Time in the Sound and the Fury

One of the main realities of the human existence is the constant passage of time. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner explores time in many new and unexpected ways as he tells the sad tail of the Compson family. The Compsons are an old Southern family to whom time has not been kind to. Years of falling apart mainly from slavery have brought them to the brink of destruction.

Most of the story focuses on the Compson children who are undergoing the worst of the social and moral decay. Each of the four children see time in a different way, but in the strangest and most bizarre way toward time that is told in the story by one of the three brothers, Quentin. He is fully fixated with his past and can think of nothing else. He also becomes determined to stop time itself that eventually forced him to take his own life. Quentin’s obsession with the past and with the passage of time is a theme of not only the Quentin section but of the entire book, and it is the key to understanding what Faulkner is trying to say about the downfall of Southern culture and it’s traditions. To fully understand the motif of time in the Quentin section, it is first necessary to compare it with the different ways Faulkner uses time in the other three sections. The first section is told from the point of view of a thirty three year old idiot, Benjy Compson, who can’t tell no difference between the past or present. The Benjy section is very difficult to understand because the slightest incident can trigger a memory from him and completely replace what is happening in the immediate time frame. For instance, the first jump in time occurs on just the second page of the book when Luster says, "Can’t you never crawl through here without snagging on that nail." Benjy automatically thinks back to when he went with Caddy to deliver a letter to Mrs. Patterson and got stuck on the fence near Christmas. When Caddy says in the same memory, "You don't want your hands froze on Christmas, do you," Benjy thinks of an earlier incident when Caddy tried to convince Mrs. Compson to let him come outside with her (Faulkner 4). Benjy, who has absolutely no idea of what time is, He drifts back and forth through time as if the past were no different from the present to him. Benjy constantly thinks of his sister Caddie who has left the family home, but because he has no concept of time, he has no idea that she has been gone for many years.

The next section, told from Quentin Compsons perspective, is even more confusing. Since Quentin has decided to end his life, he reminisces about his past and the reason he chose to die. The reason is his sister's act of adultery. Whenever he is reminded of events that have to do with his sister's sin, he also goes back in time. When Quentin is thinking about how good the weather will be for the Harvard boat race in June, the month of brides, he thinks of Caddy's wedding day. He then thinks of the roses at her wedding and of trying to convince his father that he committed incest with his sister (77). The third section is narrated by the greedy brother, Jason. To Jason time is all about the present and he grabs every second as it goes by much as he does with the money that his sister Caddie sends to him in order to provide for her daughter who is under his care. The fourth and final section in the book, unlike all the others, is not told by one of the children but by an under looked character. In this section time is shown as much closer to what ordinary people see it to be.

More than any of the other sections, the Quentin section sees time as the enemy. Quentin himself is in a constant struggle to escape time. The first evidence of this attempt to stop time is seen when he breaks the hands off his pocket watch. But to his sadness, he can still hear it running even without the hands, a sign that time is inescapable. Everywhere he goes he can see and hear clocks constantly reminding him of the passage of time. Quentin’s twisting of time is shown by his obsession with the past and his sister Caddie in particular. Caddie has just married several months before and Quentin has numerous flashbacks about her. In his mind this fixation on his sister is an attempt to protect her. It is a kind of distorted Southern tradition, but instead of it protecting the honor of the Southern woman, it is destroying him because he is unable to let go of the past. As Quentin continues to try to stop time from progressing it is obvious that it is an impossible task.