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Juxtaposition In The Sound And The Fury

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4-Lack of Human Commitment
Modernist literature also investigates the human relationship and commitment in the time of spiritual death. Relationship became very superficial and real love faded away. In Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury this has been very well depicted. The Compson children longed the love that was absent in the family. Mrs. Compson was lost in her hypochondriac attitude and did not pay attention to any of them except Jason. Which caused Quentin’s famous line, “if I’d just had a mother so I could say Mother Mother”(Faulkner 84). Mr. Compson on the other hand shows no paternal love toward his children, of course he had sold the pasture for Quentin’s education at Harvard, but beside that no more affection is received. His presence …show more content…

One of these innovations is the use of fragmentation and juxtaposition of ideas, images , scenes, settings, sentences and even sentences. Benefiting from the cinematic technique of montage, his narrative came to be suffocating with fragmentary sentences that flash back to other events. The obscurity is very high in the first chapter with Benjy’s narration. As a severely retarded man he cannot distinguish past and present and in this way all his words juxtapose with every change in nostalgic images, sounds and even smell.
…Hush, now.” Luster said. “Aint I told you you cant go up there. They’ll knock your head clean off with one of them balls. Come on, here.” He pulled me back. “Sit down.” I sat down and he took off my shoes and rolled up my trousers. “Now, git in that water and play and see can you stop that slobbering and moaning.” …show more content…

It is interesting how Faulkner use the stream of consciousness in each chapter differently. The reader could hardly understand anything in Benjy’s section due to his severe mental disorder. Benjy’s wording is not difficult but since he only relies on images, sounds,… the reader would be lost in its complexity. Quentin’s section seems to be more complicated in vocabulary however his mind is only focused on two major ideas, Caddy’s promiscuity and his father’s ignorance. His mind shift back and forth in past and present as he prepares himself in his last hours before his committing suicide. Jason on the other hand is concerned not about others, or any kind of values. His mind is occupied with his passion for money and hatred toward Caddy and Miss Quentin. He blames Caddy for robbing her out of the promised jib at Herbert’s bank and thus his unfulfilling life. Unlike Benjy and Quentin he is not obsessed with Caddy and the past, but he focus aimlessly on the present and

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