1、大连科技学院毕 业 设 计 (论 文 )题 目 On idiot Benjys Stream of Consciousness in The Sound and the Fury 学生姓名 专业班级 英语 12-3 指导教师 职 称 副教授 所在单位 外语系英语教研室 教研室主任 大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设计（论文）完成日期 2015 年 12 月 12 日Table of Contents1.Reading Faulkner, Reading Quentin.32.Dreading Time .53.Brothers.64.Sisters.7Conclusion.8Works C
2、ited .10大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设计（论文）41.Reading Faulkner, Reading QuentinIn first reading The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, I soon came torealize how important it is to study the two novels in conjunction with one another. Although I read The Sound and the Fury first, after finishing Absalom,
3、 Absalom!, thebooks became inextricably linked. I also came to discover that Faulkner creates anunusual situation for his audience: while The Sound and the Fury (1929) certainly standson its own, readers reach a much fuller understanding after reading Absalom, Absalom!(1936), so that, in brief, to i
4、nterpret The Sound and the Fury, readers must also interpret .Absalom, Absalom!, just as knowing The Sound and the Fury is essential to any understanding of Absalom, Absalom!. Quentin Compson, as both narrator and character, provides the essential link between the two works. Fascinated by his suicid
5、e, I knew that Quentin would be a focal point through out my project. Immediately, I realized that Quentins relationship with his sister, Caddy, was significant. After getting more involved with my work, I discovered the attentionFaulkner devotes to brother and sister relationships. While most Faulk
6、ner criticism focuses on the brother-sister relationships of Caddy and her three brothers in The Sound and the Fury, as we shall see, a close reading shows that Quentin has an “extended family“ of many brothers and sisters. Moreover, while all readers acknowledge the links between The Sound and the
7、Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, more often than not criticstend to discuss the works as discrete units. When focusing solely on Caddy and herbrothers, or on the love triangle of Henry, Bon, and Judith, the reader disservices and obscures the intricate web of relationships interwoven between these two no
8、vels. By positioning Shreve McCannon as a non-Southern narrator, Faulkner allows readers from all backgrounds to reconstruct the Yoknapatawpha story of Thomas Sutpen and Quentin Compson. Faulkner knew full well that many of his readers would not be Southerners, so Shreve permits the reader to feel w
9、elcome and invited into Southern society. As Shreves relationship with Quentin develops, so does the readers. Faulkner indicates Shreves importance as a narrator: “Shreve was the commentator that held the thing to something of reality. If Quentin had been left alone to tell it, it would have become
10、completely unreal. It had to have a solvent to keep it real, keep it believable, creditable, otherwise it would have vanished into smoke and fury“ (FU 75). Yet Shreve, in his detachment from the South, is but one type of narrator; the Sutpen story is an altogether different matter for Quentin, who c
11、omes to discover that he is implicated within the tale of 大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设计（论文）5Sutpens dynasty. Ultimately, we reach a deeper understanding of Quentins suicide and our fullest grasp of Sutpens design in the “happy marriage of speaking and hearing“ between Quentin and Shreve (AA 253). Through the
12、 narrative tellings and retellings, the reader comes to experience and to understand the fluidity and fluctuation of time and all of its components. By focusing on the brother-sister relationships that flow freely between the two novels, connected by the tragic character, narrator, and brother, Quen
13、tin Compson, the reader can see the prevalence of these brother-sister relationships spanning generations and bloodlines while undergoing countless metamorphoses and substitutions, demonstrating the interchangeability of people and the repetition of events throughout time. The Sound and the Fury ost
14、ensibly refers to Macbeths speech, but the reader cannot overlook the similar deliberate references to Macbeths soliloquy in Absalom, Absalom!. Sutpen desires to leave his mark on the world, not just waste his time on earth to be “heard no more,“ and tries to establish a dynasty that will live on. S
15、imilar to Macbeth, Sutpen stops at nothing to accomplish his goals, even when he destroys his own family. Mr. Compson explicitly describes Sutpen as hearing “ all the voices, the murmuring of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow beyond the immediate fury, “ and Rosa, too, pointedly describes Sutpen: “
16、He was a walking shadow“ (AA 232, 139). Macbeth will stop at nothing to obtain the crown just as Sutpen stops at nothing in order to create his dynasty. The reiteration of “tomorrow“ again signifies the perpetual aspect oftime which draws Sutpens existence on earth closer to an end and jeopardizes h
17、is likelihood to succeed in his design. Macbeths tragic ambitions, then, as well as his anxious contempt for time, provide another important framework for an interpretation of both novels.大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设计（论文）62.Dreading TimeQuentin Compson, born to Jason and Caroline Compson in 1891, commits sui
18、cide by rowning himself in a river in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 2, 1910. After his parents sell the pasture that Benjy, his fifteen-year-old idiot brother, plays on in order to send Quentin to college, he attends Harvard for one year prior to his suicide. Before attending Harvard, however, i
19、n Absalom, Absalom!, Quentin learns about the doomed Sutpen family through a story narrated by his father and Rosa Coldfield, and after arriving in Cambridge, retells the Sutpen story with his Canadian roommate in college, Shreve McCannon. Quentin has a younger sister, Caddy, and two younger brother
20、s, Jason and Benjy; his father suffers from alcoholism and his mother from hypochondria. Yet, as we shall see, through hearing and retelling the saga of Thomas Sutpens family, Quentin comes to find new relations, and within this “extended family,“ new brothers and sisters in Henry and Bon, and Rosa
21、and Judith. Quentin struggles with three main things: his sister Caddy, time, and death. Quentin, who often thinks of committing incest with Caddy, cannot control himself when he knows that he must lose her to other men. Caddy marries Herbert Head on April 25, 1910, and Quentin commits suicide less
22、than two months later. In the Appendix to The Sound and the Fury (1945), Faulkner details that Quentin “loved not his sisters body but some concept of Compson honor,“ suggesting that Quentin strives to preserve Compson honor while realizing that his family is doomed (Portable 709). While Faulkners d
23、etailed Compson genealogy in the Appendix uses the word “doom“ in many passages to describe each characters downfall or failure, the honor that Quentin wishes to defend remains unapparent to the reader as well as to Quentin because of Faulkners ambiguous description. Quentin wishes to uphold the hon
24、or that the rest of his family has already lost, hence the doom that befalls them. In Absalom, Absalom!, the story of Thomas Sutpen especially enthralls him because Sutpen, “the idea of a man,“ in Faulkners words, “who wanted sons and got sons who destroyed him,“ tries to accomplish the seemingly un
25、attainable dynasty for his family (FU 73). Perhaps especially because Sutpen falls to his doom, the endeavor captivates Quentin: “He grieved and regretted 大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设计（论文）7the passing of an order the dispossessor of which he was not tough enough to withstand. But more he grieved the fact (be
26、cause he hated and feared the portentous symptom) that a man like Sutpen, who to Quentin was trash, origin-less, could not only have dreamed so high but have had the force and strength to have failed so grandly“ (Selected Letters 185). John T. Irwin, in his study Doubling and Incest/ Repetition and
27、Revenge, describes Sutpens quest in expressly psychoanalytic terms.3.BrothersQuentin experiences the fluidity of time throughout his narrative in The Sound and the Fury as well as in the retellings of Sutpens story in Absalom, Absalom! Quentin, like the reader, travels freely between memories of the
28、 past and events of the present. Similar to this transposable relationship of time, Quentin also encounters the inter change ability of people and their relationships with each other, especially as he and Shreve reconstruct the story of the Sutpens. Throughout the tellings, Quentin imagines Henry, B
29、on, Shreve, and himself as the “four of them there, in that room in New Orleans in 1860, just as in a sense there were four ofthem here in this tomblike room in Massachusetts in 1910“ (AA 268). While Shreve narrates the story, Quentin sees him as like his father: “Yes, almost exactly like Father“ (A
30、A 168). “Yes, we are both Father. Or maybe Father and I are both Shreve, maybe it took Father and me both to make Shreve or Shreve and me both to make Father or maybe Thomas Sutpen to make all ofus,“ once again linking The Sound and theFury and Absalom, Absalom! and reaffirming the repetition of his
31、tory as well as the mutability of time (AA 210). Transferring this capability of substitution, readers can see the transposable aspects of many of Faulkners characters in these two novels.King describes the repetition of events inevitably brought about by the passage of time; those denied by Sutpen
32、reappear to destroy him. Bon returns to enforce his mothersrevenge upon Sutpen while Wash returns to murder Sutpen for taking advantage of his granddaughter in an attempt to father another son. Sutpens “misrecognition of time“ leads to his fear of time and this fear directly corresponds to Quentins
33、fear of time, clock time in particular, in The Sound and the Fury. Much like Macbeth and Sutpen, Quentin fears the inexorable progression of time. However, as time moves forward and Caddy becomes more removed from his life, Quentin places extreme value on his sister and focuses all of his energy on
34、attempting to 大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设计（论文）8preserve her honor and keep her for himself.4.SistersThe importance of sisters remains prevalent in Faulkners novels. In an introduction written in 1933 to The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner describes his original concept for the novel: “I, who had three brothers
35、 and no sisters and was destined to lose my first daughter in infancy, began to write about a little girl“ (Intro SF 230). This absence of females creates a void for Faulkner to fill with his female characters and sister relationships. In Gwynn and Blotners Faulkner in the University, Faulkner descr
36、ibes his motivations for writing about women: “Its much more fun to try to write about women because I think women are marvelous, theyre wonderful, and I know very little about them . its much more fun to try to write about women than about menmore difficult, yes“ (45). Faulkner often creates female
37、 characters that symbolize endurance. While most Faulknerian critics tend to ignore or evade the aspect of sisters in The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, these female relationships remain important and unavoidable. Faulkners interest in writing about women because they remain mystical and
38、incomprehensible to him indicates that women and sisters create pertinent aspects to be analyzed in these two novels.As he merges the images of the men that affect his life, Quentin describes his metamorphoses with Henry and, similarly, Henrys symmetry with Bon (“ whom he watched 大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设
39、计（论文）9aping his clothing carriage speech and all and (the youth) completely unaware that he was doing it “ (AA 252), thus allowing Quentin to share and exchange both of them with Shreve: “So that now it was not two but four of them riding the two horses through the dark over the frozen December ruts
40、 of that Christmas eve: four of them and then just twoCharles-Shreve and Quentin-Henry“ (AA 267). This transposable, fluid relationship is related to Irwins idea of Quentin as both brother seducer and brother avenger. However, Quentin overtly pairs himself with Henry, not Bon, perhaps in an attempt
41、to become the more desirable brother avenger rather than the more deviant brother seducer: “Quentin projects onto the characters of Bon and Henry opposing elements in his own personalityBon represents Quentins unconsciously motivated desire for his sister Candace, while Henry represents the consciou
42、s repression or punishment of that desire“ (Irwin 28).ConclusionFaulkner clearly demonstrates the importance of storytelling as well as the universality of narrators in the dialogue between Quentin and Shreve recreating the story of Thomas Sutpen. Indicating the interdependence and interchangeabilit
43、y of narrators, Faulkner shows that the story is the most important entity and as long as it is being spoken and heard, the identity ofthe storyteller often, even necessarily, becomes less evident and less certain. Proposing that Faulkner felt the same about the stories he created, he would accept t
44、hat a story remains eternal after the author has passed out of existence: “ to make that scratch, that undying mark on the blank face of the oblivion to which we are all doomed “ (AA 102). Through Quentin and Shreve, Faulkner demonstrates the fluidity of their narration:This “happy marriage,“ which
45、occurs in chapter eight, does not last because in chapter nine, the conclusion of the novel, Quentin and Shreve are portrayed as very separated. Shreve proposes his sardonic prediction that“ in time the Jim Bonds are going to conquer the western hemisphere. . and so in a few thousand years, I who re
46、gard you will also have sprung from the loins of African kings “ and after which he asks Quentin: “ Why do you hate the South? “ (AA 302-303). Quentin, feeling very alone, helplessly and inextricably bound to Sutpens 大连科技学院 2015 届本科生毕业设计（论文）10story and the legacy of his Southern past, pants desperat
47、ely “in the cold air, the iron New England dark: / dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!“ (AA 303). The chilling conclusion oiAbsalom, Absalom! forces the reader to return to The Sound and the Fury in order to fully understand Quentins demise, creating a necessary, circular bond between both novels.Returning to the action of Mr. Compson giving Quentin his grandfathers watch, he sta
