Unity or Contradiction?

One aspect of the article “Rereading Faulkner: Authority, Criticism, and The Sound and the Fury,” by Stacy Burton, really struck me. Burton allows the reader to question the notion of both unity and contradiction within William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. This article examines the following question: is contradiction, or unity, the true theme of the novel? With “the three first-person narrators, who recount interior monologues of the three Compson brothers, speak in distinct voices . . . : Benjy by mental limitations, Quentin by neurosis, Jason by defensive self-justification. The fourth does not resolve them but instead demonstrates, in conjunction with them, the impossibility of an omniscient point of view,” Burton shows that some critics believe that this novel does in fact, demonstrate unity (610). On the contrary, other critics “have focused on its contradictions and the ways it complicates attempts at resolution and undermines attempts at closure” (610). With the first two narrations by Benjy and Quentin, the complicatedness of the novel is evident; however, as the reader moves on to the next narration through Jason’s point of view, things slowly begin to unfold, and the reader is able to get a better sense of the issues within the Compson family. To me, there is a certain unity in Faulkner’s novel with the three narrators giving the reader a chance to see inside each brother’s mind and observe the Compson family through his eyes. Each narration allows the reader to decipher the nature of each character from different points of view. I think it’s interesting that Faulkner chose Benjy, Quentin, and Jason to act as narrators versus Caddy; the same incidents, though the same actions and consequences, would be portrayed differently through Caddy’s eyes; therefore, those incidents would more likely than not have a very different effect on the reader.

I chose this article because the word unity barely comes to mind when reading a book such as The Sound and the Fury. It wasn’t until I read this article that I really took a step back and realized the unifying factors that are portrayed through the narrations, especially when certain scenes are replayed in two different narrations, through two different Compson brothers’ eyes. (367)

Rereading Faulkner: Authority, Criticism, and "The Sound and the Fury"
Stacy Burton
Modern Philology, Vol. 98, No. 4 (May, 2001), pp. 604-628
Published by: The University of Chicago Press