The Sound and the Fury 8th April 1928
The final section of the book is narrated by an omniscient narrator, and it begins with a focus on Dilsey. The old servant goes about her morning duties of cleaning up the kitchen and making breakfast while Mrs. Compson periodically interrupts her work with complaints and demands. Dilsey patiently does her work and sends Luster to care for the yet asleep Benjy. Luster keeps sneaking away to the basement, but Dilsey finally manages to compel him to complete his work. Jason comes down for breakfast soon after Luster and Benjy. Luster complains to Dilsey that when he had gone to fetch Benjy, Jason had been complaining about a broken window in his locked room. He seemed to believe that Luster and Benjy had broken the window by throwing stones at it. The family is joined by Mrs. Compson, who tells Jason that the servants would be leaving for an easter service, which makes him quite angry. Jason demands that Quentin come to have breakfast with the rest of the family, but Dilsey tries to resist the notion. Mrs. Compson intercedes and Dilsey goes up to fetch Quentin, but she doesn’t receive a response from Quentin’s locked room.
Jason has a sudden epiphany and races to her room. He tries to get her to respond to him, but when he receives no response he manhandles his mother to get her keys. He opens her room and finds her gone, and he then rushes to his room where he finds that the money he had been saving for years had been stolen. He calls the police and tells them that he needs to track down a thief. Jason leaves the house without explaining the matter to any of the house members. The black servants take Benjy with them when they go for their church service, though Frony tries to tell Dilsey that some of the churchgoers disapprove of them bringing Benjy since he is white. Dilsey doesn’t care what the other churchgoers think, and they attend a moving sermon hosted by a visiting preacher who talks to them about the birth and death of Christ. Dilsey cannot help crying as she returns home with the others.
Jason goes to the sheriff to gain his help in tracking down Quentin, but the sheriff refuses to help as he cites the lack of evidence against Miss Quentin. The sheriff dislikes how Jason conducts his affairs, and he has some inkling that he has been using his niece to blackmail her mother for her money. Jason decides that he must track her down on his own, and he drives to the nearby town in his car. He forgets to bring enough camphor for the journey, which causes the gasoline smell to give him a severe headache. Jason arrives at the town and tracks down the musical show which is where the man with the red tie had worked. Jason gets into an altercation with an old man, who turns out to be too much trouble for him as the man comes after him with a hatchet. Jason is rescued from the old man by the owner of the musical show, who informs Jason that Quentin and the man with the red tie had been forced to leave the show since the owner hadn’t wanted to associate his show with such negative circumstances.
Jason gives up trying to find Quentin and hires a black man to drive him back home as his headache leaves him incapacitated.
At home, Luster and Benjy set out for a carriage ride with their old horse Queenie. However, Benjy begins to scream when Luster accidentally takes him from the wrong side of the road. Jason happens to be nearby when this occurs, and he charges onto the carriage. He strikes Luster, Benjy, and the horse as he berates Luster for not being aware of the direction that allowed Benjy to feel comfortable. Jason corrects the course of the horse, and the normal order of images causes Benjy to calm down.
Analysis
In this final section of the book, Faulkner subverts the readers' expectations as he doesn’t use Caddy as the fourth narrator of the book. Caddy would have been the natural choice for the last section of the book since the earlier sections were narrated by her siblings and she was featured centrally in all of their narratives. It can be theorized that Faulkner believed her brothers did not experience the true Caddy but rather viewed her as a store of feminine virginal purity. Therefore, by excluding Caddy from the narrative, Faulkner reinforces their viewpoint.
This final section of the book features Quentin’s elopement from the Compson house, which becomes the final stage in the destruction of the Compson name. Quentin steals all of Jason’s money and reduces him to the status of a penniless farm store clerk. She follows the example of her mother in being free, and independent while remaining uncaring of the standards that Jason attempts to impose on her.
It is interesting to note that the last narrative section occurs on the day of Easter, which is considered both an ending and a beginning. The theme of resurrection is adopted from Easter and applied to the legacy of the Compson family through the character of Dilsey. She has been a steadfast servant to the family throughout its rise and fall in fortune. Dilsey treats all the Compson children with fondness and even bears the demanding nature of Mrs. Compson without ever indicating any moral decay. Faulkner poetically ends the plot of the book by placing the legacy of an aristocratic southern family in the hands of Dilsey, the black servant who occupied the lowest social rank in Southern Society.
