WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.245 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.245 --> 00:00:03.480 align:middle line:84% After Benjy's, Quentin's, and Jason's sections, 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:05.880 align:middle line:84% most first-time readers of The Sound and the Fury 00:00:05.880 --> 00:00:08.100 align:middle line:84% probably expect the fourth and last section 00:00:08.100 --> 00:00:10.680 align:middle line:84% to focus on the thoughts of the fourth Compson 00:00:10.680 --> 00:00:13.050 align:middle line:90% sibling, their sister Caddy. 00:00:13.050 --> 00:00:15.930 align:middle line:84% But that coin Luster is searching for in section one 00:00:15.930 --> 00:00:19.380 align:middle line:84% isn't the only missing quarter in this novel. 00:00:19.380 --> 00:00:21.570 align:middle line:84% When Faulkner was at the University of Virginia, 00:00:21.570 --> 00:00:23.560 align:middle line:84% one of the first questions he was asked 00:00:23.560 --> 00:00:25.930 align:middle line:90% concerned Caddy's absence. 00:00:25.930 --> 00:00:29.340 align:middle line:84% And we can use another aspect of Digital Yoknapatawpha 00:00:29.340 --> 00:00:31.890 align:middle line:90% to overhear part of his answer. 00:00:31.890 --> 00:00:35.400 align:middle line:84% So from the Other Resources section of the control panel, 00:00:35.400 --> 00:00:38.310 align:middle line:90% I'm going to select Audio Clips. 00:00:38.310 --> 00:00:40.440 align:middle line:84% And when I do that, it brings up this list 00:00:40.440 --> 00:00:43.560 align:middle line:84% of 10 questions about the novel that Faulkner 00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:47.280 align:middle line:90% answered in 1957 and 1958. 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:50.640 align:middle line:84% As you can see, the first two are about Caddy. 00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:52.830 align:middle line:84% To save time, I won't play the first one 00:00:52.830 --> 00:00:56.550 align:middle line:84% though I highly recommend that you listen to it. 00:00:56.550 --> 00:00:59.880 align:middle line:84% We can play part of the second question. 00:00:59.880 --> 00:01:02.830 align:middle line:84% The question itself is a little hard to hear. 00:01:02.830 --> 00:01:07.260 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to skip ahead to the answer. 00:01:07.260 --> 00:01:09.990 align:middle line:84% The question is being asked by a woman 00:01:09.990 --> 00:01:14.780 align:middle line:84% who obviously likes Caddy, or at least who wants to like Caddy, 00:01:14.780 --> 00:01:17.190 align:middle line:84% but she isn't sure that she should. 00:01:17.190 --> 00:01:18.930 align:middle line:84% Mr. Faulkner, she asks, how do you 00:01:18.930 --> 00:01:21.900 align:middle line:84% want readers to feel about Caddy? 00:01:21.900 --> 00:01:25.470 align:middle line:90% This is Faulkner's answer. 00:01:25.470 --> 00:01:31.210 align:middle line:84% To me, she was the beautiful one. 00:01:31.210 --> 00:01:32.730 align:middle line:90% She was my heart's darling. 00:01:32.730 --> 00:01:35.150 align:middle line:84% That's what I wrote the book about. 00:01:35.150 --> 00:01:40.770 align:middle line:84% And I used the tools, which seemed to me the proper tools, 00:01:40.770 --> 00:01:45.630 align:middle line:84% to try to tell-- try to draw the picture of Caddy. 00:01:45.630 --> 00:01:48.090 align:middle line:90% The picture of Caddy-- 00:01:48.090 --> 00:01:50.640 align:middle line:84% that's how Faulkner describes the novel. 00:01:50.640 --> 00:01:54.420 align:middle line:84% But as a picture, it's a kind of cubist one. 00:01:54.420 --> 00:01:57.840 align:middle line:84% As a character, Caddy doesn't exist except in the memories 00:01:57.840 --> 00:02:00.270 align:middle line:90% of those first three sections. 00:02:00.270 --> 00:02:04.230 align:middle line:84% In section 4, even her name is absent except when 00:02:04.230 --> 00:02:07.570 align:middle line:84% an exasperated Luster taunts Benjy with it-- 00:02:07.570 --> 00:02:10.320 align:middle line:84% I'll give you something to bellow about, he says. 00:02:10.320 --> 00:02:14.820 align:middle line:84% Five pages from the end of the novel, Caddy, Caddy, Caddy, 00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:15.870 align:middle line:90% Caddy. 00:02:15.870 --> 00:02:18.360 align:middle line:90% Four times, four sections. 00:02:18.360 --> 00:02:21.060 align:middle line:84% Faulkner is using Luster's voice to signal us 00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:23.550 align:middle line:84% that every section in this four-part novel 00:02:23.550 --> 00:02:27.970 align:middle line:84% revolves somehow around Caddy, even the fourth one. 00:02:27.970 --> 00:02:35.000 align:middle line:84% So let's start by going to the fourth section 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.470 align:middle line:84% and asking Digital Yoknapatawpha to show us all 00:02:38.470 --> 00:02:41.840 align:middle line:90% of the events in that section. 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:44.170 align:middle line:84% And when we do that, it looks like even 00:02:44.170 --> 00:02:46.600 align:middle line:90% the past has disappeared. 00:02:46.600 --> 00:02:49.180 align:middle line:84% There is no purple on the timeline 00:02:49.180 --> 00:02:51.610 align:middle line:84% unless we notice this line all the way 00:02:51.610 --> 00:02:54.020 align:middle line:90% to the left of the timeline. 00:02:54.020 --> 00:02:56.800 align:middle line:84% If we click on the novel's first event chronologically, 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:02.350 align:middle line:84% we can see this very earliest event in the book, the story 00:03:02.350 --> 00:03:06.010 align:middle line:84% that Reverend Shegog tells in the Black church on Easter 00:03:06.010 --> 00:03:09.340 align:middle line:84% morning about the birth and death and Resurrection 00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:13.000 align:middle line:84% of Jesus, which took place almost 2000 years before April 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:15.400 align:middle line:90% 8, 1928. 00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:17.440 align:middle line:84% What the novel ultimately does is 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:21.610 align:middle line:84% to juxtapose what Shegog says about the recollection 00:03:21.610 --> 00:03:24.700 align:middle line:84% and the blood of the crucified Jesus, 00:03:24.700 --> 00:03:27.460 align:middle line:84% with the main story that Faulkner is telling 00:03:27.460 --> 00:03:32.000 align:middle line:84% about the recollections of Benjy, Quentin, and Jason 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:34.240 align:middle line:90% of the absent Caddy. 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:37.360 align:middle line:84% To appreciate the relationship between these two stories, 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:39.940 align:middle line:84% let's use one of the more radical ways in which we 00:03:39.940 --> 00:03:44.290 align:middle line:84% try to use the technology to re-conceptualize Faulkner's 00:03:44.290 --> 00:03:45.460 align:middle line:90% novel. 00:03:45.460 --> 00:03:48.400 align:middle line:84% From the Visualization section of the project, 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:51.250 align:middle line:84% I'm going to choose Location Character, 00:03:51.250 --> 00:03:56.110 align:middle line:84% and then I'm going to select a force-directed graph 00:03:56.110 --> 00:03:58.420 align:middle line:90% of The Sound and the Fury. 00:03:58.420 --> 00:04:03.340 align:middle line:84% And when I do that, you get this very strange looking graph, 00:04:03.340 --> 00:04:07.200 align:middle line:84% at least it looked very strange to me the first time I saw it. 00:04:07.200 --> 00:04:09.700 align:middle line:84% By the way, when you use a force-directed graph, 00:04:09.700 --> 00:04:14.170 align:middle line:84% the first thing you should do is click the Freeze button 00:04:14.170 --> 00:04:16.149 align:middle line:90% to stop all the wiggling. 00:04:16.149 --> 00:04:18.370 align:middle line:84% I confess, when I first saw this I 00:04:18.370 --> 00:04:21.279 align:middle line:84% had almost no idea what it could tell us 00:04:21.279 --> 00:04:23.740 align:middle line:90% about The Sound and the Fury. 00:04:23.740 --> 00:04:27.790 align:middle line:84% The green circles are all the locations in the novel, 00:04:27.790 --> 00:04:30.100 align:middle line:84% and their size indicates how frequently 00:04:30.100 --> 00:04:32.260 align:middle line:90% they appear in the text. 00:04:32.260 --> 00:04:36.970 align:middle line:84% That big green circle at the center is the Compson place. 00:04:36.970 --> 00:04:40.910 align:middle line:84% The blue squares are all the characters in the novel. 00:04:40.910 --> 00:04:44.990 align:middle line:84% And for example, by clicking on the Compson place, 00:04:44.990 --> 00:04:48.040 align:middle line:84% you can see all the characters who are, in one way or another, 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:51.070 align:middle line:90% connected to that location. 00:04:51.070 --> 00:04:53.080 align:middle line:84% For what I wanted to show you, however, we're 00:04:53.080 --> 00:04:54.520 align:middle line:90% going to have to zoom out a bit. 00:04:54.520 --> 00:04:57.560 align:middle line:90% 00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:01.090 align:middle line:84% This is the biblical world that Reverend Shegog 00:05:01.090 --> 00:05:04.630 align:middle line:90% evokes in his sermon. 00:05:04.630 --> 00:05:06.940 align:middle line:84% One obvious point here is just how far 00:05:06.940 --> 00:05:09.730 align:middle line:84% that biblical world, and the past that 00:05:09.730 --> 00:05:13.060 align:middle line:84% matters to those people in church on Easter, 00:05:13.060 --> 00:05:16.350 align:middle line:84% is from the world in the rest of the novel. 00:05:16.350 --> 00:05:19.475 align:middle line:84% Dilsey inhabits this biblical world in the past 00:05:19.475 --> 00:05:21.610 align:middle line:84% that the Reverend Shegog resurrects 00:05:21.610 --> 00:05:24.280 align:middle line:90% defines time and space for her. 00:05:24.280 --> 00:05:27.610 align:middle line:84% Like Caddy, the Jesus she believes in is gone. 00:05:27.610 --> 00:05:31.270 align:middle line:84% That is the paradox of Easter, that the tomb in Jerusalem 00:05:31.270 --> 00:05:35.500 align:middle line:84% was empty like Jason's money box on Easter morning. 00:05:35.500 --> 00:05:38.800 align:middle line:84% But for the Black Christians in that church scene, 00:05:38.800 --> 00:05:44.050 align:middle line:84% Jesus is gone and still there, eternally present. 00:05:44.050 --> 00:05:47.770 align:middle line:84% Just as Quentin's broken watch ticks all through his section, 00:05:47.770 --> 00:05:51.340 align:middle line:84% however, neither Caddy nor her brothers 00:05:51.340 --> 00:05:54.190 align:middle line:90% can ever get outside of time. 00:05:54.190 --> 00:05:57.670 align:middle line:84% For the Compson boys as inhabitants of modernity, 00:05:57.670 --> 00:05:59.320 align:middle line:90% God is dead. 00:05:59.320 --> 00:06:01.600 align:middle line:84% Which explains why each in their own way 00:06:01.600 --> 00:06:04.090 align:middle line:84% tries to find a substitute source of meaning 00:06:04.090 --> 00:06:05.870 align:middle line:90% in their sister. 00:06:05.870 --> 00:06:09.730 align:middle line:84% And when Caddy fails them, as being human she must, 00:06:09.730 --> 00:06:12.890 align:middle line:84% they try to find a substitute for that 00:06:12.890 --> 00:06:14.830 align:middle line:84% which is the other story in section 4 00:06:14.830 --> 00:06:16.630 align:middle line:90% that Faulkner is telling. 00:06:16.630 --> 00:06:18.880 align:middle line:84% Jason's frantic quest to get back 00:06:18.880 --> 00:06:21.520 align:middle line:84% the money that was his symbolic substitute 00:06:21.520 --> 00:06:24.730 align:middle line:84% for the job in the bank with Caddy's husband. 00:06:24.730 --> 00:06:27.340 align:middle line:84% It's important to recognize how the novel uses 00:06:27.340 --> 00:06:31.300 align:middle line:84% these two stories, Dilsey finding Christ in church, 00:06:31.300 --> 00:06:34.510 align:middle line:84% Jason not finding that money in Mottson, 00:06:34.510 --> 00:06:37.040 align:middle line:90% to comment on each other. 00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:39.130 align:middle line:84% So we've gone back to The Sound and the Fury 00:06:39.130 --> 00:06:41.020 align:middle line:84% and the fourth section which I've already 00:06:41.020 --> 00:06:43.690 align:middle line:90% cued up to page 287. 00:06:43.690 --> 00:06:45.340 align:middle line:84% And I want to play the events now 00:06:45.340 --> 00:06:48.880 align:middle line:84% not in narrative order, one page after another, 00:06:48.880 --> 00:06:52.930 align:middle line:84% but in chronological order which organizes the story's 00:06:52.930 --> 00:06:56.350 align:middle line:90% events as they happen in time. 00:06:56.350 --> 00:07:00.280 align:middle line:84% We'll start with this event on page 289 00:07:00.280 --> 00:07:04.720 align:middle line:84% when Dilsey and her family leave the Compson place to head 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:08.650 align:middle line:84% for the church, the Black church, 00:07:08.650 --> 00:07:11.330 align:middle line:90% on the outskirts of Jefferson. 00:07:11.330 --> 00:07:15.010 align:middle line:84% At the same time that they're going there, 00:07:15.010 --> 00:07:17.530 align:middle line:90% Jason leaves the house too. 00:07:17.530 --> 00:07:19.960 align:middle line:90% But he's not going to church. 00:07:19.960 --> 00:07:25.180 align:middle line:84% He's chasing that money, so he heads to the Sheriff's house 00:07:25.180 --> 00:07:28.840 align:middle line:84% to try to get the police to help him find his niece. 00:07:28.840 --> 00:07:31.060 align:middle line:84% And as I keep clicking, you can see 00:07:31.060 --> 00:07:34.920 align:middle line:84% how the two narratives, Dilsey going to church, 00:07:34.920 --> 00:07:37.710 align:middle line:84% Jason going down the road to Mottson 00:07:37.710 --> 00:07:40.830 align:middle line:84% where he drives past churches but doesn't see any reason 00:07:40.830 --> 00:07:43.740 align:middle line:84% to go into them, how the novel puts those 00:07:43.740 --> 00:07:48.430 align:middle line:90% two sequences together in time. 00:07:48.430 --> 00:07:50.580 align:middle line:90% There's Dilsey in church. 00:07:50.580 --> 00:07:53.100 align:middle line:84% There's Jason on the road to Mottson. 00:07:53.100 --> 00:07:54.840 align:middle line:90% Dilsey in church. 00:07:54.840 --> 00:07:58.020 align:middle line:90% Jason driving past churches. 00:07:58.020 --> 00:08:00.270 align:middle line:84% When you juxtapose these two narratives, 00:08:00.270 --> 00:08:03.480 align:middle line:84% you get the picture of Caddy that Faulkner is drawing. 00:08:03.480 --> 00:08:07.980 align:middle line:84% The novel's focus is not on who Caddy is but on what she means. 00:08:07.980 --> 00:08:11.670 align:middle line:84% Or to use the word that is and isn't there in the novel's 00:08:11.670 --> 00:08:15.300 align:middle line:90% title, what Caddy signifies. 00:08:15.300 --> 00:08:19.560 align:middle line:84% Ultimately for her brothers, she signifies nothingness. 00:08:19.560 --> 00:08:21.750 align:middle line:84% By which I mean that she can only 00:08:21.750 --> 00:08:24.540 align:middle line:84% reflect back to them the meaninglessness 00:08:24.540 --> 00:08:26.540 align:middle line:90% of their existence. 00:08:26.540 --> 00:08:29.880 align:middle line:84% While in The Sound and the Fury as a novel, 00:08:29.880 --> 00:08:32.250 align:middle line:84% the artist can create meaning, order, 00:08:32.250 --> 00:08:35.460 align:middle line:84% and maybe a work that will transcend time, 00:08:35.460 --> 00:08:40.409 align:middle line:84% the Compsons cannot escape the chaos of reality as a sound 00:08:40.409 --> 00:08:41.640 align:middle line:90% and a fury. 00:08:41.640 --> 00:08:43.590 align:middle line:84% You can say that in the absence of God, 00:08:43.590 --> 00:08:46.170 align:middle line:84% and with the loss of faith in eternity, 00:08:46.170 --> 00:08:49.620 align:middle line:84% time itself is the fence that all four Compson 00:08:49.620 --> 00:08:52.520 align:middle line:90% kids are trapped inside.