The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

In Gaines, however, the commentary also includes race as the “they” in “ The Sky is Gray” that segregate the bus, own the pool doos, and maintain control of the town are wealthy white landowners who implement racist laws that keep Blacks in a subservient position. Suffice it to say, though, I see the “they,” in both authors, as a commentary on class. These individuals, in many ways, are like the “idle white rich” in Gaines’ work who skim along the surface of the river in their boats while others work the land. In Faulkner’s novel, the “they” are rich whites who have the luxury of leisure time to play golf while the Compson’s family fortunes dwindle and evaporate. I have written about this before, so I do not want to restate that discussion here.

This opening paragraph, in many ways, reminds me of Ernest Gaines’ use of the same pronoun, “they,” in a similar manner. What are the unidentified individuals doing? Why is there a flag? What is the table? We find out, as we get further into the text, that the anonymous “they” are playing golf on land that Benjy’s family used to own and that Luster, Benjy’s young caretaker, is searching for golf balls to sell to the golfers. As well, we do not get a clear indication of what is going on in this paragraph. We do know that the “he” is one of the “they,” but we do not know who the “they” actually are. The opening paragraph contains eight pronouns that do not have a clear antecedent with a person. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit.

They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower bed. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence.

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. He moves in time typically through associating a word, smell, sound, or other stimuli with a memory from the past, usually involving his sister Caddy. In the opening section, the constant shifts in time from the present to various scenes in the past, seemingly at random, occur within the head of the 33-year-old mentally disabled Benjy. That author, of course, is William Faulkner, and the novel is The Sound and The Fury (1929).įrom the outset, The Sound and The Fury disorients us as readers, leaving us dangling in the ether without much to hold on to. Today, I want to look briefly at another modernist author who does the same thing in a slightly different manner than Hemingway. Over the past few posts, I have been writing about Ernest Hemingway, modernism, the ways that language constructs meaning, and how authors such as Hemingway interrogated these constructions.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner