WEBVTT

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The most challenging part
of The Sound and the Fury

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is the second section,
Quentin's section,

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which traces his thoughts
on the last day of his life.

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Quentin's consciousness
is much more complex

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than his brother
Benjy's, but if I

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play the events
in his section, we

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can see the same pattern that
we observed in Benjy's section

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as Quentin's mind keep moving
back and forth between living

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in the present and
remembering the past.

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First, I'll use the speed slider
to slow down the animation,

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and then I'll use the Play
button so that the events will

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play automatically.

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And as they play, you
can see each new event

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appear on one part of
the map or the other.

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Either the inset map
of Massachusetts,

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where Quentin is on June 2,
or the map of Yoknapatawpha

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and the inset map
of the Compson place

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where he was at various
moments in his past

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as shown on the
timeline below the map.

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We noted in the first video how
spatially limited Benjy's world

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is, but even though
Quentin is hundreds

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of miles away from
Mississippi, his mind

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keeps pulling him back
inside his earlier life,

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effectively keeping him
inside a kind of fence, too.

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The timelines in
the two sections

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aren't exactly the same.

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I'm stopping the
animation and then

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I'm going to play all the
events in Quentin's section.

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Benjy's memories-- if we go back
to Benjy's section in The Sound

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and the Fury--

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Benjy's memories are
mainly from the 1890s,

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from the Compson
kids' childhood,

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while Quentin's
memories are mainly

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from the first part of the
20th century, when the Compson

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kids were adolescents.

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This is another way in which
Faulkner is organizing reality,

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providing an order
that's always there

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underneath the apparent
chaos of the novel.

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Readers jump from
Benjy's section in 1928

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back to Quentin's section in
1910, but at the same time,

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we're going forward
just as you would

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expect a story to do from
childhood to adolescence.

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And in both sections,
a major effect

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of that stream of consciousness
technique that Faulkner's using

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is to dramatize how in
our minds and memories,

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consciously and
unconsciously, people

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carry their past around
with them wherever they go.

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As Faulkner is famous for having
said, the past is never dead.

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The past however,
is a big concept.

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If we ask the program
to play all the events

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in The Sound and
the Fury, which I'll

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do by hitting the reset button
and clearing Quentin's section,

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and then pressing the
Show All Events option,

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we can get a
clearer idea of what

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the past means in this novel.

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We can compare this timeline--

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the purple that shows
where the events

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of The Sound and the
Fury take place in time--

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with the timeline of
Faulkner's earlier novel,

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Flags in the Dust, his
first Yoknapatawpha fiction.

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Let me show you all the
events in that novel.

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You can see two
things immediately.

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The vertical line
across the timeline

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again indicates where
the story begins,

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and again, there's comparatively
little to the right of it.

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In Flags in the
Dust, too, the story

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moves forward by
frequently looking backward

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at what has already happened
before the novel begins.

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But the second
thing to notice is

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that the past that matters
in Flags in the Dust

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spans almost 100 years.

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The perspective is historical.

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While southern history is
certainly part of the story

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that Faulkner is using
the Compsons to tell

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in The Sound and
the Fury, the past

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that matters most in
this novel is personal.

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And the perspective is
essentially psychological,

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emphasizing how
individuals are shaped

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by their own early
experiences inside a family.

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This is equally true for the
third brother, Jason Compson,

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whose mind is the setting of
the novel's third section.

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After the first two
sections, it might

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be surprising to play all
the events in the third

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and see so little
purple on that timeline.

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Although Jason does remember
a few earlier moments,

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on the whole, he seems much
less haunted by his memories

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as he goes to his adult job in
Jefferson on Friday, April 6th.

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But that's not really the case.

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Digital Yoknapatawpha offers
many ways to drill down

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into the data for the novel.

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Under all the icons on
the map, for example, you

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can find lots more
information, and if we

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click on the Compson
house in this novel,

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the program can
help us appreciate

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how Jason's apparent
freedom from his past

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is really illusory.

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He's not confined by
any fence, but when

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you look at all the
events that take place

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at the Compson house
in his section--

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and this is that list--

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look how many times
Jason keeps coming back

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in the course of that day to
the house that he grew up in.

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Jason is a middle-aged man still
living at home with his mother.

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His day not only begins
and ends in the house,

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twice during the workday,
he goes back to it.

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We could use the
Search Events option

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at the top to map this location
as we mapped 1898 as a place

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and time when we were
looking at Benjy's section,

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but another way to see the
pattern behind Jason's behavior

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is to look at the
spot on the map

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where he seems furthest
away from the Compson house,

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at least spatially.

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Ab Russell's farm
out in the county.

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Why is Jason there?

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He's chasing his
niece, Miss Quentin,

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who he has seeing driving around
with the man in the red tie.

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And why is he chasing his niece?

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He says he's protecting his
mother's reputation, holding

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on to what little
the family has left.

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Maybe, but he's also
reenacting the past,

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because two decades
earlier, his mother

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had him follow Caddy around
to spy on her relationships

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with boys.

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Jason doesn't
remember that event,

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but it's there in
his unconscious mind,

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just as it's referred to in
Quentin's section of the novel.

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And when you think about that,
that Jason is following Quentin

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in 1928, just as he
followed her mother,

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Caddy, in 1909, we can
see that he's actually

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following a script
for his life that

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was laid down much earlier.

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In a sense, it's just like Benjy
getting snagged on that nail.

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For all three
brothers, their past

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is the center of the circle
that they keep going around in.

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The paradox is that, like
Benjy at the fence hearing

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the golfer say caddy, and
thinking it means his sister,

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Caddy, Jason is chasing
something that's

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not there, that's absent.

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Indeed, it may never have
existed in reality at all.

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Let's go back to the events
in the Compson section

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and note that Jason's
second trip to the house

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during the work day, "I got
in the car and went home,"

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is just to count the money he's
been stealing from his niece

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and hoarding in the closet.

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He counts it again
before he goes to bed.

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He can't forgive
Caddy for costing him

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that job in her husband's bank.

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His one chance, he says, the
one thing that gave his life

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meaning, one way
to understand what

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Jason is doing so
obsessively with that money--

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keeping it locked up, taking
it out and counting it

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over and over again--

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is that he's trying
to find a substitute

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for that job in the
bank, but he never had

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that job in the first place.

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He's trying to replace what
wasn't there, what's gone,

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and that, trying
to find substitutes

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for what's been
lost, like the idea

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that art can create meaning
and significance out

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of chaos, that is another
of the novel's major themes.

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