blog #6/7 - faulker question

Question 8 (the one about Caddy):

Caddy is the central character in The Sound and The Fury. All the plot motion (well, what little there is) circles around her actions, her motives, and everyone else's opinion of her. Yet she is without her own chapter -- never does Faulker allow her the opportunity to express her own sentiments. The four narrative characters' perspectives shape her figure: Benjy's, as the loving, caring sister; Quentin's, as the jealous, sex-obsessed trophy; Jason's, as his cruel source of wealth; and Dilsey's, as the sweet girl tarnished by her family's declining image.

How these characters interact with Caddy determines the course of the novel. The interactions within the narrators themselves are relatively insignifcant. From the onset, her magnetic lure is revealed, drawing Benjy's childlike obsessions long after she departs the Compson compound. He roams the fence on Sundays, pitifully mistaking golfers' "Caddies" for his lost sister. For the most part, Benjy captures her sweet, innocent, and friendly demeanor, as she is the only member of the family who can control the "idiot."

Then Quentin arrives and blemishes everything. His twisted, introspective, indecipherably complex chapter delves into their sex-crazed relationship. Each tries to outdo the other, and both conclude disastrously. Quentin is left feeling jealous and unfulfilled, traits which effectively combine to expedite his suicide.

As those characters spiral out of control -- one literally dead; the other, figuratively -- Jason responds with his characteristic frustration. He blames all his personal suffering on the mistakes of his older siblings. When, in fact, he controls much of his own blasted fate. His interaction with Caddy is subtle and cruel -- he robs her daughter, his neice, of the money Caddy sends weekly. While essentially removing her from the family in one respect, he ironically feeds off of her efforts. It's sickening, and Faulker plays off the crookedness to remove any sympathy for Jason.

While Benjy and Quentin drown in their obsession, Jason tries desperately to escape Caddy's gravitational pull. By the end, he falls down with the rest of them. He and his mother, the defiant "Blascomb," erradicate her name from the household. In doing so, stretching the connecting thread, they merely tighten it. Caddy's centrality, in the physical form of Quentin, continues to pester the family until they finally break. Quentin escapes with the money, and the rest remain to suffer the emptiness -- financial, personal, otherwise.

Only in the end does Faulker explicitly concede her prominence to readers. Dilsey, the one firm soul in the family (ironic, seeing as she's a black servant) treasures Caddy's memory and scorns the anti-Caddy wing of the household -- Jason and Caroline. As the family descends into the Old South's grave, Dilsey endures the suffering, and she praises Caddy for her escape. Everyone else is trapped in their own misery. Dilsey, positioned atop an awareness unmatched by any Compton, truly understands Caddy's place -- she is the tragedy of the Old South, the nameless soul, who escapes and out of the ashes creates a new life. In death, she is the rebirth -- the ressurection.