Final Chapter & Revelation

It's over. Not only the novel, but also the Compson family. In this final chapter, we see, through third-person narration, almost everything at once. It's like a revelation, or it feels like the reader is this omnipresent being that can now witness everything as whole and not from only one character's tainted point of view. I think Faulkner wrote the novel like this because he wanted to set the tone by beginning the story from Benjy's perspective, and making his readers favor one character over the other right off the bat. Typically, authors write a story in a way that makes the reader decide who they like and who they don't. With The Sound and the Fury, it seems that Faulkner is trying to persuade his audience to choose one over the other, and the obvious best choices if that.


We see throughout every chapter, Caddy is mentioned once or twice. However, each brother has a different view of their sister. To Benjy, Caddy is like a safe haven and he is comforted by little things that remind him of her, like her scent. Quentin is constantly remembering Caddy for her "sluttiness", which is something he is obsessed with. And Jason thinks of Caddy as the person who ruined his job opportunities due to her divorce from Herbert Head. With that being said, the novel seems to be about Caddy, told from four different perspectives. This brings us back to the Macbeth quote: "(life) is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing." The novel is about Caddy herself, yet we aren't blessed with a chapter narrated by her. Her life story is told to us the readers by three other idiots, her brothers. But the "signifying nothing" aspect of the quotation still ponders me. Caddy's life is insignificant? However, that can't be true because she has unintentionally affected so many people's lives. That has to be significant. Perhaps this is Faulkner's way of defying that quotation by saying life doesn't signify nothing, life is always important, and with four different narrators, three with different interpretations of the subject of the novel, it doesn't signify nothing. More than one "tale-teller" represents a stronger influence than simply nothing.