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摘 要

福克纳对《喧哗与骚动》有着特殊的感情。因为这部作品是福克纳第一部成熟的作品，也是作家花费心血最多、本人最喜欢的小说。本文通过对杰生具体行为的列举分析其性格，并从南方的没落，家人的“遗弃”，心智成熟三个方面分析康普生·杰生四世性格形成原因，给杰生一个公平客观的评价。

关键词：具体行为；性格；南方的没落；家人的“遗弃”；心智成熟

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 3

3. Analysis of the Reasons for Jason’s Behaviors and Personalities 4

3.1 The fall of the South 7

3.2 The “desertion” of his family 8

3.3 Mental maturity 10

4. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

William Faulkner is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century in American literary scene, even in the world. He was particularly interested in the decline of the Deep South after the civil war. He made an exploration of the deterioration of the Southern aristocracy after the destruction of its wealth and way of life during the Civil War and Reconstruction. He projected his reputation for his famous Yoknapatawpha series of novels, such as As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Hamlet, and Go Down, Moses. The most prestigious novel, The Sound and the Fury, is the most representative one of this series, which Faulkner loved at the bottom of his heart. His other novels include The Unvanquished, Intruder in the Dust, Requiem for a Nun, A Fable, and The Reivers. The latter two books made him awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Faulkner’s reputation as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century is largely due to his highly experimental style. In his novels, he mastered a usage of the artistic device—the stream of consciousness so proficiently. Stream of consciousness is used to indicate a literary approach to the presentation of psychological aspects of characters in fiction. It presents unspoken materials directly from the psyche of the characters, or makes the characters tell their own inner thoughts in monologues. The realm of life with which stream-of-consciousness novel is concerned is mental and spiritual experience, such as sensations, memories, imaginations, conceptions, intuitions, feelings and the process of association. Stream of consciousness writing is a variant of the third person point of view, in which the narrator relates only to what is experienced by a character’s mind from moment to moment. The Sound and the Fury, because of the using of the stream of consciousness, is rated as one of the three representative masterpieces for “the stream of consciousness” novels, together with Marcel Proust’s Time Regained and James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury plays an important role in the stream of consciousness novels. He described the whole story through using the flow of consciousness to describe characters with different personalities, different misfortune and different quality in different periods, resulting in a complex flow of consciousness. Although some of its parts are repeated, but there is no similar sense. The reason is that the author does not focus on the fall of Katie and her daughter. He focuses on the different impacts on different people’s hearts the event has and the changes it results in people’s mind. The story is an integral part of the process by being divided into three characters’ awareness. Faulkner does not describe the story in the chronological order. So readers need to be involved in the creation when they read the story and assemble the whole process of the event completely, which shows that under the reverse and disordered timing sequence, the story has its own intrinsic order. Perspective of the narration of the fiction is inside-out. The changing thoughts of the narrator become the main line of the content of the work. Jumping and changing thoughts are described without clear words, instead of using the transformation of fonts, tone, title and other means. Readers need to distinguish carefully.

Another feature of The Sound and the Fury is that Faulkner uses multiple narrators. The novel is separated into four distinct sections, and each part has a narrator respectively.

The first, April 7, 1928, is written from the perspective of Benjy Compson. He is a 33-year-old man with severe mental handicaps. Through the youngest son’s eyes, we can see the situation of the world around the Compson and this family which at the verge of decline.

The second section, June 2, 1910, focuses on Quentin Compson, a young Harvard student and Bengy’s older brother, and the events leading up to his suicide. Faulkner describes this part in the perspective of Quentin. He tells readers about Quentin’s thinking, somniloquy, subconscious activities as well as his real life.

In the third section, April 6, 1928, Faulkner writes from the point of view of Jason, a bitter farm-supply store worker and Quentin’s cynical younger brother. Because of Caddy, Jason does not gain a job in the bank. He hates Caddy and her daughter, which fully demonstrates his selfish and avaricious state of his mind.

In the fourth and final section, set a day after the first, on April 8, 1928, Faulkner introduces a third person omniscient point of view. The last section primarily focuses on Dilsey, one of the Compson’s black servants who have played a great part in raising the children. Faulkner supplements the plot of the fiction with the observation and inner monologue of this black house cleaner. She embodies the “human” power.

2. Literature Review

Through finding and organizing information, there have been many critics doing research on Faulkner and The Sound and the Fury in the modern literature. Most of their works focused on psychological analysis, the relationship between the individual and the society and narrative techniques, including multi-angles and freedom of association of the novel. For example, Yang Feng’s “A Freudian psychoanalytic Interpretation of The Sound and the Fury”, Wang Yan’s “Individual VS Community: The cause of the individual tragedy in The Sound and the Fury” and Zhou Xiaofei’s “The coincidence of Form and Consciousness in The Sound and the Fury”.

Liao Jinluo analyzed the formation of Jason’s character from the perspective of post-modernism. He thought that Jason’s personalities were not formed when he was a child. They were not inherent and changeless. They can be acquired and constructed in daily life with the influences of economy, politics and culture.

There were also some thesis that are about archetypal analysis, but very few. For example, Li Xue’s “Biblical Factors in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury”. She researched it “on the basis of Northrop Frye’s theory on archetypal criticism, and with the base of association between the biblical archetypes on three aspects, such as theme, characters and image”.

Some scholars focused on narrative ambiguity in The Sound and the Fury. For example, Tian Ping and Hong Zengliu’s “On the Gradualness by the Narrative Ambiguity in The Sound and the Fury”. They focused on “ambiguous narrators’ narratives” (Tian Pingamp; Hong Zengliu 2012: 253-262), especially synchronized gradualness of Caddy. They illustrated rich and deep significance by elucidation of narrative gradualness on the basis of deconstruction and psycho-analyses.

Some critics concentrated on “time” in this novel. Feng Wenkun’s “On the Idea of Time Reflected in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury” is an example. He said that “the characters turn out to be the bearer or performer of the time”.（Feng Wenkun 2007: 131-136）He explained Faulkner’s idea of time and the sense of his characters in the light of Meileau Ponty’s philosophy of time –inter-subjectivity. Liang Zhen and Zhu Caixia analyzed the relationship between time and fate in The Sound and the Fury. They tried to analyze characters’ fate on the basis of Bergson’s “psychological time” in order to find Faulkner’s view of time.

This thesis analyzes Jason’s personalities through enumerating his specific acts and analyzes three reasons for the formation of his personalities from the fall of the south, the “desertion” and mental maturity to give him a fair and objective evaluation.

3. Analysis of the Reasons for Jason’s Behaviors and Personalities

The Sound and the Fury, set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. Mr. Compson is the father of the Compson family. He is a lawyer who attended the University of the South. He is a nihilistic thinker and alcoholic. He detests the whole world, which torment his son, Quentin. Mrs. Compson is a self-absorbed neurotic. She has never shown affection for any of her children except Jason because he takes after her side of the family. In her old age, she has become an abusive hypochondriac. Quentin is passionate and neurotic. He commits suicide as the tragic culmination of the damaging influence of his father’s nihilistic philosophy and his inability to cope with his sister’s sexual promiscuity. Candy is somewhat stubborn, but is loving and compassionate. She is Benjy’s only real caregiver and Quentin’s best friend. Jason is the bitter, racist third child who is troubled by monetary debt and sexual frustration. He works at a farming goods store owned by a man named Earl and becomes head of the household in 1912. He has been embezzling Miss Quentin’s support payments for years. Benjy is severely mentally disabled, an “idiot” with no understanding of the concepts of time or morality. Caddy is the only family member who shows any genuine love towards him. He has an almost animal-like “sixth sense” about people, as he was able to tell that Caddy had lost her virginity just from her smell.

As the children grow older, however, Caddy begins to behave promiscuously, which torments Quentin and sends Benjy into fits of moaning and crying. Quentin is preparing to go to Harvard, and Mr. Compson sells a large portion of the family land to provide funds for the tuition. Candy loses her virginity and becomes pregnant. She is unable or unwilling to name the father of the child. Caddy’s pregnancy leaves Quentin emotionally shattered. He attempts to claim false responsibility for pregnancy, lying to his father that he and Caddy have committed incest. However, Mr. Compson seems largely indifferent to Caddy’s promiscuity.

Attempting to cover up her indiscretions, Caddy quickly marries Herbert Head, a banker she met in Indiana. Herbert promises Jason Conmpson a job in his bank. Herbert immediately divorces Caddy and rescinds Jason’s job offer when he realizes his wife is pregnant with another man’s child. At the same time, Quentin is still in despair over Caddy’s sin. He commits suicide by drowning himself in the Charles River just before the end of his first year at Harvard.

The Compson break off the relationship with Caddy, but take in her newborn daughter, Miss Quentin. The task of raising Miss Quentin falls squarely on Dilsey’s shoulders. A year after Quentin’s suicide, Mr. Compson dies of alcoholism. As the oldest surviving son, Jason becomes the head of the Compson household. Bitterly employed at a menial job in the local farm-supply store, Jason plays a trick to steal the money Caddy sends to support Miss Quentin’s upbringing.

Miss Quentin, daughter of Caddy, grows up to be an unhappy, rebellious, wild and promiscuous girl, constantly in conflict with her overbearing and vicious Uncle Jason. On Easter Sunday, 1928, Miss Quentin steals several thousand dollars from Jason and runs away with a man from a traveling show. While Jason chases after Miss Quentin to no avail, Dilsey takes Benjy and the rest of her family to Easter services at the local church.

In The Sound and the Fury, Jason does many things that are hurtful to others, including his family members, especially Caddy and her daughter, and people around him. He is selfish, mean, greedy, fraudulent, cynical and ruthless. Jason’s legacy, even from his earliest childhood, is one of malice and hatred. Jason remained distant from the other children when he was a child. Ironically, the loveless Jason receives Mrs. Compson’s affection among the Compson children. Jason does not have the ability to accept, enjoy, or reciprocate this love. Jason refuses not only familial love, but romantic love as well. He hates all women at the bottom of his heart and thus cannot date, marry and even have children. Jason only gets a romantic satisfaction as an adult from a prostitute in Memphis. He lacks of love. His sensibility is suppressed by his rationality (Volpe 1983: 101). Jason is a rationalist. He uses American slang to express his resentment and self-pity. He is a utilitarian who is described as Satan. (Gu Lianli 1996: 109)

“He hates everything around him. Every word spoken from his lips seems to contain the acid. It attacks people and makes people sick, but it is not worth going to fight back. However, you will have a half-day discomfort. In addition to the money, he loves nothing. Even to his mistress, he is heavily guarded. He only sees her as a counterparty he does business with. He is heartless and always takes advantage of other people, but he always looks like a victim. He plays with a series of tricks to keep the alimony of his niece for his own over the years, and sucks the joy of revenge.”（Li Wenjun 2004: 3）

Jason is the most evil character in The Sound and the Fury. Most people think he is a representative of evil force. However, Critics generally only condemn that he is evil, but very few of them make an in-depth exploration of the roots of his evil. Actually, he is a victim.

3.1 The fall of the South

The story background of The Sound and the Fury is Jefferson town. It describes a once prominent but now declining family. The description of the Compson’s family life and spiritual world truly presents a side of historic change of the Southern United States

A theme of the decline of this clan is also the theme of the whole world that is experiencing the inevitable transition from traditional model to modern one. As a result, the theme of The Sound and the Fury is a constant theme of world literature. Throughout the article, we see the conditions in the time after the Civil War and Reconstruction of America. The result of the civil war is the abolition of black slavery plantation that hinders the development of the capitalist economy, which creates the conditions for the economic development of capitalism of the United States. The old south does collapse irreparably. Its economic basis has collapsed and remaining superstructure shakes and crumbles too. The fall of Caddy means the bankruptcy of southern moral regulations. Benjy has well-developed limbs, but he has no thought ability. While Quentin’s thought is complex but he loses the ability of action.

With the rising influence of money in the South, Jason has complied with the historical trend and become a materialist. Hatred and despair sometimes make him become an irrational, unrealistic avenger and sadist. Jason’s eyes are only filled with money. To Caddy’s daughter, Miss Quentin, he cheats Mrs. Compson and Miss Quentin out of Miss Quentin’s alimony, which is sent by her mother, Caddy. Jason used a series of measures to keep his niece’s alimony for his own. He deceived his mother that the check she burned was true. In practice, the check his mother burned every time was a dishonored check. In addition, Jason himself gained the real money. Money means everything to him. He is greedy and fraudulent. He has the trait of capitalists. Miss Quentin’s destiny is tragic. She cannot gain her mother’s love or relatives’ love. There is no one caring for her, no showing consideration to her, or no showing sympathy for her.（Li Wenjun 2008: 316）At the beginning of the first chapter, Luster tried his best to find his lost twenty-five cents that was used for a show. On April 8 in 1928, Eyre gave Jason two tickets for the show. Luster begged him to give a ticket. He even promised to install a tire for Jason every day. However, Jason insisted asking five cents from Luster who did not have cash in his pocket. He would rather throw the tickets to the stove than give one of them to Luster without any pay. He is so cool and mean. He does not do anything that is not beneficial to himself. He simply gives up the value of old standards. He replaces it with new value standards that are followed by bourgeois. He has become cruel and snobbish as bourgeois. He is heartless and always takes advantage of other people, but he always looks like a victim. He plays with a series of tricks to keep the alimony of his niece for his own over the years, and sucks the joy of revenge. As a materialist, he is mean, greed and fraudulent.

3.2 The “desertion” of Jason’s family

The formation of Jason’s character is mainly due to his unhappy childhood. His family environment gives birth to such a characteristic. Psychological research shows that behaviors and personalities of an adult are affected by the event that happens in the first few years after his birth. The children’s mentalities are quite fragile. Natural instincts need to be caressed. They are particularly sensitive to damage and fear. Especially some particular damage often leaves children an unforgettable impression, and this damage is indelible. Professor Xiao Minghan says that the formation of Jason’s character is due to his lonely childhood. He does not receive proper care and thinks that he does not receive a fair treatment. The psychological imbalance results in his characteristics.

Jason does not get the love and the right spiritual guide from his parents.  Mr. Compson prefers Quentin, Caddy and Benjy. He hates Jason because Jason is much like “the Bascomb”. In the novel, he has several equal dialogues with Quentin; he holds Benjy with his loving arms; Benjy recalled that Mr. Compson just looked at Jason, then kissed Caddy and put his hand on Benjy’s head. Even when Caddy lost her virginity, he did not punish her. On the contrary, he blamed Jason because he kept watch on Caddy. In his eyes, Jason is an outsider. Whenever conflicts happened between the children, Mr. Compson just said, “Come on, come on, and then you want me to do pulls out your meal?” Here, “and then” explains that Mr. Compson often beats Jason and he simply ignores who is right in the end. His mother, Mrs. Compson, is deeply influenced by the southern womanhood, so she sees herself as a well-mannered woman of the South from time to time. The patriarchal society in the south deprives mothers of “all feelings and their features of taking care of their children” (Richard 1995: 35). She is hypocritical, cruel and selfish. She always feels that the family and the children drag her down. She does not have love and tolerance that a mother and wife should have. Xiao Minghan thought that she “poisons the family’s atmosphere and damages the hearts of children”.（Xiao Minghan 1997: 205）“The Compson was dead because Mrs. Compson did not care for his children or love his children.” (Page 1972: 47) She loves Jason only. However, she does not love Jason from her mind. She just puts Jason as a bargaining chip when she has a cold war with her husband, Mr. Compson. There is no evidence proving that she loves Jason or spoils Jason. Jason’s brother, Quentin, compared Mrs. Compson as a dungeon. She regards Jason, her brother and herself as “the Bascomb”, and she rejects to communicate with “the Compson” represented by Mr. Compson. Such a mother without love makes Jason have a miserable childhood.

Jason does not get along well with his brothers and sisters. When they were young, Quentin, Caddy and Benjy slept in a room, but Jason slept with his grandmother. If his grandmother was ill, he could not sleep with her. As a result, he cried every night, especially in the night of the death of his grandmother. However, the Compson did not comfort Jason’s young mind from the soul. Instead, they condemned that he was spoiled by his grandmother. On a certain day in 1898, that year, Benjy was three years old. He, Caddy and his two brothers played with water in the stream. At that time, Jason did not play with his sister and his brothers. Benjy recalled, “Jason is also playing, but he plays in the far place himself”. Caddy and Quentin played with the water. At the end, their clothes were wet. However, before they went home, their clothes had been dry. If their brothers kept the secret, they would avoid be blamed and whipped. However, Jason told his father that Caddy and Quentin had a water fight. As a result, they were punished to have dinner in the kitchen. Jason is one of malice and hatred even from his earliest childhood.

On the day of Mr. Compson’s burial, Caddy came back to her hometown to seek the last chance to see her father. After her father’s burial, Jason found that Caddy was there. He was angry with her. He asked Caddy to leave there and kept his family away. Caddy implored Jason to bring Quentin to see her and gave him one hundred dollars through the bargaining.. She just asked for one minute. Jason took the money and promised to do it. While when he took Quentin who was two years old to see Caddy, he just lifted up Quentin and allowed Caddy to see her daughter through the window of the carriage without stopping of the carriage. In addition, the time was less than one minute. Caddy did not see her daughter clearly. He asked carter to gallop quickly. He did not feel ashamed. Instead, he felt happy. “And so I counted the money again that night and put it away, and I didn’t feel so bad. I say I reckon that will show you. I reckon you’ll know now that you can’t beat me out of a job and get away with it.” He had that thought after he took Quentin home without keeping his promise. He sucks the joy of revenge. He is fraudulent and ruthless.

Quentin and Benjy felt attachment to Caddy. Caddy gave Quentin certain spiritual comfort and give Benjy motherly care. While to Jason, she just gave him fists. When Jason tore Benjy’s paper doll carelessly, Caddy threatened to tear his stomach. Quentin once proposed to run away with Caddy and Benjy with the money that was used for Harvard. Rejection from them can be seen here. Like his brothers, Jason is fixated on Caddy, but his fixation is based on bitterness and a desire to get Caddy in trouble. Faulkner said, “Caddy, to me, is the embodiment of beauty. She is the love of my heart”.（Li Wenjun 1984: 366）However, she is used to prove Jason’s cruelty.

Jason cannot get love from his parents and his brothers and sisters, which makes him treat others ruthless with no compassion. Growing up in a family that is in lack of parental love and brotherly affection, he becomes selfish, egoistic, cool and ruthless. He does not trust other people. He lacks a sense of security. He thinks he is deserted by his family. This hurt makes him full of hatred. He hates everyone belonging to the Compson and everyone around him in society.

3.3 Mental maturity

Xiao Minghan thought that Jason cannot be simply denounced as an inherently bad or villain. Comparing to Mr. Compson, Quentin and Caddy, he is a man with ration. Mr. Compson was an alcoholic. He sold the last piece of land in order to raise money that was used for Quentin’s admission to Harvard and Caddy’s decent wedding. However, doing like that made Jason lose an equal chance to be educated. Caddy was pregnant before marriage, which made Herbert desert her. At the same time, Jason lost a chance to be a clerk in a bank. However, he did not sink into this unfortunate news. He cheered up soon. He saved money slowly from the slender income that was earned as a helper. He wanted to go to school to learn something that was useful. Then he went to school to learn how to identify the grades of cotton. That is why he regards money as the chief end and aim of his life. He was often bullied in the competition. However, he still worked hard. He tried his best to do business. After the death of his father and brother, he became the financial dependence of the whole family. His family needs and the difficulty of earning material needs forced him to regard money as his life. To his 33-year-old brother, Benjy, a mentally handicapped person, Jason thought he was burdensome. He gave his brother a castration operation. “At last, the innocent Benjy was castrated.” (Volpe 1964: 99-101) He even threw his brother to the welfare institution of the state government to take care of. He thought the best way was to send him to Jackson. Benjy could have a happy life there if he lived with the people like him. He proposed that some times. His mother thought Jason was conscienceless. In order to make his mother not sad, he did not do like that. He tolerated everything himself silently. He lived with Benjy. He sent Benjy to Jackson until his mother was dead.

In addition, Jason loved his lover. However, he did not get married all his life. He understood Mrs. Compson’s thoughts. She could not let others rap her son because of her selfishness. Jason considered that his mother would be up like a balloon and she would step out of her graveyard. He chose to be single to care about his mother’s feeling. At the same time, the real situation of his family made him single. The dementia of Benjy, Caddy’s pregnancy before marriage and then the lover of Nazi, Quentin’s suicide, the death of Mr. Compson and the promiscuity of Miss. Quentin, all of those made his family fall into disrepute. He knew that no woman or respectable woman would like to marry him. So he lived single all his life.

4. Conclusion

This paper focuses on analyzing the reasons for the formation of Jason’s personalities. In the first part, there is something about the writer, William Faulkner. One point is his reputation and his famous works. The second is his skills in The sound and the Fury, including stream of consciousness narrative technique and multiple narrators. In the second part, through finding and organizing information, some people’s views relate to this topic. Liao Jinluo analyzed the formation of Jason’s character from the perspective of post-modernism. He thought that Jason’s personalities were not formed when he was a child. They were not inherent and changeless. They can be acquired and constructed in daily life with the influences of economy, politics and culture. Feng Wenkun wrote a passage called “On the Idea of Time Reflected in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury”. He said, “The characters turn out to be the bearer or performer of the time”. He explained Faulkner’s idea of time and the sense of his characters in the light of Meileau Ponty’s philosophy of time –inter-subjectivity. In the third part, Jason’s behaviors and personalities are elaborated. He is selfish, mean, greedy, fraudulent, cynical and ruthless. The reason why he forms these personalities is that he is hurt in the depth. Then three reasons from the point of the fall of the Southern, the “desertion” of his family and mental maturity are given to defend him to give him a fail and objective evaluation.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Random House, 1984.

Page, Sally. “Faulkner’s Women: Characterization and Meaning”. Florida: Everett. 1972: 47

Richard, A. “Southern Renaissance”. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995: 116

Tian Bing amp; Hong Zengliu. “On the Gradualness by the Narrative Ambiguity in

The Sound and the Fury”. Academics 11 (2012): 253-262

Volpe, Edmond L. . “A Reader’s Guide to William Faulkner”. New York: The Noonday Press, 1964: 99-101

——. William Faulkner. New York: Octagon Books, 1983:101

冯文坤. 《论福克纳lt;喧嚣与骚动gt;之时间主题》.外国文学研究，5（2007）：131-136

顾连理. 《福克纳传》. 上海：东方出版中心，1996：109

李文俊. 《福克纳的神话》.上海：上海译文出版社，2008：316

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