The Sound and the Fury : Tragic downfall of a southern Family

Of course, he is troubled by his dysfunctional family, with "an alcoholic get, a neurotic give, a abstemious sister, an idiot brother?" (Levins 129) However, it is Caddy's increasingly promiscuous behavior that tor manpowerts Quentin just intimately acutely, and he can non accept the loss of her purity. He tries to remind himself that "Caddy's a woman too remember. She must do things for women's reasons too" (Faulkner 92), exclusively the fact that Caddy is no longer a consummate(a) is far too traumatic for him to deal with rationally.

Moreover, his father's lack of clientele regarding Caddy's behavior but serves to further increase Quentin's anguish. When they speak to the highest degree Caddy's loss of virginity, Quentin is stunned by his father's re do: "They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity now women. Father said it's handle death: only a state in which the others are left?" (Faulkner 78). Quentin is so troubled by his father's response because "Mr. Compson undercuts the chivalric pattern of get by by seeing it as the foolish defense of a principle that does not even exist?" (Levins 129). Indeed, Caddy and Mr. Compson's rejection of the genuinely code that Quentin honors is demoralizing, and pushes him closer to suicide, as Quentin describes:

I said, But to moot it doesn't matter

Quentin's fierce allegiance to the chivalric code paralyzes him in another way as well.

He is unable to be a man of action because "the abstract chivalric code becomes more important to him than the cosmos of daily living; the chivalric pattern comes to mean more than the living individuals whose conduct that ideal should inspire" (Levins 129). Thus, Quentin is more touch on with abstract ideals than the cold, hard reality of action. When Caddy becomes pregnant with Dalton Ames' child, Quentin does not confront Ames or take any decisive action. Instead, he fantasizes about what he would do: "If I could have been his mother lying with open body lifted laughing, holding his father with my hand refraining, seeing, watching him die before he lived" (Faulkner 80). When he attempts to fight Ames over his sister's honor, Quentin recalls that he "had just passed out like a girl" without Ames landing a single thrusting (Faulkner 162). He is unable to follow through with his desire to act.

Ikuho, Fujihira. "The physique of Hell, the Myth of Family, and the Paradox of Narrative in William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Oe Kenzaburo." The Faulkner Journal of Japan. whitethorn 1999. William Faulkner Society of Japan. 15 December 2003 .

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