Dilsey as a Source of Unity in the Compson Family

"Out, out, cursory candle!
Life'due south just a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

The Sound and the Fury (1929) is one of William Faulkner'due south most famous novels. Befitting a Faulkner piece of work, it's both mildly incomprehensible and incredibly tragic.

The story follows the extremely dysfunctional Compson family of Jefferson, Mississippi (part of Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, where many of his stories are set). It's mostly focused on the four Compson siblings: Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Caddy.

Each of its four sections is narrated past a different family fellow member: the first by the mentally disabled Benjy; the 2nd by Quentin, a Harvard pupil who's essentially forsaken his family unit by this bespeak; the 3rd by Jason, an objectively despicable human being existence who resents his function as family patriarch and emotionally abuses his mother, brother, and niece; and the fourth by Dilsey, the family's blackness cook/housekeeper who observes the dysfunction. (Her section is also unique in that while the Compson brothers narrate in start person, Dilsey'due south section is a more than standard 3rd-person omniscient narrative.)

In 1945, Faulkner wrote an appendix that clears upwardly a few issues and describes what happens to everyone that wasn't already dead by the novel's end.

Two movie adaptations have been made. The first, released in 1959, was directed by Martin Ritt and starred Yul Brynner, Joanne Woodward, Margaret Leighton, Stuart Whitman, Ethel Waters, Françoise Rosay, and Jack Warden. The second, released in 2014, was directed by James Franco, who also starred with Tim Blake Nelson, Jacob Loeb, Joey Rex, Loretta Devine, Ahna O'Reilly, Scott Brume, Seth Rogen, and Danny McBride.

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This novel provides examples of:

• all lowercase letters: The end of Quentin'due south department.
• Apocalyptic Log: Quentin's section has some elements of this, particularly when he all of a sudden blacks out in the middle of a sentence, leading to a flashback, but, because his mind's breaking downward, it'due south told without whatever punctuation.
• Berserk Button: Do NOT say disparaging things near women, or anything that suggests that you've never had a sis, in front of Quentin.
• Large Blood brother Instinct: All the Compson boys have strong opinions on Caddy. Quentin's definitely falls into this trope. The reason he confesses to incest with her is that, if the two of them committed an act that awful, they would at least endure any penalization they deserved together.
• Bribery: Jason does this to Caddy.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Simply to be clear: Caddy and Quentin DID Not take a sexual relationship, although Quentin spends the entirety of his section ranting well-nigh how they did. This is a prevarication that he told to his father.
• Closer to Earth: Benjy. He can olfactory property Caddy'southward lost virginity.
• Dead Guy Inferior: Caddy names her daughter after her brother Quentin, who killed himself. This results in a surprising moment in Benjy'south narrative in which Quentin is mentioned carrying out a detail action, only this action is described using feminine pronouns. Information technology most looks like a typo for a moment, until the reader realizes that at that place are 2 people named Quentin.
• Deep S: The broader scope of the novel is the fall of pre-Reconstruction southern club and its obstinate refusal to have the transition lightly.
• Defiled Forever: Fifty-fifty though Caddy wasn't raped by Dalton Ames, everyone has this reaction to her having lost her virginity to him.
• Downer Ending: The Compsons, a noble family with a proud Southern Heritage, completely destroys itself within two generations.
• Driven to Suicide: Quentin.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Caddy is the central figure of the novel, but it is narrated from the perspective of iv other characters. Faulkner even said that Caddy is the real protagonist of the story.
• Freudian Excuse: Every. Single. Compson.
• Funetik Aksent: The blacks and Italians in the story have very stiff phonetic accents. This was standard at the time - compare Huckleberry Finn.
• Generation Xerox: Caddy and her daughter.
• Good Bad Daughter: Caddy.
• Incest Subtext: Quentin and Caddy.
• Inner Monologue
• Innocent Inaccurate: One of the reasons that Benjy's section is difficult to understand is that he himself cannot understand much that is going on around him (he is mentally handicapped). While he frequently narrates flashbacks, he narrates said flashbacks in nowadays tense as if they're happening right at present because he has no concept of fourth dimension.
• Ivy League for Anybody: Quentin is a student at Harvard.
• Jerkass:
  • Jason.
  • Luster is pretty nasty towards Benjy.
• Literary Allusion Title: "The audio and the fury" is a quote from Macbeth; upon hearing of the suicide of his wife, the championship character describes life equally "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying zip." The starting time part of the book could exist seen as "a tale told by an idiot," while the title is more generally symbolic of all the meaningless traditions the Compsons desperately cling to, which ultimately culminate in their demise.
• Magical Negro: Dilsey.
• Manipulative Bastard: Jason, especially concerning Caddy and her daughter.
• Mind Screw: In their respective sections, Benjy and Quentin both condone chronology in such a way that it's almost incommunicable to understand what is happening until you tin can put them into a larger context.
• My Beloved Smother: Caroline Compson is this to her favorite son Jason, who turns out to exist every bit terrible every bit she is (though in a different mode).
• My Sister Is Not A Slut: In order to preserve Caddy's dignity subsequently she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, Quentin confesses to committing incest with her so that their parents won't think she was sleeping around. Yep, in the Compson family, pre-marital sex is a worse sin than incest.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits!: Quentin's mental attitude towards Caddy. He's not very good at enforcing this dominion.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Quentin's father preaches nihilism to him.
• Non-Linear Graphic symbol: Benjy literally cannot tell the departure betwixt the past and the present - everything seems to be happening to him at the same fourth dimension. Quentin is non one of these, simply his disjointed narrative gives the impression of it.
• Not-P.O.V. Protagonist: Caddy, the main character of the novel, is the but Compson kid not to receive a department told from her POV. This is narratively demonstrated in an anecdote from the Compson siblings' childhood in which Caddy climbs a tree and all her brothers look up to see her panties covered in mud. While Caddy is doing the activity, it's her brothers' unlike points of view of the incident which dictate the course of the novel.
• No Punctuation Catamenia: Quentin'southward narrative near the finish.
• Not What It Looks Like: A little Italian girl follows Quentin effectually for awhile, and he tries to find out where she lives - upon which her blood brother attacks him, under the impression that he was trying to kidnap and molest her. In spite of his innocence, Quentin still has to pay a hefty fine.
• The Substantive and the Substantive
• One Steve Limit: Averted with Jason and Jason Jr. As well averted with the two Quentins, which is only one of the many, many things which makes Benjy'south narrative hard to follow.
• Merely Sane Human: Dilsey, especially in relation to the Compsons.
• Painting the Medium: In Benjy's narrative, shifts in time are indicated with cursory passages in italics. Quentin's narrative is almost entirely based on this trope, the formatting and judgement construction growing increasingly erratic and disjointed equally Quentin approaches the Despair Outcome Horizon.
• Parental Favoritism: Mrs. Compson but cares for her vicious son Jason, and pays little attention to whatsoever of her other children.
• Sanity Slippage: Quentin's narrative.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism:
  • Jason, disdainful of everyone effectually him and full of bitterness, is at the cynical finish of the spectrum. His department even begins, "Once a bitch always a bitch."
  • Quentin, with his ideals, though often misguided, of accolade and gentlemanly conduct, is at the idealistic finish. Suffice to say, reality and lofty ideals don't always mix well.
  • Mr. Compson's wearied cynicism and nihilistic outlook are a counterpoint to Quentin's farthermost adherence to abstract concepts such as honor and purity.
  • Faulkner himself is much more than on the idealistic side than his characters - the ending shows that it is Dilsey and her family who will inherit the world, because they are held up by some degree of hope.
• Suicide Pact: Quentin tries, and fails, to make 1 with Caddy.
• Unconventional Formatting: In Quentin's narrative, sentences are broken upward with brusk phrases in italics, there are long passages with extremely disjointed arrangement of text, and as the narrative goes on it begins to shed punctuation, paragraph breaks, upper-case letter letters and conventional judgement structures. This is used to visually represent Quentin's declining mental state.
• Unreliable Narrator: All of the narrators qualify to a greater or lesser extent. The most reliable (in the sense of partiality) narrator is Benjy, who is likewise mentally handicapped. At the other finish of the spectrum, it tin can be difficult to discern from Quentin's narration what really happened.
• Virgin Power: Caddy's virginity is a big honking deal.
• "Well Done, Son!" Guy: Just one part of Quentin'southward very heavy emotional baggage.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheSoundAndTheFury

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