters
in the book, Darl relates the events of
mother's death although he is away from home with Jewel.
Safely
able
of
separated
to
his
from her death-bed by several miles, he is
distance himself emotionally from the harsh reality
bereavement.
Faulkner
reveals
to
imagination, and
At the outset of the novel, therefore,
the
exposes
dangerous.
Moriarty
one
precipitates
often
illness
depending
Tull:
"I
thing
the
on
have
said
matter
muchW.(68)
out
that the death of a loved
emotional
the
illness;
vulnerability
personality
and
with
Cora
Darl's fertile, too vivid
insight which is both painful and
points
Darl's
personality.97
reader
I
is
of
the
kind
of
the premorbid
noted by Vernon
say again, that's ever living
Darl: he just thinks by himself too
Tull
speaks
of Darl "that was touched by
God Himself and considered queer by us mortals..."(l59)
Darl's
the
description
reactions
their
loss,
with
Jewel,
of
Cash,
images
his
words
the
family
lumber"
Dewey
Dell and Anse to
and
Faulkner uses italics for these sections.
of
describing
events of the lumber trip,
decay, disintegration and lifelessness, and
is
about
to
embark.
He speaks of "The tilted
which "gleams dull yellow, water soaked and heavy as
the
broken
wheel", and notes that "about the
...a runnel of yellow neither water nor
swirls ,..."(48) He describes Jewel: "Jewel's hat
limp about his neck, ...he pries with a slipping
shattered
droops
Vardaman,
death-scene, detailing
foreshadow events of the funeral trip upon which
lead,...above
earth
Addie's
is interspersed with his own remarks while away
Interestingly, Darl,
uses
of
spokes
two-by-four,
with
a piece of rotting log . . . " (51)
His words
b
i
bring
to
mind the coffin floundering in the flooding river,
Jewel's attempts
funeral
cart.
physically
who
to
save
it,
and the broken down Bundren
Significantly in these sections Jewel is the
active
completes
member of the duo, contrasting with Darl,
his
psychic revelations and his monologue by
pronouncing that his mother is dead.
The
away
drama of the coffin-making, recorded by Darl whilst
with Jewel, is played out against a back-drop of storm,
darkness,
is
lightning
foreshadowed
the
vagaries
of
Greek
tragedy
face
of
the
of
this emphasis on weather conditions and
nature--from the start Faulkner exposes in
beyond
man's
control.
Darl
poetically
the rain as "myriad" and "fluctuant", and portrays
nightmare
perceives
Again the funeral trip
fashion the nature of human limitation in the
forces
describes
by
and heavy rain.
his
scenes
father's
with
startling
sensitivity.
He
limited mental capacity, and speaks
Anse's face, streaming with rain: "It is as though upon a
face
carved
by
a savage caricaturist a monstrous burlesque
of all bereavement flowed".(73/4)
At
the
conclusion
of this monologue, Darl reveals his
uncertainty as to his personal existence:
In
a
strange
room you must empty
yourself for sleep. And before you are
emptied for sleep what are you. And
when you are emptied for sleep, you are
not.
And when you are filled with
sleep, you never were. I don't know who
I am. I don't know if I am or not.(76)
Hearing
rain
strike
the
loaded
wagon
outside,
interprets its "wasness" (for rain is only heard as it
he
ceases
to
wagon
fall) as a symbol of his mother's death: "Yet the
'is' because
will
not be.
Addie
the
Bundren will not be.
be.
And
for
sleep
in
makes
an
wagon is 'was' Addie Bundren
And Jewel 'is' because when the wagon is 'was'
must
he
when
then
a
And Jewel 'is', so Addie Bundren
I must be, or I could not empty myself
roomW.(76)
strange
In this passage, Darl
effort to believe his mother is alive.
As long as
can keep her alive, his own existence as a human being is
beyond question. 9 8
Thus
Darl temporarily protects himself from the painful
effects
of
grief
pattern
of
response
adolescent
within
there
identity
loss
who
identity
the
may
and
self
be
one
is
to
strong
in
Raphael
may
notes, this
be reinforced by
If there is great uncertainty
who and what one is or will become,
ego
The
As
bereavement
issues.
about
choice.
brings
mourning.
pressures
to consolidate
some
threat to the ego that major object
bereavement heightens the uncertainty about
now that one is "fatherless" or "motherless" or
who one is without the one who has died. 99
Both
of
The
death
Quentin
of "Pantaloon in Black" and Quentin Compson
Sound and the Fury
of
unable
are
Rider
to
Mannie
replace
cannot
able
results
and
suffer a loss of identity.
in a void within Rider that he is
his
reassemble
The
self-structure
is fractured.
his life without Caddy.
Neither
to face a future which demands a reorganization of
lifestyle built on a new reality.
As
Darl
and Jewel return to the house, Darl taunts his
brother
about
mutual
and
bond
with
of
mother's
affection
uncanny
love-child
aware
their
death.
Darl is aware that a
existed between Jewel and Addie,
intuition
realises
that
Jewel
Addie and the Reverend Whitfield.
of
is
the
He is also
of Jewel's identification of his mother and his horse:
"Jewel's mother
is a horseN.(89)
that
enables
face
of bereavement, and his success is contrasted to Darl's
failure:
Jewel
"I
cannot
mother". (89)l o o
Addie's
end
coffin
which
to
he
keep
It is this identification
love
his mental equilibrium in the
my
mother
Symbolically,
on
to
as
I
have
brothers
lift
because
the
no
the wagon, it seems to Darl that the
carries has no weight.
His anxiety continues
to build as the journey to Jefferson gets under way.
Anse
ma
records
laying
in
her
embarrassment.
Darl,
of
at his feetW(99), much to Anse's
coffin
He believes it is a mark of disrespect.
Sound and the Fury,
to
his loss.
is
finally
novel.
But
taken
is
that
the
entirely
absent
asylum
in the final pages of the
in "Mourning and Melancholia" that the
of
melancholia
(pathological
tendency it displays to turn into mania.
many
in
an
peculiarity
the
periods,
regular
to
notes
remarkable
adds
is undergoing a manic reaction
His laughter increases and intensifies when he
Freud
mourning)
He
Darl begins to laugh "with his dead
like Rider of "Pantaloon in Black" and Quentin Compson
The
most
that
cases
run their course in intermittent
intervals
or
alternation
only
of
of
very
which signs of mania may be
slight.
melancholic
Others
show that
and manic phases which
has
been
classified
laughter
in
monologue
world
the
as
wagon
dreamlike
the
and
retreats
motion
where
insanity.
Darl's
appears to subside and, as his next
suggests, he
where
circular
of
for a time into an unreal
the
wagon
is
soporific
and
"time and not space" decreases between
Jewel on horseback and the cart itself.(lOl)
As
the
intensely
cortege reaches the flooded river, Darl becomes
introspective
and
he describes the river and its
attendant foliage in terms of death and loss:
Above
the
ceaseless
surface
they
stand--trees,
cane,
vines--rootless,
severed from the earth, spectral above a
scene
of
immense
yet circumscribed
desolation filled with the voice of the
waste and mournful water.(135)
He
not
is
obsessed with the idea that if his mother's body does
exist,
denying
neither
her
Swiggart
death,
comments
in
Darl's
to
echo
his
death.
If he can persist in
then he possesses an identity himself.
that
mother's
grave
"dying" become
away
b
the trip to Jefferson is associated
implicit
from
and
deny
coffin
to
float
her
belief
that
only
in
a
the Bundrens can her process of
complete. l o *
burial
In
order
to prevent her
death, Darl attempts to allow Addie's
away.
Jewel
and
Darl
are once more in
Jewel ardently desires to transport Addie's body
opposition:
across
Jefferson
her
mind with Addie's permanent death, and Darl seems
Jefferson
safely
does
in
desperately
the
river
in order that it may be buried at
accordance with her long-felt wishes; and Darl
wishes
to
lose
the
body
in
the
torrent.
Evidence
save
is
Addie's
frenziedly
not
supplied
body.
"hollers"
succeed.
by
Vardaman
He
relates
to
of Darl's reluctance to
how
he
repeatedly
and
Darl to "catch her", but Darl does
Vernon Tull relates how Darl jumps out of the
wagon, but Jewel stays with it to protect the coffin.
In
a
chapter
demonstrates
face
at
his
near
total
Addie's death.
Armstid's
little
saying
to
reports
bursts
and
that
Vardaman's
the novel Darl again
and obstinent refusal to
he
secret
took
and
murmurous
Vardaman to listen.
In
questions
about what his mother is
talking
to, Darl says that she is
who
she
is
talking
to
God
and
calling
reports
that
and
that his mother "talks in
of
and
he
of
inability
he
trickling
response
end
As the coffin lies under the apple tree
place,
bubbling"(202),
the
on
Vardaman
Him to help her.
hear
her
turning
He even
on
her
b
side.(204/5)
The
image
the
murmurous
bubblingw--are an
monologue
Addie
as
of
decay
describe
impression
sounds
of
the
she
rotting
uncanny
conjures
up
describes
that
at
Darl
body--"secret
echo
the
chooses
of
to
and
the sensory
beginning
of
her
her quiet place to think "with
the
water bubbling up and away and the sun slanting quiet in
the
trees
and
the
quiet
smelling
of
damp
and
rotting
leaves". (161)
In
barn
a
at
further
Armstid's
night.
As
body,
the
Darl
attempt
place
reports
hostility
at denial Darl sets fire to the
where Addie's coffin lies for the
the
between
events of the lodging of the
himself
and
Jewel
becomes
increasingly
evident.
Darl's
thoughts
inner
obsessive
again;
face
quality:
that
and
between
body
about
"He had
bold,
eyes
Faulkner
surly,
were
two
uses
his
that
italics
to
denote
brother, which assume an
wooden
look on his face
high-colored rigid look like his
colours of wood . . . " (
173)
Tension
the brothers increases as Jewel rescues his mother's
once
more,
expression
attempts
of
to
watching.
this time from fire.
"furious
Darl reports Jewel's
unbelief"(208), and
his
frantic
haul the coffin from the flames as he stands by
Addie's
prophecy voiced to Cora Tull, that Jewel
save me from the water and from the fire" (160) is thus
"will
fulfilled.
It
seems that Darl has inherited his mother's prophetic
qualities--he
and
Jewel
Addie
return
assume
unfolds.
Armstid
voice
forecasts
the
Again
remarks
like
he
himself".(l81)
from
the
remarks:
be
to
their trip--and between them he and
role
of the seer in the Greek drama that
Faulkner
on
was
his
himself
Darl's
personality:
detachment, speaking "in that
listening
and
expresses
never give a durn
a wish to separate
As he assists the futile attempts of
"set" Cash's
cement, he
"If you could just ravel out into time.
That would
broken
leg
Darl's desire to be outside of time recalls
Compson's
comments:
odd
just
Darl
emphasises
with
nice."(198)
Quentin
his mother will die before he
from
time and reality.
family
that
wish
"That Christ
to
escape
its
confines.
Quentin
was not crucified: he was worn away
by a minute clicking of little wheelsW.(TSAF 94)
Darl is
'
becoming
progressively withdrawn, and shows a marked loss of
interest
in life, a condition of the bereaved noted by Freud
in
"Mourning and Melancholia". l o 3 His jealousy of Jewel
is
accompanied
experienced
the
by
in
and
adds
pathological
distinguishing
to
the
loss
mourning.
mental
of self-esteem
Freud remarks that
features
of
melancholia
(pathological mourning)
are a profoundly painful dejection,
abrogation
in
capacity
of
the
speech,
of
interest
the
outside world, loss of the
to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering
self-regarding
Darl
feelings. lo4
betrays
his
In
nihilistic,
the following
defeatist
attitude
about the meaninglessness of existence:
How do our lives ravel out into the
no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures
earthly
recapitulant:
echoes of old
compulsions with no-hand on no-strings;
in
sunset
we
fall
into
furious
attitudes, dead gestures of dolls. Cash
broke his leg and now the sawdust is
running out. He is bleeding to death is
Cash. (197)
His
words
startlingly
resemble
the words of Mr. Compson's .
advice to Quentin:
Father was teaching us that all men are
just accumulations dolls stuffed with
sawdust swept up from the trash heaps
where all previous dolls had been thrown
away the sawdust flowing from what wound
in
what side that not for me died
not. 105
Quentin's
the
negativism
attitude
struggle
with
and loss of self-worth, due in part to
his father,
comparable to Darl's.
Both
the distorted, exaggerated "grief-work" often
experienced in pathological mourning.
But
anger
Darl's
which
phrases
dejection is accompanied increasingly by an
is
Darl
expressed
mainly
towards
Jewel.
In taut
questions Jewel once more about his parentage:
"'Jewel', I say, 'whose son are you?'", and "Your mother was
a
horse, but who was your father, Jewe1?I1(202) His anger is
directed
at
Jewel because he is jealous of the relationship
between
Addie and Jewel and because Jewel is anxious to bury
Addie.
But
loss
in
anger
cases
of pathological mourning.
the
problem
of
understanding
directed
is one of the most frequent responses to
in
understanding pathological mourning is that
not
the
against the lost
displacement
Bowlby notes that
towards
simple
of
hostility
object, but its repression and/or
other
expends
presence
objects,
including
the
self. lo6
Darl
However,
grief
remarks,
it seems that the expression of anger often changes
is
a
his pent-up hostility on Jewel.
process,
not a state, and, as Parkes
with
the passage of time. lo7 Such is the case with Darl,
and,
as
in
an
the
altercation with a "town fellow" who draws a knife on
him.
After
state
of
square
cortege approaches Jefferson, he defends Jewel
settling
mind
his
argument,
Darl return to a calm
where he is able to observe and describe the
monument
concludes
the
and
courthouse
of
Jefferson,
and
he
narrative with an objective, unbiased view of
Jewel as he squats on the back wheel of the wagon,
Intense
demonstrated
the
guilt
by
becomes
the
fact
a component of Darl's mourning,
that he lies all night on top of
coffin after Jewel has rescued it from the burning barn.
Vardaman
believes
awayn(214), but
that
Darl
reasons:
he
does
because
he
has
protects
this
Addie's
to
"keep the cat
body
for
several
tried
to
destroy
experiences
a
her
remains;
and
guilt which is linked to
profound ambivalence in the relationship he had with his
mother
when
she
rejected, and
association
the
does
not want her to be buried; he feels guilt
overwhelmingly, he
the
Darl
was
hate
with
alive.
had
her,
During his childhood he felt
become the motivating force in his
Raphael explains that in such cases
death seems a fulfillment of the bereaved's wishes, and,
as a result, the bereaved must punish himself. 108
To
to
the
delay
family
end, Darl denies his mother's death.
the
at
Jefferson
and
suggests that the
Cash to Dr. Peabody first: "She'll wait,
take
already
burial
He wishes
waited
nine
days". (224)
With
his
She's
strange
b
clairvoyance
shovel, an
was
Darl
is
awareness
aware
his father will borrow a
that
which prompts Cash to remark that "it
just like he knowed, like he could see through the walls
and into the next ten minutes". (226)
But
Jackson
fight
Darl
Asylum.
which
laughing.
by
The
in
does
not
prophesy
his incarceration at the
His family aids in his capture, and as the
ensues
subsides, Darl
sits
on
the
ground
The manic symptoms known to Freud and experienced
both Rider of "Pantaloon in Black" and Quentin Compson of
Sound
the
assures
and the Fury
final
him
stages
that
begin to manifest themselves; again
of
Jackson
the
will
mourning process.
be
better
for
When Cash
him, Darl
repeats
the
hardly
word
say
it
"better", and,
for
laughing.
according
to
Cash, can
Cash reports that he sits on
the ground, laughing and laughing.
He
continues
take
him
to
link
between
essential
to
laugh
Jackson.
when he is put on the train to
Interestingly, Rochlin speaks of the
denial and mania, and states that denial is an
mechanism in the elations or mania, functioning as
a defense against the underlying depression. 109
Darl's
possesses
burial,
able
final
an
he
monologue
identity.
must
face
illustrates
Unable
her
to
prevent
his
mother's
death, a reality that he is not
to tolerate and remain sane.
happen
to
that he no longer
himself
He therefore narrates the
events
which
as the actions of a third
person
"Darl", effecting a disassociation with his physical
self,
His
imagined duality is echoed in his description of
the
two men on the train, one of them sitting beside him and
the
other
men
to
Dewey
the
sitting
two
sides
on
the seat facing him,
of
a
He relates the
coin, and connects this idea with
Dell, his sister, "two-faced", who has betrayed him to
authorities.
Cash
comments
on
the
concept
of
the
duality of man:
But I ain't so sho that ere a man has
the right to say what is crazy and what
aint
It's like there was a fellow in
every man that's done a-past the sanity
or the insanity, that watches the sane
and the insane doings of that man with
the
same
horror
and
the
same
astonishment. (228)
.
Darl,
in
keeping
with
Bundren
tradition, has
been
.
sacrificed
Jackson
to
the
relieves
needs
them
of
of
the
family.
Sending him to
embarrassment and satisfactorily
explains the burning of Armstid's barn to the authorities.
Images
a
of
Jewel, portrayed as rigid and wooden, become
distinguishing
feature
As I Lay Dyinq
of
progresses.
Darl
wooden-backed,
wooden-facedW(89), with
high-colored
colors
sits
of
on
rigid
describes
look
wood"(173),
his
horse
like
and
like
him
his
as
as the novel
"Motionless,
"that bold, surly,
face
and eyes were two
Dewey Dell observes that "Jewel
they
were both made out of wood,
looking straight aheadW.(ll6)
But
Jewel's
Jewel's
outward
nature.
portraying
Jewel
demeanor
conceals
a
vibrant,
passionate
Faulkner paints tableaux which emphasise moments of
stasis, followed
a
differs from that of his father,
Where Anse's appearance reflects a lack of character,
Anse.
In
rigidity
by
bursts
of violent action, effectively
the struggle for supremacy between man and horse.
memorable passage, Faulkner, through Darl, relates how
is
illusion
"enclosed
of
of a snake".
wings"
by a glittering maze of hooves as by an
and "moves with the flashing limberness
Jewel and the horse are described as being
rigid, motionless, terrific, the horse
back-thrust
on
stiffened,
quivering
legs, with lowered head; Jewel with dug
heels, shutting off the horse's wind
with one hand, with the other patting
the horse's neck in short strokes myriad
and caressing, cursing the horse with
obscene ferocity.(l2)
.
The
relationship between
reflected
Before
she
in
her
his
mother
is
death,
Addie
both accepted and rejected Jewel:
him as her love-child, the result of her brief
with Reverend Whitfield; and rejected him because she
could
only
relate to others by brutality--a relationship of
"blood"--an
treatment
Jewel
example
of
her
of
which
is
schoolchildren.
seen
in
the
sadistic
In his single narrative,
openly expresses his devotion to his mother: "It would
just
be
down
the hill at their facesW.(l5)
me
his
horse
his
mother:
and her on a high hill and me rolling the rocks
as Darl says, "ma always whipped him and petted
However, Addie's
strengthen
behaviour
deserved
And Jewel's treatment of
mirrors the treatment he receives at the hands of
himW.(l7)
to
and
the relationship between Jewel and his horse.
accepted
affair
Jewel
to
the
him
bond
is
punishment,
rejection, by whipping, serves
between mother and son because her
interpreted
successfully
by
his childish mind as
alleviating his guilt at
being the favoured son.
Like
but,
Darl,
unlike
Jewel
Darl,
attempts to deny his mother's death,
the
phases of mourning through which he
passes do not result in insanity.
The
ana
lumber
Jewel
anticipated
agrees
to
Tull,
that
her
trip
from
by
go
their
Darl
after
his
which
for
results in the absence of Darl
mother's
his
own
deathbed
is
eagerly
reasons, but Jewel only
he persuades himself, with the help of
mother is not really very sick, a denial of
illness and an indication that he is not willing to face
the death which to others seems inevitable.
Jewel's
anger,
exaggerated,
reactions
speaks
word
consistently intensifies as Faulkner traces his
to
in
the
a
"It's
his
he
walks
He
of
Addie,
Cash reports that Jewel
sympathises with his mother before she
laying
damn,.."(l8)
on
loss
"harsh, savage" voice and is unable to say the
"coffin",
dies:
an aspect of his mourning which becomes
As
dying
there, watching
he
Cash
whittle on that
and Darl leave, Jewel does not look in
mother to say goodbye.
Uncharacteristically,
around the house rather than through it, deviating
from
his
usual
one
point
to
practice of walking in a straight line from
the
next,
an
idiosyncrasy which Faulkner,
through
Darl,
takes
pains to describe in the first chapter
of
novel.
By
circling the house he can avoid Addie's
the
sick-room and need not confront her condition,
L
As
In
a
Darl taunts him, Jewel resorts to vicious swearing.
short monologue, Darl and Jewel confront each other as
they
return
which
from
circle
mother
has
that's
dead".
youW.(88)
because
words:
that
the
over
died.
he
trip: Darl points out the buzzards
the
Bundren farm, indicating that their
Darl
And
Darl
their
jeers:
Jewel
then
"But
replies:
it's
"Goddamn you
...Goddamn
states that he cannot love his mother
has no mother, and adds the following remarkable
"Jewel's mother is a horseW.(89)
with
not your horse
his
unusual
Darl's words reveal
perceptive powers he has discovered
meaning of the relationship between Jewel and his horse.
Furthermore,
he
understands
that
in
order
to
survive
emotionally, Jewel
must
transfer
his
affections
to
his
horse.
As
onto
him
Anse
the
in
wagon,
upon
and
his
one
on
anger
teethm.(91)
he
depended,
is
person.
The
there
before,
on
died.
bereaved
to
a
anger
be
just
Mannie
Raphael
due
may
of
feelings
reacted with intense anger
notes
that the anger felt by the
sense of being deserted by the dead
may appear as irritability with others,
rage
more
cataclysmic
guilt.
fury
wagon
than
~
as
bed,
the
bereaved has felt
It is unconsciously linked to
destructiveness
of
as Rider in "Pantaloon in
and
seemingly irrational.
fantasies
Jewel is frantic with grief,
is that of the bereaved who has lost a loved
depended
she
the
brothers struggle to load the coffin
Jewel's anger escalates and Darl describes
his
whom
Black"
and
the
equine terms: "his face suffocated, furious, his lip
lifted
when
and
and
Jewel's
killing,
anger
stirring
erupts
up
into
he hurls the coffin single-handed into
"his
face
suffused
with
fury
and
despairU.(91)
His violent action is reminiscent of Rider of
"Pantaloon
Black", who in the anger of bereavement hauls
in
a log onto a truck with his bare hands.
Bowlby
notes
that
of
the
several
different
and
incpmpatible
responses to loss, anger is the most frequent.
He
as a direct result of the frustration caused by
sees
loss.
rule,
it
Anger
and
certain
expressed
the
tendency
in
of
conditions appears
one direction or another is the
sorrow
to
be
to
arouse anger under
part of the fundamental
.
constitution of the mind. 111
At
an
the
anger
which
movements
his
in
the
barn
where
His
the horse is tethered, intending to ride to
When
his
family
not
"like
with shock and numbness.
the wagon with the coffin, Jewel heads directly for
the
does
combined
Vardaman records that as Anse and Cash prepare to
Jefferson.
all
is
suggest that he feels isolated from the reality of
loss.
ride
outset of the journey to Jefferson, Jewel feels
father
reminds him that Addie wished
to travel in the wagon with her body, Jewel
reply.
Rather,
he looks at his father with eyes
marbles", seemingly, in a state of shock, unseeing and
unfeeling.(97/8)
speaks
of
Darl
Jewel
takes
making
up
his
Vardaman's
way
narrative and
towards
the
barn
"wooden-backed", and entering it without looking back,(97/8)
Raphael
comments
shutting
that
out give the bereaved time to mobilize resources so
the
death
gradually,
depended.
a
and
Jewel
the
needs
loss
time
may
be
dealt
with
desperately, and must
to the reality of life without Addie on whose love he
adjust
as
that these moments or hours of numbness or
Until
defense,
continue
his
he is able to reorganize his life he must,
shut
out
his
loss.
But
he can and does
love-hate relationship, substituting his horse
for his mother.
The
Addie's
identity
death
conversation
reasons
that
crises of three of the brothers following
is
reported
centering
on
by
Jewel
Vardaman
and
who
records
his horse,
a
Vardaman
since Darl pronounces that Jewel's mother is a
horse,
his
his
own
brother,
Darl
mother
his
counters
reveals
that
can be a fish, but because Jewel is
mother
will have to be a horse too.
Vardaman's words
he
is
aware
with
that
a
Jewel's
But
statement which
father
was
the
Reverend
Whitfield and not Anse: "If pa is your pa, why does
your
ma
have
to
Vardaman
does
not understand, but asks Darl what his mother
is,
to
which
therefore
does
be
a
horse
question
just
Darl replies he hasn't a mother and
does not exist.
When Vardaman persists that Darl
exist, Darl replies: "...I
for
one
woman
acknowledges
perceives
the
its
time--thus
to
am not is.
foal". (95)
relationship
uniqueness--a
proving
to
because Jewel's is?"
Here
between
Are is too many
Darl
intuitively
Addie and Jewel and
mare only nurses one foal at a
himself
that
he
has
no mother or
siblings. 113
Jewel
rides
his
horse and catches up with the wagon.
He
is determined that his mother will be buried in Jefferson
as
she
will
wished,
when Cash tells Darl that Addie's body
be smelling in a couple of days, Darl, aware of Jewel's
fierce
determination, but
mother,
the
and
replies:
ever
right
"You
reluctant
might
himself
to
bury his
tell Jewel thatW,(l02) Cash,
practical son, adds that the coffin isn't balanced
for a long ride, and Darl retorts that Jewel should be
told that too.
Jewel,
circumstance
desires
to
angry
over
regain
and
shocked by the loss of his mother, a
which he had no control, now passionately
control
of
the situation and carry out
Addie's
wishes
alleviate
his
robot-like
In
relates
as
the
though
that
swaggering
be
sorrow--another
to
wooden-faced
may
He acts in an attempt to
defense--and
his mechanical
manic euphoric laughter of Darl, Jewel
he
is
Jewel
in
powerful
"sits
the
and
in control.
lightly,
saddle,
the
poised,
broken
hat
Darl
upright,
raked
at a
angle". (102) Raphael remarks that such behaviour
understood
helplessness
and
as
"adult", as
it
restitution
for
his
to
mother
a
fear.
identification with
exercise
all odds.
actions constitute a manic reaction to his loss.
contrast
behaves
against
the
reaction
It
dead
may
person
were, in the child.
formation
also
to
be
keep
a
against
partial
alive
the
But Jewel makes
his loss by transferring his affection from
his
horse, a creative act over which he can
control, hopefully
mitigating the risk of further
L
deprivation.
As
look
at
he
passes
his
the
family.
to
on horseback, Jewel does not
His horse kicks up mud which lands on
the
coffin,
the
coffin maker, carefully removes the dirt with a tool and
washes
but
wagon
the
stain
anxious
to
ensure
totally
involved
his
horse,
which
Jewel this is of no importance.
with
wet
that
at
leaves.
But
Cash,
Jewel, although
Addie's body reaches Jefferson, is
this
point with his relationship with
must continue in order to fill the aching
void in his life left by the loss of Addie.
In
the
monologue
sick-bed, Jewel
narrated
expresses
while
Addie
lies
on her
strong guilt feelings, and these
are
connected
favoured
with
child.
his
As
position
the
in the family as Addie's
favourite, he wishes to enjoy an
exclusive
relationship with
his
jealously
from
blames others because of their
encroachment
others.
on
his
He
mother
and
protect
her
mother's life, suggesting that without
their involvement with her she would not be dying:
If it had just been me when Cash fell
off of that church and if it had just
been me when pa laid sick with that load
of wood fell on him, it would not be
happening
with every bastard in the
county coming in to stare at her...(l5)
But
Jewel's
bolster
criticism
his
own
his
illegitimacy
was
not
by
the
Addie's
of
others
self-image,
and
caused
her
death.
notes
the
This fear, nurtured
guilt
and
of hate which, now that she is
an intolerable suspicion that he
her condition, and will be the eventual cause of
Parkes,
the
of
concentrating
tolerable
attempt to
behaviour towards him as a child--"whipping" and
that
death
an
damaged by the realisation of
idol he wished her to be.
produce
has
also
by an underlying fear that his mother
"pettingN--fostered feelings
dying,
is
bereaved sometimes feels that he has caused
his
on
than
commenting on this aspect of mourning,
loved
one.
The
self-persecutory
thinking
about
delusions, which is more
his
loss.
self-persecution
anger,
and constitutes a defense against his sorrow.
tend
to
undoubtedly
In the case of
Jewel,
further
is
loss may be denied by
a component of his
Parkes
observes that individuals who are bereaved sometimes
intensify their neurotic patterns,
and Jewel
6
falls
into
family
and
novel
as
this
category.
Faulkner,
friends, portrays
through the eyes of
Jewel from the outset of the
outwardly rigid but inwardly passionate, and it is
noticeable
that,
at certain stages in his mourning, Jewel's
neurotic behaviour becomes exaggerated.
As
the
cortege
description
of
concealing
reaches
Jewel
energy
and
ready
the
his
to
be
flooding
horse
river,
reflects
galvanized
a
into
Darl's
stasis
instant
action:
Jewel sits the horse at the off rear
wheel.
The horse is trembling, its eye
rolling wild and baby-blue in its long
pink face, its breathing stertorous like
groaning.
He
sits
erect,
poised,
looking quietly and steadily and quickly
this way and that, his face calm, a
little pale, alert.(135)
As
his anger subsides, Jewel, at this point, appears to
identify
with
protection
his
he
from
child,
is
the
the
the
idea
of Addie, a subtle and unconscious
the pain of his loss.
"its eye
...baby-blue
The horse has become
in its long pink face", and
parent, calm and in control.
characteristics of
his
mother's
He assumes some of
personality
as
he
withdraws
and
isolates himself from the conversation of his
brothers.
As
they sit "talking quietly of old security and
old
trivial
things"(l36), Jewel, with
determination, rides
across
the
chips
in
into
the
ahead.
a
quiet,
steely
As he leads the funeral wagon
river, Darl describes his eyes as "two bleached
his
face" (138),
current
"his
and
as he forces the horse down
swift alert calm gaze"(l40) surveys
b
the
with
scene.
He
appears
superhuman
skill
aloof, has assumed authority, and
and
strength
he saves his mother's
coffin from the torrent.
After
this dramatic episode Darl observes the attention
that
Jewel once more lavishes on his horse: in an attempt to
deny
his
loss, Jewel has resumed his relationship with the
animal.
grooms
In
it,
Armstid's barn he lovingly feeds the animal and
"cursing
the
caress"(l74), striking
curry-comb.
horse
it
in
a
whisper
of obscene
on the face with the back of the
He apparently obtains comfort from this bizarre
interplay, which
resembles the emotional relationship which
existed between his mother and himself before she died,
Transference
important
by
this
of
his
affections
proves
to
be
an
Jewel's mourning, and the time "bought"
method of denial enables him to face the reality of
Addie's
of
phase
of
death.
mules,
When Anse sells Jewel's horse to buy a team
Jewel
reacts
violently
by
galloping away in a
Armstid recalls that Jewel
frenzy.
...
But
unhitched the horse and got on it.
It was moving when he come into the
saddle and by the time he was on it they
was tearing down the road like the Law
might have been behind them. They went
out of sight that way, the two of them
looking like some kind of a spotted
cyclone. (182)
Jewel dutifully takes the horse to Mr. Snopes, the
buyer,
and
proceeds
returns, walking,
on
its
relationship with
sombre
to
join
journey.
the
The
wagon
need
as
for
it
his
his horse is now less that his compulsion
b
to
serve
in
Jefferson
body
his
and
as,
in
the
barn.
the
fury,
he
rescues
her from Armstid's
His anger erupts as he faces the townsmen on
Kill the son of a bitchW.(227)
Jewel's
others
of
stage of the journey, and he shows Darl no mercy:
"Kill him.
he
Jewel's desire to save Addie's
her in Jefferson becomes evident once again,
fever
final
and
as she wished.
bury
a
blazing
family, coupled with his desire to bury Addie
anger
directs
dominates
the
process of his mourning,
it towards Addie for deserting him; towards
for invading her life, especially Darl who also knows
secret
of
his
parentage;
imagined
cause of her death,
a
he
horse
is
and
towards himself as the
By identifying his mother with
able to make a gradual mental adjustment to
his loss and so retain his sanity.
.
The
bereaved
child, Vardaman, of
As I Lay Dying,
some
respects resembles Benjy Compson, of
Fury
.
Like
which
he
in
is
disjointed
times,
The Sound and the
Benjy, he cannot comprehend the tragic events
reason, although
the
in
seems
involved, but, unlike Benjy, he is able to
often
nature
in
of
incoherent.
his
As a result of
thoughts, his narration, at
However,
his
thought
patterns
clearly
reveal
death.
In ten narrative sections Vardaman relates the story
as
he
Jewel's
sees
it.
single
difference
in
the
a confused way.
process by which he mourns his mother's
This
quantity
chapter.
the
of
Faulkner
personalities
of
words
thus
the
contrasts with
emphasises
two
the
brothers.
Vardaman -is able
Jewel's
silence
however,
totems,
deny
and,
to
express
conceals
Addie's
by
a
his thoughts outwardly where
an inner turmoil.
Both brothers,
death by identifying her with animal
bizarre
transference of affection to a
fish, Vardaman is able to sustain his loss.
The
text,
but
remarks
he
precise age of Vardaman cannot be inferred from the
it
that
seems
likely
that
he
is quite small: Tull
the fish Vardaman catches is "Durn nigh big as
isW(29), and notes "how low down on the door the knocking
wasn(66) when Vardaman flees to his house after his mother's
death.
The
misleading:
obviously
realise
apparent
where
beyond
that
perceptions
literary
descriptive
ability
passages
of
Vardaman
appear
which
is
are
Vardaman's capabilities, the reader should
Faulkner acts as the interpreter of Vardaman's
by
transforming
his mental images into words.
For example, Vardaman speaks of horses as
, unrelated
scattering
of
an
components--snuffings
and
stampings ;
smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac
hair;
an illusion of a co-ordinated
whole of splotched hide and strong bones
legs, a rolling eye, a gaudy
within
splotching like cold flames...(55)
...
In
spite of such passages, the reader is led to believe that
Vardaman is much younger than his brothers.
The
the
most
exaggerated
transference
of
Interestingly, Moriarty
before
literal
they
have
knowledge
a
of
phase
his
notes
of Vardaman's mourning is
affections
to
that
children,
young
a
fish.
long
concept of death, have a very real and
the fact of death as learned from the
.
observation
of
reassuring
about
dogs,
cats,
theoretical
birds,
and
etc.
do
not
develop
a
However,
philosophical
are not yet meaningful to them.
children
death
is
abstract,
death
that
dead
ideas
Research shows
comprehensive concept of
until approximately age nine, but, in some ways, death
more
real
conceptual
Vardaman
to
way
young children in a literal rather than a
than
it
may
be
for
most adults. 116
is obviously used to catching and killing fish, and
has
faced
with
the
knowledge
the death of farm animals, so is quite conversant
knowledge
of
the
of
death
long-term
in
animals.
effect
that
But he has no
the death of his
mother will have upon him.
Vardaman
slings
the
is proud of his killing, and feels manly as he
fish
to
the ground, grunts "Hah", and, as Tull
notices,
"spits over his shoulder like a manW.(29)
to
the
show
bravado
feel
a
as
fact
is
fish
a
to
his
mother
in
He plans
her sick-room.
His
defense against the helplessness he begins to
he faces the possibility that his mother might die,
that
he is constantly reminded of by his family and
In
life
Addie
of
her
friends.
all
Vardaman
family
desperately
actions.
The
in
mind.
his
rejected Vardaman, just as she rejected
wrth the exception of Jewel.
tries
to
obtain
Therefore
her approval of his
fish and Addie die together and are connected
Vardaman
is
compelled
to
consider
the
fundamental question of existence.
Thoughts of death are commonplace to the child and are
b
a
matter
that
of
it
deep
would
consideration
be
to him.
unreasonable
to
expect
entertains
adult conceptions of death.
death
embossed
are
emotion
at
vicissitudes
with
his
do
every
disposal,
not
serve
Rochlin observes
Rather, the facts of
conscious
and
that the child
and unconscious
these
psychological
the ends of reality, but rather
quite opposite ends. 117
Addie's
death
is a traumatic experience for Vardaman.
Her last glance is towards her youngest:
She looks at Vardaman; her eyes, the
life
in them, rushing suddenly upon
them; the two flames glare up for a
steady instant.
Then they go out as
though someone had leaned down and blown
upon them. (47)
An
important
young
the
point
child being forced to confront the external reality of
dead
living
family
person
system, and,
employ
death,
macabre
that
as
the
consistently
journey
imaginary
child
models
wishful
development
Seeing
overburdens
the
main
Vardaman,
the
these
member.
the corpse of the former
child's immature regulatory
instead of working out the loss, the child may
denial
anxiety.
The
is developed by Moriarty concerning the
and
for
to
who
defensive
after
witnessing
attempts
to
Jefferson.
has
measure against the
deny
his
it
Moriarty
lost
mother Is
throughout
the
further observes
a parent often looks toward
on which to base his inner constructions.
imaginary
the
replacements
child's
are
a
necessary
emotional survival, but often
do not correspond to the world of reality.
For
.
Vardaman,
the
the
fish
which
replacement which
he associates with Addie becomes
is
a
necessary
part of his mental
adjustment.
In
a moving narrative following Addie's death, Vardaman
records
his grief.
where
the
fish
into
pieces
His first impulse is to run to the porch
laid
of
nor
the
blames
Dr.
Peabody
fish
He
runs
grabbing
at
bushes,
his
horses
with
broken
standing
neither
his
In a rush of anger he
death:
"The fat son of a
through the bushes to the stable,
crying and vomiting, sobbing: "He kilt
In a fury he strikes Dr. Peabody's team
a stick: "You kilt my maw!"
stick
in
But the fish is cut up
"not-blood":
Addie's
wildly
He kilt her."
and
exist for him.
for
bitch".
of
the dust.
"not-fish"
mother
her.
in
and
directs
his
anger
He throws away
towards
a
cow
the barn door, yelling, "I aint a-going to milk
L
youW.(53/4)
therefore
In
his
expended
mind
her
the
energy
cow
which Addie milked and
on, is also responsible for
her death.
Fear
is
of
eight
age
possibility
child
his
of
component
or
nine,
of Vardaman's anger.
children
of their own deaths.
this
concepts
death
of
in
a
a
age
of
childishness
to
the
and
realize
the
Studies show that when the
range confronts a personal bereavement,
death may be thrown into question, and the
parent is particularly threatening.
independence
fragile, and
begin
Around the
the
child
parental
has
boss
helplessness. 120
achieved
is
The degree
still
very
reawakens his feelings of
Vardaman' s
violent
reaction--running,
emotions.
the
crying,
vomiting--reflects
these
He has seen his mother die, he begins to think of
effect
of
her death on himself, and for the first time
he realizes that sometime his own human body will die.
After
cries
his
outburst
quietly.
He
Vardaman
is
experiences
spent
the
and numb, and
aching
void
of
bereavement
known to children, adolescents and adults alike:
"I
anything.,.I
am
not
feeling
the
and
hearing
am
quiet
...I
my tearsn.(55)
can
cry quiet now,
His mind grapples with
problem of non-existence: his fish and his mother are no
longer with him.
Dewey
close
narrative
follows
Vardaman's,
and
the
relationship between her youngest brother and herself
becomes
Sound
Dell's
apparent.
The
and the Fury
The
dependence of Benjy Compson of
on his sister Caddy is brought to mind,
b
Vardaman,
rejected
sister, and
made.
now
Again
he
by
she
Addie,
urges
has
him
been
cared
for by his
to eat the supper she has
blames Dr. Peabody for his mother's death:
"She never hurt him and he come and kilt herW(60), but Dewey
Dell
quietens
care
greatly
mother,12'
and
firmly.
assists
and
Vardaman's
a
him
life
a
Raphael remarks that surrogate
child
undoubtedly
to
mourn
Dewey
the
Dell's
eases the pain of his loss.
death
role
of a
in
She reveals in
later monologue that she used to sleep with Vardaman(ll5),
it
becomes increasingly evident that Vardaman relies on
her for comfort and reassurance.
In
a
monologue
in
which
Faulkner, through Vardaman,
forces
body
the
of
accept
a
on
breathe.
coffin
attempt
words
he
was
and
contains
Cash?
clear.
Vardaman recalls the
shut in a hay crib and couldn't
disbelief he asks Cash about the
his mother's body: "Are you going to
Nail it?
Nail
it?"(62)
His thought
become fragmented as his anxiety mounts, and in an
to
seek comfort he remembers Dewey Dell's placatory
him
when
question
the
becomes
shock
shut
to
him
which
which
processes
confront the horror of confining the
death
With
it
to
mother to a coffin, the child's utter refusal to
Addie's
occasion
nail
reader
about
the
of
the bananas and toy train available to
family
reaches
existence
Jefferson.
uppermost
bananas as "...gone, eaten.
fish
and
what
is
the
bananas
not.
all
Perhaps
But
with
the
in his mind, he thinks of
Gone."(63)
His mother, the
provoke thoughts of what is and
the connection has its roots in the
b
fundamental concept of mother being the provider of food for
the child.
For
that
being
the
the
may
she
she
make
differ
He
is
went
associated
from
that
with
the death of a human
connected
with
the death of
told that his mother has gone away and asks
as
far as town.
When Dewey Dell replies that
went further than town, Vardaman ponders, "Did all those
rabbits
God
time Vardaman confronts the possibility
philosophy
animals.
if
first
and
made
a
possums go further than town?"
the
rabbits and possums and questions why He must
different
comprehend
or
He reasons that
place
for them to go.(63)
He cannot yet
separate the concepts of the death of animals
and the death of people.
Throughout
that
his
Addie's
his
mother
monologues
is
a
fish.
Vardaman clings to the idea
Narrating
events
prior to
death, Tull, ironically, anthropomorphizes the large
fish caught by Vardaman:
Vardaman ...p icks up the fish. It slides
out
of his hands,...and
flops down,
dirtying
itself
again,
gap-mouthed,
goggle-eyed, hiding into the dust like
it was ashamed of being dead...(30)
Repeatedly
the
obsession, and
"My
reader
fish's
You
runs
existence.
He
pleads with Vernon: "You was there.
In the same breath, Vardaman
that Cash is going to nail his mother up.
conviction
evident
Vardaman's
to the Tulls for Vernon's confirmation of the
Vernon
firm
of
Immediately after Addie's death,
seen it laying there."(67)
tells
reminded
one of his monologues consists of the words,
mother is a fishV.(79)
Vardaman
is
that
His
his mother is not really dead becomes
when Tull relates that he has bored holes in Addie's
coffin so that she can breathe.
During
a
calmer
the course of the journey to Jefferson, however,
attitude
transference
and
a
period
reports
help
of
that
replaces
of time in which to adjust to his loss.
Vardaman
acts
Cash's
tools
retrieve
awaiting
"rapt
alertness".(l50/1)
collects
confusion, and the
his emotions to the fish provides a defense
Tull,
and
Vardaman's
with courage and efficiency to
from
the torrent.
instructions, with
sand
to
He
make
Darl
"rapt
He watches
absorption"
and
is anxious to help his family
cement
for Cash's leg.
It is
.
noticeable
that,
as
the
obstacle, Vardaman,
funeral procession confronts each
with the support of Dewey Dell, is able
to survive emotionally.
He
As
he
retains his "magical" belief through flood and fire.
relates
Darl's
river, Vardaman
mother
is
again
or
a
fish
in
woman". (144)
his
in
mother
water,
a
the coffin in the
when
he
observes that Darl had to dive
the water she could go faster than a man
As
the
cortege
approaches
Mottson,
conversation with Dewey Dell, insists that
has
and
with
reveals that he is still convinced that his
"because
Vardaman,
experiences
got
out
"when we
of
the
holes he bored, into the
come to the water again I am going to
see her". (187)
But
towards
obsessions
other
to
anyone
and
dominate
with
diminish
as
end
the
of
at
his
Darl,
that
this
he
journey,
Vardaman's
He promises Dewey Dell not
has seen Darl setting fire to the
point
thoughts.
the
need for them becomes less and
concerns take their place,
tell
barn,
the
A
his
anxiety
monologue
for Darl begins to
completely concerned
the fact that he is his brother, and has gone to
the asylum, illustrates this fact, and ends with the words:
He had to get on the train to go to
I have not been on the train,
Jackson,
but Darl has been on the train. Darl.
Darl is my brother. Darl, Dar1,(242)
Finally
and
the
an
ending
Vardaman's
living surfaces.
irrepressible
enthusiasm
for life
Addie's body has been buried.
In
which moves from the tragedy of Darl's madness to
the
revelation
of
Anse's
Jefferson, Vardaman
while
new
being
Mrs.
ulterior motives for the trip to
blithely
eats
introduced, along
Bundren.
course,
and,
remain
with
The
although
with Cash and Jewel, to the
mourning
the
Vardaman,
bananas with Dewey Dell
process
has
taken
its
emotional scars of his loss may
he
has,
for
the
moment,
dealt
successfully with his grief.
In
his
Grief",
George
completion
outcome,
music,
article
of
the
mourning
end
sculpture,
science.122
by
Pollock
H.
the
and
his
"Process
the
University
process
can
the
results
in
creative
be a great work of art,
poetry,
philosophy
it
is
of
In
Virginia
1957 he observed to students at
that
and
particularly
importance
that
that
or
in his writing, and his great novels are
product.
the
and
successful
his characters came from
imagination,
and
the
from research "with every breath he draws". 123
emphasised
why
that
Mourning
lived through the losses suffered
observation, experience
gains
writes
literature,
characters
creative
Affect:
result
Faulkner
his
and
of
writer
He
insight, and curiosity about
man does what he does,124 and stressed
the
writer's
first job is to search his
own
soul, and to give a proper, moving picture of man in the
human dilemma. 125
In
range
the
of
Black",
foregoing pages a study has been made of a wide
responses
is
a
young
to
death.
Rider,
of
"Pantaloon in
adult Negro who mourns the loss of his
.
wife.
reacts
with shock, anger, alienation, denial and
self-hatred, and,
because he is unable to overcome his loss
of
He
self-esteem
in the face of persecution by the white man,
he welcomes and precipitates his own lynching.
Benjy
are
and
Compson of
The Sound and the Fury
members of a white, once-aristocratic Jefferson family.
Benjy,
death
the
retarded
and
unable
loss
to
of
youngest
brother, is preoccupied with
lives a life of constant mourning.
develop
Because he is
emotionally, he cannot recover from the
his sister Caddy, the focus of his life.
brother,
Quentin,
associated
the
Quentin
with
result
bears
the
that
emotional
loss
scars
from
His older
childhood
of his beloved grandmother, with
when he loses his sister he succumbs to an
unbearable lack of self-esteem and loss of identity.
In
unable
and
the
to
Bundren
family
of
As
I Lay Dying,
Darl is
survive emotionally following his mother's death,
his
sensitive,
increasingly unstable.
component
of
reorganise
his
intuitive
personality
becomes
Denial becomes the most exaggerated
mourning,
and,
because
he is unable to
his life around a new reality, his self-structure
disintegrates, and he succumbs to madness.
The
suffer
children
from
Vardaman
a
lack of adequate parents, and both Jewel and
struggle
dies.
Jewel's
anger
dominates
Vardaman,
in
of the Bundren family, like the Compsons,
with
identity
crises
when their mother
emotions seethe within a wooden exterior and
the process by which he mourns.
the
midst
of
anger,
The child,
fear, guilt and denial
cannot
Both
comprehend
brothers,
transferring
the
fundamental
however,
are
question of existence.
able to sustain their loss by
their emotions, gaining time in which to adjust
and adapt to life without their mother.
all
It
becomes
of
the
parents
to
evident
that, with the exception of Rider,
characters discussed are the children of failed
who for reasons of their own are unable or unwilling
provide
a
offspring.
similar
healthy
Rider,
an
emotional
own
for
their
orphan raised by his aunt, suffers a
deprivation.
Faulkner's
environment
Perhaps
the
circumstances
of
childhood provided him with an understanding
of the emotional difficulties which these children fa.ce.
Of
the
six
Vardaman--survive
assumption
that
characters,
only
two--Jewel
and
their grief, an outcome which supports the
Faulkner
doubts
the
possibility
of full
recovery from loss.
b
In
his
Nobel Prize acceptance speech of 1950, Faulkner
advises
the
young
writer to "leave no room in his workshop
but
the old verities and truths of the heart,
for
anything
the
old
ephemeral
processes
of
the
belief
human
universal
and
of
"old
writing". 127
doomed". 126
lacking
which
His
insight
any
story
into
is
the
mourning demonstrates a thorough understanding
universal
expressed
heart
truths
in
in
truths",
his
conflict
speech
and his work reflects the
that "the problems of the
with itself...alone
can make good
NOTES
1. Gail L. Mortimer, Faulkner's Rhetoric of Loss
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p.1.
2. Andre Bleikasten, The Most Splendid Failure:
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury
(Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1976), p.173.
3.
Bleikasten, pp. 52-53.
4. David Minter, William Faulkner: His Life and Work
(Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press,
l98O), p.11.
5. Joseph Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography One-Volume
edition. (New York: Random House, 1984), p. 30.
6.
Blotner, p. 212.
7.
Minter, p. 92.
8.
Minter, p. 127.
9.
Blotner, pp. 356-357.
10.
Minter, pp. 183-184.
11.
Minter, p. 64.
12.
Minter, p. 49.
13.
Minter, pp. 47-48.
14. John Bowlby, "Processes of Mourning", The
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 42(1961), 317-338.
15. Sigmund Freud, General Psychological Theory
York: Collier Books, 1963), pp. 164-179.
16. David M. Moriarty, The Loss of Loved Ones
(Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1967), pp. 92-93.
17.
Moriarty, p. 127.
18.
Moriarty, pp. 15-16.
19.
Moriarty, p. 148.
20.
Moriarty, p. 150.
(New
21. Colin Murray Parkes, Bereavement: Studies of Grief
in Adult Life (New York: International Universities Press,
Inc., l972), p. 77.
22.
Parkes, p. 83.
23.
Parkes, p. 90.
24.
Parkes, p. 79.
25. Gregory Rochlin, Griefs and Discontents: The Forces
of Change (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1965), p. 37.
26.
Rochlin, p. 78.
27.
Rochlin, p. 92.
28. Beverley Raphael, The Anatomy of Bereavement
York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1983), p. 33.
29.
Raphael, p. 44.
30.
Raphael, p. 74.
31.
Raphael, p. 102.
32.
Raphael, p, 106.
33.
Raphael, pp. 139-141.
34.
Raphael, p. 158.
35.
Raphael, p. 159.
36.
Raphael, pp. 185-186.
37.
Raphael, p, 209.
(New
38. William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses (New York:
Vintage Books, 1970), p. 1. All subsequent references to
this text will appear in the body of the paper.
39.
Minter, p. 184.
40,
Freud, p. 166.
41.
Freud, p. 166.
42.
Raphael, p. 222,
43. Eberhard Alsen, "An Existentialist Reading of
Faulkner's 'Pantaloon in Black'", Studies in Short Fiction,
14 (1977), 169-178.
44.
Blotner, p. 414.
45. Walter Taylor, "~aulkner'sPantaloon: The Negro
Anomaly at the Heart of Go Down, Moses ", American
Literature, 44 (1972), 430-444.
46. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (New
York: Vintage Books, 1956). All subsequent references to
this text will appear in the body of the paper.
47. William Faulkner, "An Introduction to The Sound and
the Fury, " Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Compson
Family, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co.,
l982), p. 72.
48.
Bleikasten, p. 52.
49.
Minter, p. 34.
50.
Moriarty, p. 127.
51.
Moriarty, p. 128.
52.
Blotner, p. 210.
53. Selma H. Fraiberg, The Magic Years
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), p. 42.
54.
Moriarty, pp. 18-22.
55.
Bleikasten, p. 85.
56.
Bleikasten, p. 76.
57.
Minter, p. 29.
58.
Minter, p. 14.
59.
Minter, p. 99.
(New York:
60. Bleikasten, pp. 78-84. The incestuous desire of
Ben-jy and Quentin is compared by Bleikasten on p. 79. He
makes the interesting point that where Quentin's desire is
restricted to the world of fantasy, Benjy would yield to his
urges without the slightest sense of guilt.
61. Faulkner, "An Introduction to The Sound and the
Fury ", Critical Essays, ed. Kinney, p. 72.
62.
Minter, p. 97.
63.
Cleanth Books, "The Breakup of the Compsons,"
Critical Essays, ed. Kinney, p. 1 2 8 .
64.
Moriarty, p, 22.
65,
Minter, pp. 8-9,
66.
Minter, pp. 8-9.
67.
Minter, p, 1 5 .
68,
Blotner, p. 1 8 .
69.
Minter, p, 1 7 ,
70.
Minter, p. 97,
71.
Bleikasten, p. 2 2 8 .
72.
Blotner, pp. 5 5 - 6 0 .
73.
Parkes, p. 7 7 .
74.
Freud, pp. 1 7 0 - 1 7 1 .
75.
Bleikasten, pp. 1 1 6 - 1 1 7 .
76.
Parkes, pp. 89-90.
77.
Bleikasten, p. 2 2 8 .
I agree with Bleikasten, who
points out on p. 2 2 8 that Quentin's mourning reduplicates the
psychic processes involved in Faulkner's writing of The
Both processes are responses to loss.
Sound and the Fury
But while Quentin's mourning develops into melancholia and
ends in death, Faulkner's is converted into a creative act.
.
78.
Parkes, pp. 9 3 - 9 4 .
79.
Minter, p. 7 8 .
80.
Bleikasten, p. 1 1 7 .
81.
Parkes, p. 83.
82.
Freud, p. 1 6 5 .
83,
Freud, p, 1 7 4 .
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (New York:
Vintage Books, 1 9 5 7 ) . All subsequent references to this text
will appear in the body of the paper.
84.
85.
Blotner, p. 248.
86. Michael Millgate, William Faulkner (New York:
Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1961), p. 35. Millgate comments on
p. 35 that this diversification and multiplication of point
of view seems at times both excessive and irritating, as when
Darl reports events at which he is not present. However, I
believe that the individual narrative segments, particularly
those of the family, are vital to an understanding of each
psychological drama, and Darl's clairvoyance is a phenomenon
in keeping with his unstable, intuitive mental condition.
87.
Blotner, p. 149.
88.
Raphael, p. 23.
89.
Raphael, p. 23.
90.
Bleikasten, p. 227.
91.
Raphael, pp. 140-141.
92. Peter Swiggart, The Art of Faulkner's Novels
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), pp. 117-118.
93.
Swiggart, p. 112.
94.
Parkes, pp. 64-65.
95.
Rochlin, p. 78.
96.
Parkes, p. 73.
97.
Moriarty, p. 16.
98.
Swiggart, p. 121.
99.
Raphael, p. 159.
100.
Swiggart, pp. 119-120.
101.
Freud, p. 174.
102.
Swiggart, p. 121.
103.
Freud, p. 165.
104.
Freud. p. 165.
105.
Faulkner,
106.
Bowlby, p. 321.
The Sound and the Fury
p. 218.
107.
Parkes, p. 78.
108.
Raphael, p. 209.
109.
Rochlin, p. 56.
110,
Raphael, pp. 185-186.
111.
Bowlby, pp. 321-322.
112.
Raphael, p, 34.
113. Swiggart, p. 120. I cannot agree with Swiggart's
comment on p. 112 that Jewel is too reckless and impulsive to
accept the funeral trip as a family obligation. On the
contrary, Jewel's passionate nature and his intense love for
Addie add to his determination to bury his mother's body at
Jefferson, in accordance with her expressed desire.
114.
Raphael, p. 158.
115.
Parkes. p. 21.
116.
Moriarty, pp. 92-93.
117.
Rochlin, p. 92.
118.
Moriarty, p. 148.
119.
Moriarty, p. 150.
120.
Raphael, pp. 106-107.
121.
Raphael, p. 102.
122. George H. Pollock, "Process and Affect: Mourning and
Grief", The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 59
(l978), 267.
123. Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner, eds.
Faulkner in the university (New ~ o r k :Vintage Books, 1959),
p. 123.
124.
Gwynn and Blotner, p. 191.
125.
Gwynn and Blotner, p. 282.
126. James B. Meriwether, ed.
Public Letters by William Faulkner
l965), p. 120.
127.
Meriwether, p. 119.
Essays Speeches and
(New York: Random House,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Studies in Short Fiction,
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The Most Splendid Failure: Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury
Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1976.
.
.
Blotner, Joseph.
Faulkner: A Biography
One-Volume
edition. New York: Random House, 1984.
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The International
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