However, the theme most prevalent in The Sound and the Fury, is the communication, or its lack within the Compson family. All the uncertainties that surface in the lives of the family members are instigated through the lack of communication. Stephan Ross touches on this with his idea that Mr. Compson is constantly analyzing Quentin, "erecting a wall of words impossible to break through" (111). In one of the great ironies of the novel, Mr. Compson bombards his children with meaningless words coming from an alcoholic, downtrodden idealist. So stifled and encumbered by words that he seeks escape through death, Quentin employs this same ineffective communication endeavoring to save his sister’s purity. Ross claims that:
Only by killing himself does he act wordlessly, seeking silence in death, a soundless void away from his loud world of voices: ‘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…if I could tell you we did it would have been so and then the others wouldn’t be so and then the world would roar away’ (Faulkner 220)" (Ross 112). …show more content…
Compson, the melodramatic and absentee mother of the Compson household, offers no outlet for communication with her children either. When Caddy receives her first kiss, Mrs. Compson refuses to talk about or verbally acknowledge it; her only course of action is to swathe herself in black fabric and to enter a state of mourning. Both the Compson parents employ themselves in the pastime of talking at their children rather than with their children. Quentin’s father lobs idealistic philosophical jargon at his drowning son, while Mrs. Compson's only concern exists in her distress over her station in
Only by killing himself does he act wordlessly, seeking silence in death, a soundless void away from his loud world of voices: ‘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…if I could tell you we did it would have been so and then the others wouldn’t be so and then the world would roar away’ (Faulkner 220)" (Ross 112). …show more content…
Compson, the melodramatic and absentee mother of the Compson household, offers no outlet for communication with her children either. When Caddy receives her first kiss, Mrs. Compson refuses to talk about or verbally acknowledge it; her only course of action is to swathe herself in black fabric and to enter a state of mourning. Both the Compson parents employ themselves in the pastime of talking at their children rather than with their children. Quentin’s father lobs idealistic philosophical jargon at his drowning son, while Mrs. Compson's only concern exists in her distress over her station in