Dilsey's Chapter and the End of the Book

    Dilsey was treated very poorly by Mrs. Compson. Mrs. Compson caused all this trouble and always wanted Dilsey to be doing work by pretty much throwing a fit when Dilsey wouldn't take care of Benjy, even though Benjy was asleep. Dilsey is an African-American servant, which would be common for the Old South. This shows that Mrs. Compson is still in the Old South.
   
    Dilsey brings Benjy to church with her every sunday. Frony tells Dilsey that the people don't like having a white boy at their church. This seems like Faulkner was trying to prove a point that African- Americans were even in the new southern ways because they stayed away from the whites.


    Dilsey was a very clear and straightforward voice in this book. Faulkner chose to write this book from a confusing, mentally- handicapped person to a very clear and concise African- American servant to show give us bits and pieces of the novel at a time and really make us put all the pieces together. He starts by writing the book in almost all human senses, then moves to stream of consciousness, then dialogue, and then a third person narrative. He distances the book from the very personal Benjy to the impersonal Dilsey. He wanted to prove a point that the south was moving from the family values and everyone being knowing each other really well, like the readers go to know Benjy, into the servant that was narrating events that she wasn't even a part of.


     This book is really just about change. In this particular book, the change is Old South to New South, but it is happening all over the world. People are changing and our generations are changing. Mrs. Compson wanted to stay in the traditional Old Southern lifestyle, but her children were the New Generation. Her children, besides Jason, had a higher respect for African- Americans. Her children had less of a traditional view of family and they didn't think that family was necessarily the most important thing. This book is basically a closer, personal glimpse into a certain circumstance of change.
  
  This is not directly related to the book, but we have change nationwide between generations. The teenage generation nowadays has more tech skills. We have had a phone and computer our whole lives. This is how we are different. Faulkner really just wanted to capture that change between generations, and at that time, these generations of the New and Old South were the largest gap in values.


   Faulkner told his story four times to represent the change. There are four seasons and these seasons change the way the world look. Our generations change just as the seasons do.

Jason's Chapter

      Jason's blog was hard at times for me to read. The way that he was so vulgar and how he put women and African Americans down was horrendous. He even starts out the chapter with the line, "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say." He continues his story in a very resentful way and he is a representation of the greed of society.
    
     Jason starts by addressing most women as "she", meaning that he does not see them as an individual person, but instead as women. He threatens to slap this "she" and grabs her arm being very aggressive with her. He tried to show that he is dominate because he is a male, and he threatens this girl, who turns out to be Quentin from another generation. His mother cries and he provides no comfort to her at all. An example of his harsh writing on women is, " ..Up there in her room, gobbing paint on her face and waiting for six ni**ers." Gobbing has a negative connotation and he is saying how women basically try so hard to be pretty.


    Jason is a complete racist against many different types of people. When talking of African- Americans he says, "Six ni**rs that can't even stand up out of a chair unless they've got a pan full of bread and meat to balance them." He represents the old South still by treating African- Americans in such a harsh way and acting like they are less important than whites. He believes that African- Americans are still just meant to be servants. He also blames the Jewish people for the stock markets prices being so high.


     Jason thinks that he is better than his whole family and actually separates himself from them. He shows this by providing an excessive amount of dialogue; unlike Quentin, who talks as though he has become other people. Jason quotes other people to show that he would never say the things that the rest of his family says. He also says that he is not really of his own blood, he claims that he is better. He is really just trailer park trash in the eyes of the readers.


    This chapter is filled with Jason's resentment towards how his life played out. He says, "I never had time to go to Harvard or drink myself to the ground. I had to work. But of course if you want me to follow her around to see what she does, I can quit the store and get a job where I can work at night. Then I can watch her during the day." He is saying that Quentin went to Harvard and got to live the high society life and he was stuck working and watching after a girl.


     Overall, Jason represent the old, greedy southern ways. He was big on investing money in the stocks and did all he could to get as much money for himself as possible. He always goes back to talking about money and I think it is because he thinks that money will make him look like a better person. He is the "loser" of the family and he just wants to prove his worth through money, which is a common quality of many Americans today.

Quentin's Chapter

       Quentin's chapter is not quite as difficult to understand as Benjy's chapter, but it is still difficult. The different time changes, random rants, and weird obsession with clock talk throws the average reader off. This chapter actually interested me a lot because it is truly stream of consciousness. There is not correct punctuation everywhere sometimes, and other times punctuation is too prevalent. One of the things Quentin said was, "Roses. Roses." He used punctuation too much, but it really proved his point that Caddy did not smell like trees anymore at her wedding, so she was not innocent. He would start ranting and not use any punctuation at times, and what threw him back into a state of normalcy was the time on the clock. I am going to talk a lot about the clocks, but only because I believe that it is the most important theme of the book so far.
   
    This chapter pretty much started with talking of how "idle habits" can hurt you and that, "Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by the minute clicking of little wheels." Christ was even effected by clocks, so of course we are all effected by clocks. Faulkner is really trying to point out that a clock is part of the human life, and it is a downfall. Let's face it, we have all been stressed out while looking at a clock. Whether it's making it to an appointment on time or figuring out how you are going to finish a lot of work in a short period of time, we have all experienced stress from clocks.  Quentin always falls back to saying what time it was, and that is what gets him back from his crazy rants, that is what makes him human. Life can't be truly lived if you are focused on the time on the clock. Your stream of consciousness, just as Quentin's stream of consciousness, is disrupted by your next activity scheduled at a certain time. We are always distracted from what we are doing in the future and we look at our clocks to make sure that we won't be late for our next activity.
 
   The paragraph above probably sounded pretty repetitive, but I'm just trying to enforce the idea that time has ruined us. We no longer go about our days just being the best we can. Quentin's father claims that, "Clocks slay time." This is the reason that Quentin has tried to destroy his watch at the beginning, he is done trying to deal with time and the reminder of his father because his father, I assume, gave him the watch. The watch continued to tick, even after Quentin twisted the hands of the clock around. Quentin is unable to destroy time.


     Time not really organized throughout the book in an easy way to understand. I think this is Faulkner trying to explain that time is too important to people and they focus too much on having their schedules set out based on time. The book goes back and forth between time periods, which is confusing for people because they are so set on a linear time scale. He is trying to prove that you can get all the facts of a story, even if it's not in order, as long as you just use your brain.

     Quentin's voice was very hard to follow. He was confusing because he would talk as though he was another person and he would just go on rants using a voice that could not be his own. His voice is really random with rants and weird puntuacion, he doesn't have a strong sense of self. He doesn't seem to believe in himself, so how can anyone else be expected to believe him.

Benjy's Story

The first chapter of sound of fury is difficult to even the most experienced reader to comprehend. The narrator is named Benjy. He is a mentally disabled boy of the Compson family. The people of Faulkner's time in the South most likely did not have much respect for the mentally handicapped because even Faulkner himself calls this chapter a, "tale told by an idiot." Benjy's narration seems to go back and forth between different times of his and Caddy's life. He describes scenes by using only what he can sense, at one point he even, "smells the cold on his hands." He has little obsessions that are typical of a mentally handicapped person, such as saying that Caddy always smells like trees and going back to stories about being on the golf course.


     He seems to always be talking about looking for golf balls and quarters, this is the theme that he always comes back to. This theme of reverting back to the golf course is particularly ironic because Benjy hears people saying "caddie" a lot, which is a golf term, but also his sisters name. Luster gets a rise out of Benjy by sticking around and saying Caddy's name. He also talks about his life involving Caddy; he talks of the day the pig died, the day Caddy made-out with Charlie, and the day that Damuddy dies.


    Faulkner sets up the reader with such a confusing chapter to start because the book probably advances like a human being advances through different stages of their life. Benjy represents the baby because he describes details of his side of the story by using his senses alone. Faulkner also wanted to set us up for the crazy time shifts, why not start on the first chapter? Benjy is treated as though he is just stupid because he was originally given the name of his brother Maury, but they thought that since Benjy is mentally handicapped it would dishonor his brother to have the same name. Caddy is very protective of Benjy and has nothing but love for him. The Compson family is very mean to Benjy because they sell their land to be turned into a golf course while Benjy is still roaming around on the land. The family doesn't care about Benjy, but Caddy truly did care for him. This chapter says that family will always stick in your brain and little things that your family does will always stick in your brain, even if you are mentally handicapped.


    Faulkner brings in Christmas, Easter and the fact that Benjy is the age of Jesus when he was crucified. This may mean that Faulkner thought that Jesus was mentally- handicapped himself, therefore unable to complete tasks such as not allowing evil. Faulkner points out that maybe we need a new Jesus, but this concept of Jesus in this novel is difficult to grasp so far.


    Overall, Benji provides us with a very hard-to-understand description of the events that happened with Caddy. He shows Caddy as a very compassionate person that loves and understands people. She understands that Benjy is different and he can't help the fact that he is different, so she loves him.

Interesting Things on Faulkner: Activity 1

       Faulkner started to enjoy reading and writing at a very young age, you could say he was a prodigy in these subjects. He spent most of his life in the south, this allowed him to grow up experiencing the southern values. He saw the racism against the African- Americans and how the south was still effected by the past. A quote by Faulkner was, "The past is never dead." The past is always influencing the future, no matter how much we wish to move on from the past and change, we will still be influenced by what has happened because we cannot erase memories. Faulkner won a nobel peace prize and claimed that the prize was not for him as a person, but for his works. Faulkner also talked of how man is immortal because they have a soul saying, "I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."Faulkner seems like he was a very motivational person and he could speak on a lot of issues. He is optimistic because he believes that  humans will not only live to figure out a way to survive, but man will live to prevail and to succeed.