What is so compelling about Faulkner's work is his gloriously bold approach toward form and content. He embraces the dark side of humanity, through the characters of Jason, Caddy and Quentin, refusing to deny or disguise its existence and in doing so redefines despair, it is no longer, ' ...the despair that depresses or frustrates...'. Despite the sometimes ugly events, like Jason's torture of his niece in the last section, Faulkner allows his tale to end in Easter time, a time of hope and resurrection.
[...] Quentin therefore is a mechanism for symbolising his families failures, (for they neither retain any sense of honour), placing Caddy as an unwilling catalyst for the disintegration of the Compsons. Caddy is only every seen through the eyes of her brothers. Benjy worships her, and her 'smell of trees' . Quentin is haunted by her, and for Jason she is a witch who cheated him of his inheritance and he is plagued by his need for revenge, which he exacts through her daughter Quentin, 'You do a thing like that again and I'll make you sorry you ever drew breath Because she never narrates, Caddy is free from the rigid worlds of her brothers. [...]
[...] It lacks the harmony and concord of a symphonic piece, yet retaining its solid structure. Perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be to the Cubists. Faulkner is a genius of the same pursuit as a Picasso. In Benjy's narration Faulkner achieves the same affect as what the cubists achieved visually, A fragmentation of planes in a multiplication of surfaces, equivalent to as many viewpoints as possible. Through Benjy we can see the past and present in the same context, as surely as we see all aspects of Picasso's fractured women, despite the fact she is turned away from us. [...]
[...] Benjy relates speech and action without the burden of self interest, and in so far as possible he is an objective narrator, unlike Quentin of the second section, whose narration is tainted by his obsessions and failures as a man. This is seen clearly in the brothers retelling of the incident in which Caddy gets all muddy in the stream as a child. Quentin's version is charged with sexual tension, and his fascination with death. do you remember the day damuddy died when you sat down in the water in your drawers. [...]
[...] We can see this in Benjy's recollection of discovering Miss Quentin on the porch swing with her lover, he immediately is forced to recall Caddy on the swing with her lover, many years before, the swing unfolding both memories in his mind as one. ' . wait he said. Here. Don't go over there. Miss Quentin and her beau are in the swing yonder . It was two now, and then one as Caddy came fast, white in the darkness'. [...]
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