The Whole Truth?

I read the article “The Sound and the Fury: A study in Perspective” by Olga W. Vickery. Olga presents the idea that the theme is not explicitly stated in the novel but rather in the novel’s unconventional structure. By abstractly presenting the same events through the eyes of the three brothers, Faulkner gradually helps clarify the actually events, but at the same time the reader is left to cipher through the bias of each character, reconstructing the plot and deciding its meaning for himself. Since each section began with the true story and then was slightly obscured by bias, Olga believes that the theme of The Sound and the Fury is the “relationship between the act and man’s apprehension of the act, between event and interpretation, and since each man has a different interpretation of the events, it is not that he is explicably or consciously trying to spin the events to look favorable on his own view, but he is simple relating the events as they occurred in his mind. In a sense each man created his own truth. Olga’s first point, before she digs into deconstructing the structure of the novel, is that the children’s water splashing scene on the night of Damuddy’s death foreshadows the entire novel. The structure of the novel is parallel in this scene, because the reader sees the brother’s different reactions to Damuddy’s death, which as children none of them can quite grasp yet. This scene mainly focuses on the objective narrative of the dramatic event, while serving as a study on perspective of the boys. This event foreshadows not the rest of the plot, but how the rest of the plot will be presented, for Caddy’s soirée with Dalton Ames then becomes the focal point of the novel, which is presented both through concrete plot and dramatic narrative of the brothers.

I liked this article, because it presented the theme through unconventional ways. While it is quite obvious to the reader that the novel is being presented through the voices of the brothers, and therefore, each must have some amount of bias, it is not evident that one of the themes is presented in the novel’s structure. My favorite part of this article was Olga’s interpretation of the water-splashing scene, because I found the night of Damuddy’s death saturated with foreshadow, such as when Caddy stains her underwear, and Dilsey can not wash off the dirt before she goes to bed, foreshadowing her future sexual impurities. However, even though this night foreshadows the events of the novel, I never looked to it to foreshadow its unconventional structure. The article is insightful and at times confusing, but ultimately helped me to look at The Sound and the Fury from a new perspective. (460)