William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: Narrating the Compson Family Decline and the Changing South

—Curriculum Unit Overview—

Introduction

This curriculum unit will examine narrative structure and time, narrative voice/point of view, and symbolism throughout The Sound and the Fury (with sections referred to as the "Benjy," "Quentin," "Jason," and "Dilsey" chapters). Students will engage in a close reading of the full novel and in activities that prompt them to consider the changing narrative structure and voice throughout the novel and the relationship between such changes and characterization. Students also will trace the decline of the Compson family. Upon completing this curriculum unit, students will have a solid understanding of the novel and of the changing South, and they will be able concretely to analyze the novel in spoken and written forms.

Guiding Questions

• How does Faulkner use narrative structure, time, voice/point of view, and other devices such as symbolism throughout each chapter of The Sound and the Fury?
• How does Faulkner characterize Benjy, Quentin, Jason, Dilsey (and Caddy), document the decline of the Southern Compson family, and portray the changing the American South?

Learning Objectives

• Define Faulkner's place in American literary history
• Describe Faulkner's "South" in the context of the historical South and understand how the South was changing socially and economically in the early 20th century
• Understand narrative voice/point of view and its relation to content
• Understand symbolism and its relationship to plot and narrative structure
• Gain a firm understanding of The Sound and the Fury's plot and its use of time

Background Information for the Teacher

The Sound and the Fury is an emotionally charged work that is difficult for most mature readers, let alone junior and senior high school students. Yet it is not impossible to teach, nor is it out of the reach for most advanced students. In the novel, as in most of his works, Faulkner wrestles with moral themes, yet it is the structure of the narrative—at once stylistically compelling and yet obscure—that both ranks it as great among American literary classics and renders it so very complex for readers.

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.

• The South: What is it, Where is it?, excerpted from John Shelton Reed's My Tears Spoiled My Aim and available via EDSITEment reviewed American Studies at the University of Virginia, might be a good way to quickly review the multiple perspectives of the South. The article is lengthy, and uses statistics ranging from the 1920s to the 1980s, so it is intended as supplementary background information for the teacher.
• For the purposes of this curriculum unit, the terms point of view and narrative voice will be used interchangeably. While some teachers might want to enhance the lesson by distinguishing between narrative voice and focalization, this lesson adopts the broader approach to point of view since the student is already grappling with a complex text. Point of view, then, here includes both 'who sees' (often termed focalization) and who speaks (often termed 'voice').

Preparing to Teach This Curriculum Unit

• Review the lesson plan and the websites used throughout. Locate and bookmark suggested materials. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing. The following worksheets are available for use, with their respective lessons in the curriculum unit noted in parentheses.
  • Colored-Ink Exercise (Lesson One)
  • Symbols as Time Triggers (Lesson Two)
  • Point of View (Lessons Three and Four)
• Students can access the novel and some of the activity materials via the Student LaunchPad.
• Review the curriculum unit overview and the pre-reading activities for students.
• Warn students to anticipate difficult reading ahead. While Benjy's version of events in the first chapter is complex and even difficult to read, for example, ask students to focus less on creating a firm initial sense of what happened and more on how the structure of Benjy's thoughts influences their sense of the Compson family's place in time and in culture.
• Prepare students for Faulkner's use of offensive racist terms and racial stereotypes by setting the context of Faulkner's time and place. The article "Keeping Faulkner in the Classroom," by Lisa Hickman of Rhodes College (available from Southeast Missouri State University's Center for Faulkner Studies) will help you prepare students for such issues.

Suggested Activities

1. Introduction to Faulkner and Faulkner's South

2. Introduction to the Novel and Useful Literary Terms

3. Active Reading Activities

Because the novel is so complex, several pre-reading activities will help prepare students for this difficult novel. Any reader of The Sound and the Fury can benefit from being somewhat grounded in terms of their basic understanding of characters and plot prior to reading the novel and therefore be able to analyze the novel in more depth as they read it for the first time.

1. Introduction to Faulkner and Faulkner's South

• William Faulkner on the Web (WFotW), available via EDSITEment reviewed Internet Public Library, is the strongest representative of William Faulkner materials online. Be sure to review with students a genealogy of the Compson family (note that clicking on a name leads to the glossary entry for the character).

Questions that students might want to consider:

• What is the 'voice' of their website? Who wrote it? For what purpose? [these are also good questions for students to ask when viewing any webpage for academic purposes]
• What effect does the style or form of the source have on your interpretation of the content? Does it matter if you read a biography, a chronology, a map, or an image? Do certain forms illuminate certain things while obscuring others? In what way?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages to having multiple perspectives on the same subject?

Web Links:

• Brief Faulkner biography via American Memory
• William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech via Internet Public Library
• Faulkner Biography at the Mississippi Writers Page via Internet Public Library
• Faulkner Image Gallery at the Mississippi Writers Page has several interesting and useful images.
• Teachers might want to include some of the sections of Library of Southern Literature, from EDSITEment reviewed Documenting the American South. Drawn from The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, several excerpts have valuable information about the South in literature. Two valuable point of departure might be:
  • Civil War
  • Humor
• From William Faulkner on the Web via Internet Public Library:
  • Biography
  • Chronology of Faulkner's Life
  • Faulkner Family Tree

Finish by reviewing the quotation by Evan Goodwin from Little Blue Light, available via the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library:

[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.

2. Introduction to the Novel and Useful Literary Terms

Review the novel's Plot Summary, also from the University of Mississippi. Explain to students that instead of "giving away the story," this plot summary actually will help them better understand Faulkner's unique narrative style. Ask students to pay attention to how Faulkner "unfolds" this plot as they are reading the novel, and remind students to mark passages for class discussion. Refer to the 2-D Display of Time from the University of Saskatchewan. Knowing the novel's chronological time will help alleviate students' possible confusion about the course of events, particularly since the course of events is not presented in a linear way.

Students can refer to these helpful summaries as they are reading if necessary. The University of Saskatchewan's Department of English's map of the Compson house is also useful for gaining some bearings while reading the novel. It is particularly helpful for understanding where and how Benjy moves throughout the Compson yard since his pasture was sold in order for Quentin to attend Harvard.

Introduce students to Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness style:

a pure steam of words, apparently formless, but calculated to present a more intimate and vital depiction of characters and themes in a novel. (from "Little Blue Light" website, available via the EDSITEment reviewed Internet Public Library)

Finally, point out the background of the title: The novel's title comes from a line found in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth was a Scottish general who spoke these words upon learning that his wife had committed suicide. He sank into a deep depression and began to ponder the meaning of life amidst what was perceived as life's utter chaos.

3. Active Reading Activities

Unit Lessons

Lesson One: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: Benjy's Sense of Time and Narrative Voice

Lesson Two: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: Narrating Quentin's Mental Breakdown

Lesson Three: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: Narration, Voice, and the Compson Family's New System

Lesson Four: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: April Eighth, 1928: Narrating from an 'Ordered Place'?

Curriculum Unit Assessment

Essay

Assign a formal essay in which students will answer one of the following questions. Each essay should be written as an argument that is supported by key passages from the novel.

• How does Faulkner use narrative structure to develop his primary characters?
• How does the Compson family (and notions of family "blood") change throughout the course of the novel?
• How does Faulkner present time throughout the novel, and what is the relationship between narrative and symbolic time and the changing historical times in the early twentieth-century South?
• By the end of the novel, Mrs. Compson has forbidden the mention of Caddy's name. What is significant about the fact that Caddy does not have her own chapter (and that she is nameless by the end of the novel)?

Creative Writing

Deliberate obscurity, or as Conrad Aiken once said of Faulkner's work, "deliberately withheld meaning," forces the reader to unravel the novel's events over time, rendering plot less essential than character. Benjy's chapter provides hints and glimpses into the life of the family over the years as Benjy remembers them. In later chapters, the narrative for each chapter is more straightforward, allowing the reader to see how certain events occur sequentially. Caddy, however, never speaks for herself throughout the entire novel, even though she is a key character—perhaps the key character of the novel. Caddy is an enigma, to her brothers and to her readers, yet she is perhaps the most (tragically) heroic of the Compsons—certainly more so than the tragic Quentin (Chapter 2) or the rather villainous Jason (Chapter 3). Caddy escapes the South, although readers discover that she ultimately finds herself mixed up in a much more historically Modern problem.

With this context in mind, ask students to write part of a "Caddy Chapter" in the first person (4-5 pages). Students should include an introductory paragraph that explains how and why they are using the first person throughout the chapter, and their "Caddy Chapter" should unfold the same plot as presented throughout the novel via Caddy's imagined perspective.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Internet Public Library [http://www.ipl.org/]
  • William Faulkner on the Web
    [http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/%7Eegjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html]
  • hypertext version of The Sound and the Fury
    [http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner/]
• American Memory [http://memory.loc.gov/]
  • Brief Faulkner biography
    [http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/progress/
    jb_progress_faulkner_1.html]
• NARA Digital Classroom
  [http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/index.html]
  • Document Analysis Worksheets
    [http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/
    analysis_worksheets/worksheets.html]
• American Studies at the University of Virginia
  [http://xroads.virginia.edu/]
  • The South: What is it, Where is it?
    [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/REED/tears.html]
• Documenting the American South
  [http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html]
  • Civil War
    [http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/civilwar.html]
  • Humor
    [http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/humor.html]