Families In Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury

The picture perfect family does not exist; behind closed doors shocking and unpredictable actions are taken. To keep a good standing in public is essential for a good reputation. Families will stick together in the end, but it does not mean that the road to get there is a smooth one. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner highlights an aristocratic, southern family’s ties between family members and the tensions that pull families apart. The novel uses a narrative style that is separated and unaligned. Faulkner has the novel contain four narrators: Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Faulkner himself who focuses on Dilsey. The Compson family in the novel maintained a plantation and had several black servants, including Dilsey. “When the Southern states started to secede from the Union in 1861, merely seven of them led the way, while others followed reluctantly and some did not secede at all” (The South). Enlightenment thinkers questioned the human rights that were being violated with slavery. The Southern states felt that the central government beliefs were contradicting the American principles of liberty and federalism (The South). Slaves were “free” yet still remained with families throughout history. Slaves …show more content…
Jason’s opening line of “once a bitch, always a bitch” (180) is a glorious way to show the readers how nasty of a guy Jason was. Jason spends most of his time regretting the past and finding someone to blame for his sorry fate. Jason stated that "whatever I do, it 's your fault...If I 'm bad, it 's because I had to be. You made me. I wish I was dead. I wish we were all dead" (260). Ironically, Jason and Benjy possess one common quality: they both evaluate actions only as it affects them personally. Jason is the only child who gains the love of his mother. He uses his mother in order to gain her power of attorney, and then he proceeds to cheat her out of large sums of