"Then
I found Faulkner. To me, his books are mainly about language,
they are about how fantastic language can be."
Nick Cave[1]
Nick Cave has, with And the Ass Saw the Angel, ventured into a world of the mythological American South. He depicts, like William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury, a world in decline. Both authors fill their canvas of the South in the first half of the twentieth century with images of incest, suicide, inertia and mental breakdown. Both authors also deal with the internal monologue of mentally challenged mute narrators, a strategy that allows emphasis on issues of communication. The similarities between their works are notable, and worthy of study.
The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner's fourth novel, published in 1929. It depicts the decline of the once-aristocratic Compson family through four sections narrated by four different narrators. The three first sections are narrated by the three Compson brothers, and they bring to us their highly differing and private perceptions of events that have been important in their family history in the past thirty years. The fourth section is written as a heterodiegetic nonfocalized narrative. The novel centres around the figure of Caddy, who is the girl among the Compson children. Each of the first three sections are told by one of her brothers, and in each section she seems to be at the centre of their narrative. She is never allowed a section of her own, we only perceive her through the eyes of her brothers, and they relate to us what they feel is important in their relationship to her, and in her relationship to the family. Benjy, being an idiot, cannot really formulate his feelings towards Caddy, although we get a clear impression that he nurtures a strong empathy towards her. Through his section, we notice that Caddy in fact acts out the role as a surrogate mother to Benjy. To Quentin, Caddy seems to represent the loss of traditional Southern values, such as honour and pre-marital virginity, and therefore he struggles to come to terms with what or who he wants his sister to be. He realises that Caddy is a "fallen woman", but he refuses to accept it, and therefore his relationship to his sister, whom he loves very much, becomes strained. Jason, the third brother, also has to deal with a sense of loss when it comes to his relationship with his sister. Jason's loss, however, is monetary. He was promised a job as a bank-clerk by Caddy's husband, but as they divorced, he did not get it. Jason blames Caddy for this, and hates her for it. The Sound and the Fury is to a great extent concerned with themes of loss, and inability to break through the barriers that people create around themselves. In the centre of the Compson brothers' impotence, stands the figure of Caddy. Faulkner says of her:
To
me she was the beautiful one, she was my heart's darling. That's
what I wrote the book about and I used the tools which seemed to
me the proper tools to try to tell, try to draw the picture of
Caddy.[2]
The proper tools in this case would be the eyes and minds of Caddy's brothers. Faulkner was not happy with the way he portrayed her, so he tried again and again, and always claiming that The Sound and the Fury had been a failure.
I
wrote the Benjy part first. That wasn't good enough so I wrote
the Quentin part. That still wasn't good enough. I let Jason try
it. That still wasn't enough. I let Faulkner try it and that
still wasn't enough and so about twenty years afterward I wrote
an appendix still trying to make that book what - match the
dream.[3]
Throughout the novel, Faulkner experiments with several different styles of internal monologues, and most of the novel is told through a "stream-of-consciousness" technique, up until he, in the last section, where he lets "Faulkner try it", returns to a somewhat more traditional literary language. The style differs highly from one section to the next. This is a reflection on who is narrating, on what frame of mind he is in, on what thoughts he is able or willing to pass through his mind. Faulkner has, with The Sound and the Fury, faced the challenge of recreating the workings of an individual mind in literary form. Even though Faulkner himself was insistent of his failure, critics have never ceased to be amazed at his brave attempts of reaching perfection.
Although Cave’s literary language is distinctly his own, and therefore quite different from Faulkner’s, he has taken on challenges similar to some of those Faulkner faced when it came to the representation of language in the literary mode; that is, how one should represent the minds of certain characters that share similar traits, in writing. For instance, Benjy in The Sound and the Fury is, like Euchrid, mute. Even though they never speak audibly, or, with a few exceptions in Euchrid’s case, write anything, we, as readers, "hear" their voices throughout major parts of both novels. The "how" and "why"-issues of representation are clearly something to which both authors had to relate. How are we supposed to hear a mute boy/man? Why does he speak to us? What is the purpose of a mute narrator?
As will be seen, the challenge of presenting the internal monologue of a mute and mentally handicapped character has been solved in two very different ways. However, the two paths taken are but different tracks towards the same goal: to create a representation of the utter loneliness and despair that haunts people unable to express themselves, unable to communicate. This, of course, is not only applicable to Benjy, but also to his brother Quentin. I will start, however, by comparing Euchrid with the youngest of the Compson brothers, namely Benjy.
I
had already begun to tell it through the eyes of the idiot
child since I felt that it would be more effective as told by
someone capable only of knowing what happened, but not why.[4]
The narrator of the first section of The Sound and the Fury is the 33-year-old mute Benjy Compson. We meet him on "April Seventh, 1928", which is also the title of his section. Benjy is, in Faulkner’s words, an idiot, and therefore quite unable to grasp the concepts of causality and temporality. He sees things happening, but he does not understand what he sees. He only registers events in an almost photographical manner. An example of this is the opening paragraph of the novel:
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit.[5]
Benjy sees what is going on without naming it. What he sees is a couple of golfers playing on the other side of the fence, but he only refers to the golfers as "them" and to their activity as "hitting". Also, since Benjy is unable to grasp the concept of temporality, there is no past or future in his world, there is only and always "now". Benjy is unable to choose what he wants to tell us about the Compson past, for his "memory" is always triggered by association. His entire section is filled with anachronies, if we see the title of his section as indicative of the time of the first narrative, namely April seventh, 1928. His anachronies consist for the most part of partial analepses, because Benjy never completes a story by the use of the analepsis, and it always ends on an ellipsis. The following is a good example of this:
"Wait
a minute." Luster said. "You snagged on that nail
again. Cant you never crawl through here without snagging on that
nail."
Caddy
uncaught me and we crawled through. Uncle Maury said to not let
anybody see us, so we better stoop over, Caddy said. Stoop over,
Benjy. Like this, see. We stooped over and crossed the garden,
where the flowers rasped and rattled against us. [6]
When he snags on a nail while crawling under a fence in 1928, he suddenly "relives" an experience in his childhood when he also snagged on a nail. Whenever Benjy experiences these associative triggers, he is transported back and forth through time, and is thus able to relate to us scenes covering the past thirty years in the Compson household. Faulkner uses italics whenever Benjy's sense of time shifts. He does this to aid the reader in his understanding of what is going on.
From a purely technical perspective, William Faulkner explains the reason why Benjy is dumb. He thought that the story would be more "effective" when told through uncomprehending and non-subjective eyes. Benjy is as objective as any narrator can get: he does not pass judgement on anybody, he does not consciously omit anything, he does not lie. He only reports what he sees, smells and hears. He simply relates to us the sensations of his world. Through the device of the "memory-triggers", Faulkner allows us to accompany Benjy through important moments in the Compson family. Benjy's "idiocy" does not allow him to comment on the events that surround him, he is not allowed an opinion, and is therefore a perfect tool for a technique of what Genette calls an "illusion of mimesis." Faulkner is pretending to "show", he is pretending that his diegesis is in fact mimesis. It seems that Faulkner thought that the presentation of images with no disturbing comments would be the best way to represent the disintegrating world of the Compsons. Benjy's idiocy and dumbness is thus quite clearly a literary device, constructed by the author to enable himself to convey the story in the best possible way.
However, this is not the only way in which Benjy functions within The Sound and the Fury. His dumbness is not only a function of Faulkner's need for a narrative device, but it is also a symbolic property within the novel. The Compson brothers inability to communicate with the world is perhaps more blatantly displayed when it comes to Benjy than his brothers, but, according to Olga W. Vickery, his dumbness is not symbolic only of his own state:
[E]ach
of the first three sections presents a well demarcated and quite
isolated world built around one of these splinters of truth. The
fact that Benjy is dumb is symbolic of the closed nature of these
worlds; communication is impossible when Caddy who is central to
all three means something different to each.[7]
She contends that the theme of The Sound and the Fury is basically "the relation between the act and man's apprehension of the act, between the event and the interpretation."[8] This relation is always disturbed and distorted, always individualised and personalised, and therefore each man builds his own truth based on his own interpretations of the world outside him. Benjy does not filter his experiences in any way, but presents them to us in the only way he can, as simple descriptions of actions and conditions surrounding him. Benjy's reports are, however, limited to short glimpses that are not so much communicated as under-communicated. Benjy's monologue consists of very literal reports of what he sees, not what he thinks. In the end, he, like his brothers, only gives us a small portion of truth; he only gives us his truth, the observable truth. Benjy's dumbness is a symbol of the rigid state of individual truths, a state in which no man is able really to communicate.
Benjy's dumbness is therefore both a symbol of the Compsons
inability to communicate, and a literary device constructed to
tell a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing, more
effectively. This brings us to the title of the novel, The
Sound and the Fury, which is derived from a soliloquy spoken
by the title character of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth:
"It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury/Signifying nothing" (Act V, Scene v). Even though most
obviously this quotation can be used in reference to Benjy, his
brothers also fall neatly into the category of idiots telling
tales of no significance. Their inability to convey messages of
any meaning prevents them from breaking out of their "closed
[...] worlds". Clearly, they are not happy within the
confines of their worlds; Benjy is almost constantly moaning or
whimpering, longing for something he cannot name, Quentin
experiences an outside world that is so much at odds with his own
preconceptions of what the world should be like that he kills
himself. Quentin has sought refuge from his father's nihilism in
the antebellum Southern notions of honour, but when he realises
that the world has moved away from this set of values, his world
falls apart, and he is not able to mend it. Jason is extremely
bitter and sore, mainly because he feels that the world works
against him, but he is not able to explain to himself how or why.
Like his mother, he rather prefers to put himself in the position
of a martyr. He feels that he is made to suffer because of other
people's flaws. The state in which the Compson brothers
remain is not a good place for any of them. Their worlds are out
of joint, and they do not know how to mend them. Since they are
so clearly unable to communicate properly, one can register a
yearning for a world in which true communication is possible in
at least the last two of the first three sections of the novel.
Like Benjy in The Sound and the Fury, Euchrid is the mute narrator of And the Ass Saw the Angel. Although they may seem similar, they are very different from each other in many ways. However, the most immediately striking thing about them is that they both are mute, retarded narrators. The degree of their handicap is clearly not the same, and this is displayed through their prose as well as their actions, but they are both basically unable to communicate with the world outside themselves. Nick Cave has, as we have seen, said that his fascination with Faulkner is based on Faulkner's use of language, of "how fantastic language can be." This fascination for language, it seems, is also partly the reason why Euchrid was born mute. Nick Cave says:
I
wanted to create an alien language. That was one of the reasons I
made Euchrod (sic) a mute. He didn't use language to communicate.
Language was an abstract thing to him. Although he would not know
these words, I wanted his way of speaking to be [...] difficult
for the reader to understand.[9]
Although this
comment suggests Euchrid's dumbness is merely there for
satisfying the author's ambitions of creating a literary voice of
his own, there are clearly several reasons why Euchrid is dumb.
If we look at Euchrid from a technical perspective, we see that
his dumbness has a purpose. We hear Euchrid's monologue in his
dying moments, and therefore, most of his life is presented in a
retrospective anachronic manner, with only a few returns to the
first narrative, i.e. his sinking in quick-sand. When the book
opens, he is already sinking in quicksand, and he knows that he
is going to die. Euchrid has throughout his life appeared to the
world around him as a silent figure. He has never uttered a word,
nor has he, like Benjy, bellowed or whimpered. Throughout his
life he has been a character literally without a voice, yet most
of the story is told through him and his internal monologue.
Euchrid's telling of his story as he lies dying consists of a
massive flow of words, phrases, rhymes, rhythms and stories that
creates an immense contrast to the silent Euchrid that appears as
a character in the tale he tells. It seems as if Cave is playing
with the popular idea that a dying man sees his life pass before
him. We experience something like the bursting of a dam, as
Euchrid pours out to us all that he has hoarded up inside
throughout his life. Euchrid has hardly ever been able to
communicate with anybody, and now as he is almost dead, he
recounts the story of his life. So, from a technical perspective,
we see that Euchrid's dumbness allows the author to create a need
for the story to be told; Euchrid is dying, he has not spoken
before, and he must do it now. This is his only chance to
"say" something in this world, and therefore, Euchrid's
muteness allows for the urgency as well as the voluptuousness of
his language. Also, it allows, as suggested above, the contrast
between the silent, non-communicative figure of the story, and
the narrator desperately trying to communicate. This contrast
reinforces the theme of the destructiveness of the frustration of
communication, as it suggests the protagonist's overwhelming need
to express himself. This need is only fulfilled in his dying
hours.
Euchrid's dumbness also has a symbolic value, which ties in with the main theme of the novel. His muteness is symbolic of the characters inability to communicate with each other. As mentioned above, Euchrid clearly yearns to communicate, but he never succeeds. The same is the case for many of the other characters in the novel; his parents, for instance, are, as we have seen, unable to communicate at very basic levels. The characters of the novel are unable to communicate, and therefore it is a most fitting symbolism that the main character of the novel turns out to be a mute.
Both narrators, therefore, are mute because of the technical and symbolic value this device incorporates. They are mute in order to effectively tell a tale, to create contrasts between narration and action, and to create new and interesting positions from which to narrate. They are mute because of the closed nature of the worlds in which they and other characters move, and because of man's basic inability to communicate properly. Still, Benjy and Euchrid are able to relate to us their story. Even though we hear both of them through an internal monologue, their narration differs radically from each other. As Wesley Morris points out, Benjy’s narrative is dominated from without, his narration is dominated by other people's dialogue:
[A]n
interior monologue, Benjy’s narrative nonetheless is
predominantly the voices of others he hears and transmits to us
without a trace of distortion....He exists consciously in a
world with which he cannot communicate, repeatedly violated by
that world in words he cannot utter.[10]
Benjy’s own narrative voice seems flat, unemotional and dead. He merely reports what happens to him and what is being said, and he never proposes any verbal comment on what he sees, feels and hears. His reports are literal, and very visual. He does not always name the objects or persons involved in the scenes he witnesses, merely because he is unable to. Consider for instance this scene from the kitchen, where the Negro cook, Dilsey, is preparing breakfast:
I
put my hand out to where the fire had been.
"Catch
him." Dilsey said. "Catch him back."
My
hand jerked back and I put it in my mouth and Dilsey caught me.
I
could still hear the clock between my voice. Dilsey reached back
and
hit
Luster on the head. My voice was going loud every time.
"Get that soda." Dilsey said. She took my hand out of
my mouth. My
voice
went louder then and my hand tried to go back to my mouth, but
Dilsey
held it. My voice went loud. She sprinkled soda on my hand.[11]
Benjy puts his hand to "where the fire had been", and not to the stove. He is unable to name it, as he is unable to tell us that he is crying. It is almost as if he is outside himself when he tells us that his voice "went loud". His body seems to react without him having any kind of control. He does not jerk his hand back from the heat, but it is his hand itself that jerks back, in the same way that his hand tries, on it’s own, so to speak, to go back to his mouth when Dilsey holds him. It is clear that his narrative voice is dependent on what goes on around him, it seems as if he has no ability to choose what he wants to relate to us. Furthermore, we observe that he is, even though capable of emotion, unable to convey emotion through his narrative. His narrative remains coolly objective no matter what happens. This is illustrated by the fact that throughout Benjy's section almost no punctuation other than the full stop and the comma is ever used. Exclamation marks or question marks are not used, even when something dramatic happens. For instance, we presume that Dilsey would have shouted to Luster to catch Benjy before he burned himself. In a normal narrative, her shout would have been followed by an exclamation mark. Benjy, however, merely reports which words she used, not the manner in which they were presented. Therefore, Dilsey’s presumed shout: "Catch him back!" becomes " 'Catch him back.' Dilsey said."
Benjy’s comments shows us how simple his presentation of his surroundings is. He "objectively" shows us what happens, and when he does not know how to name something, like the stove, he simply does not name it. "Objectively", it must be said, in this context means uninfluenced by thought or feeling, and not necessarily "accurate" or "true". Even though we are not satisfied with what Benjy tells us, and read more descriptive details like inflections of character's voices into the text, his narrative, in the sense mentioned above, can be seen as objective. His narrative might be seen as an objective narrative lacking the descriptiveness of adjectives, which is a device to which we as readers have grown accustomed, and it is therefore, in the eyes of the reader, as subjective and "untrue" as any other narrator's. We expect things to have colour, shape and tone of voice, and therefore we insert it into the narrative, and think of Benjy's narration as incomplete. The same is the case when it comes to his narration of emotions; Benjy is not able to describe his own, or anybody else's, feelings. Even though he is very emotional and prone to weeping, he is not able to formulate the reason for his grief. He is unable to communicate even the most basic of his desires. In fact, his greatest attempt at communication ends tragically, as he encounters some schoolgirls walking past his gate on their way home:
It
was open when I touched it, and I held it in the twilight. I
wasn't
crying,
and I tried to stop, watching the girls coming along in the
twilight.
I
wasn't crying.
"There
he is."
They
stopped.
"He
cant get out. He wont hurt anybody, anyway. Come on."
"I'm
scared to. I'm scared. I'm going to cross the street"
"He
cant get out."
I
wasn't crying.
"Don't
be a fraid cat. Come on."
They
came on in the twilight. I wasn't crying, and I held to the gate.
They
came slow.
"I'm
scared."
"He
wont hurt you. I pass here every day. He just runs along the
fence."
They
came on. I opened the gate and they stopped, turning. I was
trying to say, and I caught her, trying to say, and she screamed
and I was trying to say and trying and the bright shapes began to
stop and I tried to get out.[12]
Benjy's desperate attempt to communicate ends in horror, not only for the schoolgirls that he chases, but also for Benjy himself. Later on, we learn that Benjy is gelded as a direct result of this situation, which by society is regarded as attempted rape. Benjy, however, has a certain unfulfilled need to express himself. We see here that most of his narration is based upon other people's words, but it becomes quite clear that he wants to say something of his own. However, he is not able to formulate in his own mind what it is that he wants, and he is even less able to speak his need. He is "trying to say" without being fully aware what he wants to say, he is merely aware that he has an urgent need to communicate.
Euchrid, on the other hand, has no problems with formulating his desires. His muteness is not indicative of the vocabulary of his internal monologue. While Benjy's language is simplistic, Euchrid's is complex, involved and difficult. Nick Cave says:
The story [...] was written in a kind of a hyper-poetic thought-speak, not meant to be spoken - a mongrel language that was part-Biblical, part-Deep South dialect, part-gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene.[13]
As we can see from the language he uses, as well as the contemplated way that he acts, it is quite clear that Euchrid is not as handicapped as Benjy. While Benjy is almost unable to think, Euchrid knows how to read and write, and he is fully capable of naming what is wrong in his world. Unlike Benjy's, Euchrid's narrative is full of expressed desires and longings. Michael Millgate says of Benjy:
Benjy
does not himself interpret [...] situations and events; still
less does he attempt to impose a distorted interpretation upon
the reader [...] Nor does he himself judge people, although he
becomes the instrument by which the other characters are judged,
their behaviour toward him serving as a touchstone of their
humanity.[14]
One could certainly claim that other characters are judged through their behaviour toward Euchrid as well, characters such as Ma Crowley, the hobos and Cosey Mo are certainly measured against their behaviour towards him. However, the rest of this statement is not as easily applicable to Euchrid as it is to Benjy. Being far more imaginative than Benjy, it follows easily that Euchrid also interprets the world in which he moves. Even though it is almost impossible for any other narrator to be as objective as Benjy, Euchrid’s subjective rendering of events sometimes seem like a wilful distortion of facts. While Benjy's omissions go as far as his ability to name things, Euchrid forgets, omits, lies and distorts on purpose. His monologue is filled with subjective and self-revelatory statements, and sometimes he contradicts himself so blatantly that his unreliability as a narrator becomes impossible not to detect. For instance, on page 56, he says: "In mah infant years and so through my teens - even as a young man ah sat not in judgement of mah fellow man." Less than twenty pages later, on page 75, he clearly sits "in judgement" of his fellow man:
Listen,
ah don't wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that
mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was
precisely that - a great whopping whale of a hog's cunt with a
dry black maggot for a brain.[15]
This statement clearly contradicts what he said earlier. Euchrid's claims of objectivity cannot be taken seriously. He is, as one would expect from a person suffering massive abuse, extremely subjective. Also, we can note in this passage how his language differs from Benjy's. Euchrid not only uses adjectives and question-marks, but he also uses metaphors and proverbial approximations. His use of language is on a totally different level than Benjy's. His internal monologue is much more advanced, but as characters in their respective novels, they both stand mute, unable to express themselves. Benjy is "trying to say" without knowing what he wants to say, and Euchrid is trying to express his longing for love and togetherness without being able to. They are both trying to communicate their desires, and they both fail. Benjy is caught in a world of objective observation, and Euchrid is caught up in his silent, often self-contradictory subjectivity.
However, Euchrid does not only contradict himself, he also forgets or omits things that he does not, for some reason, want to remember. This brings us to a point where it is natural to compare Euchrid to Benjy's older brothers, Quentin.
The second section of The Sound and the Fury is called "June Second, 1910", and it is narrated by Quentin Compson, Benjy's older brother. The position from which Quentin is speaking becomes particularly interesting when we later learn that Quentin in fact committed suicide this day. Quentin is, much like Euchrid, narrating his part of the novel in his dying moments. They both commit suicide by drowning, Quentin in a river and Euchrid in quicksand. Their narrative can therefore be said to represent the last thoughts of recollections of dying men.
Narrating from the point of their imminent deaths, it is rather obvious, as they have no earthly future, that both narrators are obsessed with the past. Their recounting of the past is, however, sometimes filled with ellipses and analepses as well as paralepses. We often encounter instances in which omissions have been made, and themes and events avoided. These gaps are, as we shall see, representative of moments in their pasts that have proven too troublesome and painful to deal with. However, these critical moments and events have a tendency to resurface when the narrator loses control of his narrative. Noel Polk argues his case convincingly when it comes to the narrative of Quentin Compson:
The
substance of his monologue is his effort to sort out, analyse,
and come to terms with those scenes of pain that he can
handle, and to evade, to repress, those he cannot. He is trying
to shape his memory into an acceptable version of his life that
will both explain his present misery and justify his decision to
commit suicide, and language is the only tool he has to effect
the shape he wants...Language's grammatical formality is for
Quentin a conscious way to keep away from those things he does
not want to think, those things he does not want to say.[16]
It becomes clear during Quentin's monologue that his pain is linked to his sister Caddy. Quentin is stuck in a nineteenth century mentality, and he is full of romantic and chivalrous ideals, and he is preoccupied with the idea of family honour. He is also deeply concerned with purity and the concept of virginity, and therefore he becomes obsessed with his sister's promiscuity. She has had sex with several men, and when she gets pregnant she is to marry one Herbert Head, who is not the father of her child. Cleanth Brooks say of Quentin:
A
way of seeing Quentin...is to note that he is another of
Faulkner's many puritans...Quentin reveals his Puritanism most
obviously in his alarm at the breakdown of sexual morality. When
the standards of sexual morals are challenged, a common reaction
and one quite natural to Puritanism is to try to define some
point beyond which surely no one would venture to transgress - to
find at least one act so horrible that everyone would be repelled
by it.[17]
It becomes clear that this is exactly what Quentin tries to achieve. He tries to "undo" his sister's deeds through language, through claiming that they have committed incest. Quentin seems to believe that society would somehow withdraw from them, and her "sins" with other men would no longer matter or even exist.
it
was to isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to
flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though
it had never been and he did you try to make her do it and i i
was afraid to i was afraid she might and then it wouldnt have
done any good but if i could tell you we did it would have been
so and then the others wouldnt be so and then the world would
roar away[18]
In this excerpt from a conversation that Quentin has with his father, Quentin is linguistically trying to control what causes him agony. If he, through language, can redefine the events that bothers him, he can repress his pain. He seems to think that if he linguistically removes Caddy from her promiscuous past and replaces it with an incestuous past, the world would no longer care about her. When his father asks him if he tried to actually do it, he answers that he did not dare to, because he was afraid that she might have conceded, and "then it wouldnt have done any good". He only believes in the effectiveness of language, he does not believe in the application of the physical act in itself, and he wants language to restore her virginity.
Even though he tries to avoid thinking of the loss of Caddy, her loss of virginity, her promiscuity, her sham marriage, he is not able to control himself. His lack of control is greatest when at one point he is unconscious. Sometimes, at his best "he is capable of being ironic and self-reflexive, quite witty and inventive in his wordplay"[19], but when he is knocked out by Gerald Bland, his mental linguistic guard is let down, and all his painful memories of Caddy come to the surface. Without wanting to, he thinks of the most agonising moments in his life, for instance when he discovers that Caddy has lost her virginity, and he thinks of the day of her marriage.
Euchrid tries, like Quentin, to hide certain painful moments from himself. He does not, however, like Quentin, try to control them through language. Euchrid simply pretends it never happened. He behaves like an unsuspecting bystander, when he in fact is the cause of the perceived effect. He only reveals himself to us and maybe himself when he, like Quentin, no longer has conscious control: in his sleep. Euchrid has a difficult relationship to his father, Ezra. He does not hate him the same way as he hates his mother, but he is wary of him, especially after Ezra killed his wife. When Ezra dies, however, Euchrid acts amazed and sorrowful. Euchrid wakes up one morning and finds an enormous house of cards that his father had built, like the one he built before he killed Ma Crowley. Euchrid watches as a bee flies into it, causing it to collapse. Simultaneously, he hears a tremendous crash from the yard, and he runs out to investigate. He finds the water-tank toppled over and his father dead:
Euchrid
remained riveted before the sight that confronted him. An
unspeakable sadness crept over his face. All his fears were
founded. The rusted iron water-tank - Pa's gladiatorial arena
and menagerie of death - lay upon its side.[...] And thrown
beyond the spillage, lying on his side though still in a sitting
position, his stool only inches away, lay Pa, a growing pool of
black blood spreading about his smashed skull and a thin string
of watery blood bubbling from the nob of his missing ear.[20]
For a first-time reader of the novel, Euchrid's reaction here seems genuine. He seems absolutely devastated by what has happened. Later on, however, in one of Euchrid's dreams, we learn that Euchrid actually killed his father, and this information puts the above passage in a different light. Euchrid's dream becomes a completing analepsis that fills in the missing pieces of information. Clearly, Euchrid in the quotation above acts surprised at what has happened. He seems astounded and saddened by the sight before him, and even though there is no audience to register his reactions, he acts out these emotions as if to assure himself that they are genuine. It seems as if he thinks that if he is able to convince himself that he is surprised and sad, this is actually the case. If he is surprised by what has happened, he could not possibly know that it was going to happen, and therefore he is innocent. His strategy is much like Quentin's: If you say it is so, then it is so, or if you act like you are surprised, you are surprised. Like Quentin, however, the painful truth can not be repressed. Euchrid cannot escape the fact that he killed his father, and, as with Quentin, the realisation of the painful truth comes when he has let his guard down; the truth comes to Euchrid in a dream:
It
is mah cross, ah cried, and the people all ran away. Ah produced
a giant saw and knelt by the cross. Ah started sawing. A few
paces to mah right ah saw another cross, the same, and ah began
to saw it. Then another. And another. Until ah had sawed through
four mainstems.
'But
why, Euchrid? I am your own father. Why?' said a voice.
Ah
looked up and saw Pa sitting up in his water-tower.
'Why?'
he asked again. And me with the goddamn saw in mah hand.
And
the tower collapsed and Pa crashed to the ground.[21]
Through this passage, we realise that Euchrid has killed his father, and he is not quite sure why he did it. The question "Why?" that is posed, does not actually come from Euchrid's father, but from Euchrid's own mind. Since he is so obviously unable to answer, as he always is, he tries to surpress the entire incident, and pretend that it was some sort of freak accident. He tries with all his might to avoid the painful realisation that he has killed his father for no good reason by acting as if he did not kill him. His strategy ultimately fails, and when he loses control of his narrative, he is forced to realise that he has committed this troubling act.
Euchrid experiences almost the same thing when it comes to his sexual encounter with Beth. He is unable to name it properly, but it keeps popping up in his mind when he has let his guard down. The reason why his sexual encounter with Beth is so difficult for him to relate to, might be that he has an extremely ambivalent relationship with Beth. He has an obsessive idea that his mission in life is to kill her, and at the same time he is tremendously fascinated by her, and he is almost hypnotically drawn towards her. His sexual experience with her therefore becomes an arena where these two forces meet; he is having sex with her, a young and innocent girl, and can therefore be said to be in a position in which he holds a certain power over her. At the same time, he has surrendered to her, and let her magnetism overcome him. Therefore, this encounter becomes in itself a symbol of his conflicting feelings towards her, and hence it becomes a painful experience almost impossible to talk about. However, like Quentin, Euchrid is unable to repress all recollection of this incident:
Ah
know the room. Girl smells. Clean sheets. Soap. Powder. Her
smells. Then an urgent whisper, trembling and excited. Excited. Her
voice. An arms reach away. Come...upon ...me...Jesus.
O...Jesus...please...come...come...upon...me. Boom-boom boom-boom
boom-boom boom-boom. Sickle flash. The moon a scarlet slice. Here
in the dark. In her room. The breath of her words against the
skin of mah face. I...am...prepared. I...am...prepared. Clean
cotton fabric. Mah body glistening in the moonlight. A brush of
lavender across mah cheek. Your little doll...little doll...is
prepared. Blushing blackness. Blushing blackness. Deadtime.[22]
We see here that Euchrid's narration of the event is disintegrated, repetitive and incomplete. When he closes in on the actual moment of penetration, Euchrid escapes his narrative completely by the use of ellipses, or "deadtime", which is what he calls the blank spots in his life, the moments in his life from which he is unable or unwilling to relate anything. These instances of deadtime allows Euchrid to avoid full responsibility for his actions, and he can claim that he never knew what happened, because he has no memory of it. However, the instance quoted above, shows us that Euchrid can use "deadtime" as a strategy, it only cuts his narrative when it becomes too intense, his narrative stops short just before the moment of his simultaneous surrender and violation. Here Euchrid uses "deadtime" much like Quentin uses language: to avoid painful or troublesome moments.
Both Euchrid and Quentin go to great lengths to avoid or oppress painful moments. The fact that they are unable to deal with their own emotional lives makes them even less fit to communicate with the outside world. They are both left in a condition in which they do not even dare to listen to themselves, and therefore, their general outward communication skills are flawed. In the end, they both commit suicide. O. W. Vickery says of Quentin's suicide:
Quentin
can neither accept or reconcile himself to that change or to the
possibility that a further change might make even his despair a
thing of the past, and so he chooses death as a means of escaping
the situation. [23]
The change that Quentin has experienced is the change in Caddy. He has experienced her loss of virginity, and found it intolerable. Quentin's only way of upholding himself and preserving his sense of honour is to nurse the horror he feels towards her actions. Quentin commits suicide because of his fear that in time, he will come to forget the horror that he felt in the face of Caddy's promiscuity. Quentin's sense of honour makes him feel that he should be shocked and repelled by Caddy's actions, but he fears that in time his sorrow, shock and horror will fade. He does not want to experience that day, for if he does, it would signify his betrayal of his concept of honour as well as his idea of Caddy as an honourable woman. His only solution, then, is suicide. Only this way can he escape his fears.
Euchrid, however, has other reasons for committing suicide. Euchrid's life has, as a result of his obsessive thinking, been centred on what he considers his "mission" on earth. He has decided that his ultimate objective is to kill Beth, and when he believes his mission to be accomplished, he decides it is time to leave this world. His decision fits in with his religious delusions, because it enables Euchrid to view himself as a martyr for his cause; he has done something in accordance with his beliefs, something for which he surely would be persecuted and killed. His suicide is just a speeding up of events. Euchrid, having accomplished his mission, also longs to return to the state beyond life, which is the only place in which he was really able to communicate. As we have already seen in chapter two, the only time before that Euchrid really communicated, or at least thinks he really communicated with someone, was in the womb, before he was born. There, he claims, he communicated with his twin brother. Now, he wants to return to a state in which communication and understanding is possible, and it seems only natural that his method of suicide, sinking in quicksand, is the one method that most resembles a re-entry into the womb. Euchrid exits life as he entered it, hoping that his escape from earthly life will bring him once again into a life of warmth, communication and understanding.
It seems that Euchrid, Benjy and Quentin are all caught up in their private, little worlds, worlds that are so individualised and rigid that a fulfilling life in accord with society in general seems impossible. Michael Millgate says of The Sound and the Fury:
The
Sound and the Fury is in part concerned with the elusiveness,
the multivalence, of truth, or at least with man's persistent and
perhaps necessary tendency to make of truth a personal thing:
each man, apprehending some fragment of the truth, seizes upon
that fragment as though it were the whole truth and elaborates it
into a total vision of the world, rigidly exclusive and hence
utterly fallacious.[24]
With this in mind,
we can say that since all the characters of The Sound and the
Fury are caught up in their individual truths, and not able
to see any other people's vision of the world as valid, their
real problem is a problem of communication. If the characters
were able to communicate with each other, they would perhaps be
able to free themselves from the rigid confines of the world in
which they seem to be caught. Quentin and Euchrid might have
escaped their obsessions and hence also suicide, and Benjy would
have been more content if he were able to name his feelings. The
message seems to be, however, that true communication is
difficult or even impossible in a world consisting of
individualised truths. Much like in And the Ass Saw the Angel,
we experience that the longing for true communication is met with
the realisation that this might not be possible. It will always
be the case of the ass seeing the angel without being able to
tell anyone about it, or it will be a tale told by an idiot, full
of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.
[1] Nick Cave, Interview with Dagbladet 30.04.99 del 2 p. 8 (my translation).
[2] William Faulkner, Class conferences at the University of Virginia (February 15, 1957 Session One, reprinted in The Sound and the Fury, Norton Critical Edition, 1994), p. 236.
[3] Ibid., March 13, 1957 Session Ten, p. 237.
[4] William Faulkner, Interview with Jean Stein vanden Heuvel from Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner, 1926-1962, ed. James B. Meriwether and Michael Millgate (New York, Random House, 1968, pp. 244-46, Reprinted in The Sound and the Fury, Norton Critical Edition 1994) p. 233.
[5] William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (Norton, Rice University, New York, London, 1929, 1994, edited by David Minter), p. 3.
[6] Faulkner, p. 3.
[7] Olga W. Vickery, "Worlds in Counterpoint", from The novels of William Faulkner: A Critical introduction. (1959, 1964, Louisiana State University Press, reprinted in Twentieth century interpretations of The Sound and the Fury, M.H. Cowan (ed.), Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1968), p. 42.
[8] Ibid., p. 41.
[9] Nick Cave, Interview with Lindzee Smith, "Nick Cave" (BOMB, Volume 31, 1990 Spring), p. 14.
[10] W. Morris with B.A. Morris, "A Writing Lesson", from Reading Faulkner (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989, 132-42, reprinted in Faulkner, Norton Critical Edition), p. 400.
[11] Faulkner, p. 38.
[12] Faulkner, p. 34.
[13] Nick Cave, "The Flesh Made
Word", from King Ink II, (Black Spring Press 1997),
p. 141.
[14] Michael Millgate, "The Sound and the Fury:[Story and Novel]", from The Achievement of William Faulkner (New York, Random House 1966, 94-111, reprinted in Faulkner, Norton Critical Edition), p. 301.
[15] Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel, p. 75.
[16] Noel Polk, "Trying Not to Say: A Primer on the Language of The Sound and the Fury", New Essays on The Sound and the Fury (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 150.
[17] Cleanth Brooks, "Man, Time and Eternity", William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1963, reprinted in Cowan), pp. 65-66.
[18] Faulkner, p. 112.
[19] Polk, p. 151.
[20] Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel, pp. 201-202.
[21] Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel, p. 268.
[22] Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel, p. 275.
[23] Vickery, p. 46.
[24] Millgate, p. 298-299.