Sound and Fury by William Faulkn

Sound and Fury by William Faulkner

Aim: Who is William Faulkner ? The South: What is it, Where is it?

Resources:

From William Faulkner on the Web via Internet Public Library:

Do Now: In your journal, describe: What do you know about the historical South ? How did the South change socially and economically in the early 20th century ? We will share our perspectives on these two topics in class.

Procedure:

Use the sources American Studies at the University of Virginia to find information about the historical South.
- Civil War
- Humor
Use Point of view and narrative voice will be used interchangeably. Point of view includes both 'who sees' (often termed focalization) and who speaks (often termed 'voice').
- Understand narrative voice/point of view and its relation to content
- Understand symbolism and its relationship to plot and narrative structure.

HW#1 Combine your research of the historical South using the web resources and your journal to portray a picture of the Historical South in your own words. We shall share our portrayal of the historical South in class tomorrow.

HW#2The novel is written from multi-perspectives of various characters. Describe the multi-perspectives of your classmates about the historical South, its culture, society, economy and politics, etc.

Lesson 2

Overview:

"The Sound and the Fury details the moral decay of the Compsons, a once-prosperous aristocratic family from Mississippi, with a lineage that stretches back to before the Civil War and includes a military general and a former governor of Mississippi. The tale is told in flashbacks, unfolding over at least three different periods of time and from more than one point of view. Benjy Compson, the thirty-three year old retarded son of Jason and Caroline Compson, is the moaning and slobbering "idiot" who narrates the first of four chapters; his older brother, the sensitive, Harvard-educated Quentin Compson, narrates the second chapter; the mean-spirited and stingy younger brother Jason IV narrates chapter three; and chapter four is relayed by an omniscient narrator who tells the story of this family decline by ironically focusing on the maid Dilsey, rendered powerless by virtue of her race and position, and yet the de facto matriarch of this family and its only source of stability.

The Sound and the Fury continued to explore Faulkner's themes from earlier works related to the decline of the American South, as well as issues of morality, sin, and redemption, although one could rightly argue that his overarching concern was with the nature of human existence. These latter concepts are woven into a complex tapestry of race and class-consciousness and internecine struggle as the Compsons contend with the interrelated dynamics of family honor and feminine virtue within the context of social acceptability, life's perceived order, and the element of time." (Excerpt from ED Sitement )

Aim: To familiarize yourself with the story, setting and the relationships among the characters.

Do Now: Visit the following websites to get a general idea about the characters in the novel. In your own words, describe what you know about the main characters.

Character Review

Procedures:

Visit the following websites and take notes while reading. We will share our knowledge of each section-

HW In the Nicenet, post what you know about the book and your anticipation of reading it.

Lesson 3

Aim: To understand the writer's approach of using multiple narratives to tell a story.

Do Now: Read the the quotation by Evan Goodwin

"[Faulkner] often told his stories using multiple narratives, each with their own interests and biases, who allow us to piece together the 'true' circumstances of the story, not as clues in a mystery, but as different melodies in a piece of music that form a crescendo. The conclusion presents a key to understanding the broad panorama surrounding the central event in a way that traditional linear narratives simply are unable to accomplish. "

and in your own words, explain what it means to you. (HW#3)

Procedures:

1. Describe a book in which the story is told in multiple narrative.

2. How effective is such approach used in telling a story?

Lesson 4

Aim: How do we use cues to understand Benjys narration of the Compson's ups and downs?

Do Now: Read pages 3-15, identify the cues used to understand the anachronistic narrative by Benjy.

Procedure:

Read aloud in class the first section of the book narrated by Benjy and take notes using the cues such as Benjy's care-takers' names-Versh( when Benjy was about 5), T.P (Benjy was a teen) and Luster (present time when Benjy is 33).
(HW #4 of the 3rd marking period))Create a Timeline of major events that took place in Benjy's narrative listing the page numbers where the events took place.
In Benjy's 33 years, what declining events took place that foreshadow the final destruction of the Composons?

Lesson 5*

Answer the following questions:

Study Questions

1. The opening section of The Sound and the Fury is considered one of the most challenging narratives in modern American literature. What makes this section so challenging?

2. Many other critics have countered that the novel’s themes extend beyond the story of the Compson family specifically, and grapple with issues central to human life in general. In what way might the themes of the novel extend beyond the story of the Compsons’ decline?

3. Faulkner has said that the character of Caddy was his “heart’s darling”—her character inspired him to write the novel. Why is Caddy driven to pitfalls like promiscuity? What do you make of Mr. Compson’s explanation that virginity is an ideal invented by men, which is utterly irrelevant to women( Find the sentences in the beginning of Section 2 that explain Mr. Compson's attitude toward virginity?)

4. One of the most wrenching sections of the novel is Quentin’s confrontation with Caddy following the loss of her virginity. What drives Quentin to propose mutual suicide and to conceive of the idea of incest as a solution to their problems? Even in the absence of sex between them, is there something incestuous about Quentin and Caddy’s relationship?

Find and copy the text that indicates Quention's proposal for mutual suicide.

Find and copy the sentences that indicate Quentin's incestuous thought.

*The above questions are selected from SparkNotes.com

HW#5 Interpret the first paragraph of Quentin's narration on page76" When the shadow of the sash appeared... " to " ...and the victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools".

HW#6 In your journal, respond to the philosophy of fatalism as expressed in the paragraph.

HW#7 ( After reading the 1st 20 pages of Section 2) Be Quentin's roommate Shrieve and retell the emotional turmoil that you had witnessed eventually took Quentin's life. Provide an observation and explanation of Quentin's short experience at Harvard.

HW#8 Interpret the long sentence on page 87 "The train swung around the curve, the engine puffing with short, heavy blasts, and they passed smoothly from sight that way, with the quality about them of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity: that blending of childlike and ready incompetence and paradoxical reliability that tends and protects them it loves out of all reason and robs them steadily and evades responsibility and obligations by means too barefaced to be called subterfuge even and is taken in theft or evasion with only that frank and spontaneous admiration for the victor which a a gentleman feels for anyone who beats him in a fair contest, and withal a fond and unflagging tolerance for whitefolks' vagaries like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and troublesome children, which I had forgotten."

HW#9: Play the role of Quentin-observe the hours closely before he commit suicide. Use his voice to describe What did he see? What past came to his mind? What reflections did he have about his fellow Harvard students? What reflections did he have about life in general?

HW#10:Interpret and Respond to the following quotation on page 96

"Woman are like that they don't acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do bed-clothing in slumber fertilising the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or not..."

HW#11: Identify the imagery in the following sentences and describe the meanings or feelings they convey.

"And I will look done and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand. Until on the Day when he says Rise only the flat-iron would come floating up. It's not when you realise that nothing can help you ---- religion, pride, anything--- it's when you realise that you don't need any aid. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. If I could have been his mother lying with open body lifted laughing, holding his father with my hand refraining, seeing, watching his die before he lived."

"The train swung around the curve, the engine puffing with short, heavy blasts, and they passed smoothly from sight that way, with that quality about them of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity: that blending of childlike and ready incompetence and paradoxical reliability that tends.and protects them it loves out of all reason and robs them steadily and evades responsibility and obligations by means too barefaced to be called subterfuge even and is taken in theft or evasion with only that frank and spontaneous admiration for the victor which a a gentleman feels for anyone who beats him in a fair contest, and withal a fond and unflagging tolerance for whitefolks' vagaries like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and troublesome children, which I had forgotten."

"And all that day, while the train wound through rushing gaps and along ledges where movement was only a laboring sound of the exhaust and groaning wheels and the eternal mountains stood fading into the thick sky, I thought of home, of the bleak station and the mud and the niggers and country folks thronging slowly about the square, with toy monkeys and wagons and candy in sacks and roman candles sticking out, and my insiders would move like they used to do in school when the bell rang."

Essay Topic: Is Quentin's Death Inevitable

Consider the following aspects when writing your essay-

1. His Father's attitude toward life ---> fatalism/nihilism.

2. His relationship with his mother.

3. Caddy's behavior.

4. Gerald/Dalton Ames/Spoade.

5. Society (social environment).

6. Quentin's personality value/beliefs.

7. Unwillingness to stay in Harvard.

8. The changing world.

9. The structure of Quentin's language (Narrative).

10. Quentin's efforts to stop time.

HW#12: Respond to each quotation below using double entry journal form.

Quotations	Responses
But then I suppose it takes at least one hour to lose time in, who has been longer than history getting into the mechanical progression of it.
At the corner two bootblacks caught me, one on either side. shrill and raucous, like blackbirds.
When you don't want to do a thing, your body will try to trick you into doing it, sort of unawares.
Because Father said clocks slay time. he said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
I used to think that a southerner had to be always conscious of niggers. I thought that Northerners would expect him to.
The best want to take all people, black or white, is to take then for. what they think they are, then leave then alone. That was when I realised that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior; a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among.
* make promises just to satisfy their consciences (pg. 94)
Father said clings like dead ivy vines upon old dead brick twilight-colored smell of honeysuckle *French Lick (page 95)
pg. 96 * Trampling my shadow’s bones * women have no respect for each other for themselves * street lamps * rasping darkness of summer
pg100 * Lying on the ground under the window bellowing * The street lamps *she loves people through their shortcomings
pg. 101 * Caddy told Jason and Versh that the reason Uncle Maury didn’t work was that he used to roll his head in the cradle when he was little. suttee Semiramis *The street lamps
pg. 102 women don’t do that your mother is thinking of morality whether it be sin or not has not occurred to her found not death at the salt licks *not death at the salt licks
pg. 104 * drags your name in the dirt but corrupts the very air your children breathe Jason you must let me go away a man is the sum of his misfortunes but then time is your misfortune *the symbol of your frustration into eternity
pg. 105 believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves noblesse oblige Quentin has shot Herbert he shot his voice through the floor of Caddy’s room approbation
pg. 111 river glinted/ god gods /canaille /wet oars/female palms/Adulant / * God/ * The river glinted away beyond a swooping curve.
pg. 112 cur /June /*He said Rise only the flat irons
pg.113 The street lamps go down the hill /the apple tree leaning on my hair above the eden clothes by the nose seen / Then they told me the bone would have to be broken again / fecundity /*chimaera
pg. 114 like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long / lantern?” /* flood
pg. 115 his voice were part of darkness and silence The bridge was of gray stone, lichened, dappled with slow moisture where the fungus crept. Beneath it the water was clear and still in the shadow, whispering and clucking about the stone in fading swirls of spinning sky.
pg. 116 And Father said it’s because you are a virgin: don’t you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature. It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So virginity and I said you don’t know. You can’t know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realize that tragedy is second-hand. Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water for a long time after a while the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow as the motion of sleep. They don’t touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too, out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory. And after a while the flat irons would come floating up. I hid them under the end of the bridge and went back and leaned on the rail.

HW#12: Respond to each quotation below using double entry journal form (continued).

Quotations	Comments and Responses
pg. 116 And Father said it’s because you are a virgin: don’t you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature. It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So virginity and I said you don’t know. You can’t know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realize that tragedy is second-hand. Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water for a long time after a while the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow as the motion of sleep. They don’t touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too, out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory. And after a while the flat irons would come floating up. I hid them under the end of the bridge and went back and leaned on the rail. *If it could just be a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing and the horror beyond the clean flame
pg. 117 Only you and me then amid the pointing and the horror walled by the clean flame unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact
pg. 118 * by an assumption of silent superiority *I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue
pg. 122 * In the orchard the bees sounded like a wind getting up, a sound caught by a spell just under crescendo and sustained. Sunlight slanted into it, sparse and eager. Yellow butterflies flickered along the shade like flecks of sun.
pg. 123 it is because there is nothing else I believe there is something else but there may not be and then I You will find that even injustice is scarcely worthy of what you believe yourself to be as though instead of sinking into silence, silence merely increased between us, as water rises. the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar Man the sum of his climatic experiences
pg. 124 Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire.
pg. 128 Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs. Outside outside of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that some man that all those mysterious concealed. With all that inside of them shapes an outward suavity waiting for a touch to. Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber flabbily filled getting the odor of honeysuckle all mixed up.
…a barn broken-backed, decaying quietly among rank orchard trees, unpruned and wee-choked, pink and white and murmurous with sunlight and with bees. I looked back. Page 133 …my shadow behind me now. Page 133
*It was raining we could hear it on the roof, sighing through the high sweet emptiness of the barn. There? Touching her Not there There? Not raining hard but we couldn’t hear anything but the roof and if it was my blood or her blood She pushed me down the ladder and ran off and left me Caddy did Was it there it hurt you when Caddy did ran off was it there Page 134
*…where pencils of sun slanted in the trees. And I could feel water again running swift and peaceful in the secret shade. Page 135
…broken and infrequent slanting of sunlight. Page 136 The bird whistled again, invisible, a sound meaningless and profound, inflexionless, ceasing as though cut off with the blow of a knife, and again, and that sense of water swift and peaceful above secret places, felt, not seen not heard. Page 136 …the sense of water mute and unseen. Page 136
The sun slanted through to the moss here and there, leveler…Little flowers grew among the moss, littler than I had ever seen. Page 138 …black, secret, friendly gaze… Page 138
*There was another yellow butterfly, like one of the sun flecks had come loose. Page 140
…her friendly, inscrutable regard. Page 142 …fierce roach of iron gray hair peered at us over steel spectacles. Page 142
*Children and dogs are always taking up with him like that. He can’t help it. Page 144
*…that delicate and curious horror, their veils turned back upon their little white noses and their eyes fleeing and mysterious beneath the veils. Page 145
All the time we though he was the model youth that anybody could trust a daughter with, until the police showed him up at his nefarious work. Page 146
I’d though about I could not be a virgin, with so many of them walking along in the shadows and whispering with their soft girlvoices lingering in the shadowy places and the words coming out and perfume and eyes you could feel not see, but if it was that simple to do it wouldn’t be anything and if it wasn’t anything, what was I and then… Page 147 …her knees her face looking at the sky the small of honeysuckle upon her face and throat…Page 147
*like a thin wash of lilac colored pain talking about him bringing. Page 148
…the swing the cedars the secret surges the breathing locked drinking the wild breath the yes Yes Yes yes… Page 149 When they touched me I died. One minute she was standing there the next he was yelling and pulling at her dress they went into the hall an dup the stairs yelling and shoving at her up the stairs to the bathroom door and stopped her back against the door and her arm across her face telling and trying to shove her into the bathroom when she came in to supper T.P. was feeding him he started again just whimpering at first until she touched him then he yelled she stood there her eyes like cornered rates then I was running in the gray darkness it smelled of rain and all flower scents the damp warm air released and crickets sawing away in the grass pacing me with a small traveling island of silence. Page 149