The Absent Presence of the Parental Generation: Incest and the Ordering of Experience in The Sound and The Fury
Abstract
In William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, the older generation of Compsons and Bascombs stand failed and ghostlike as a shadow of the process that consumes their four offspring and ends the family line. Though marginalized by critics, the story of the parents and uncle lies embedded within the given world of the Compson children, maintained by an ever-present past, the doubling that exists between the two generations, and a repetitious pattern of incest and failure. Through the reader's active participation, however, the older generations story emerges out of the larger whole created from the novels disparate, subjective parts. in defining incest as the vehicle for the family decline, the reader finds textual evidence suggesting that Caroline Compson and Maury Bascomb have engaged in an incestuous relationship, in spirit if not in reality, that precipitates the failure of their generation, possibly resulting in the birth of either one or both of the two youngest Compson sons.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 25, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA266490
Entities
People
- John M. Hannah