CHAPTER 3. Bursting the Watch and the Clock: William Faulkner s. Temporality of the Yoknapatawpha

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 3 Bursting the Watch and the Clock: William Faulkner s Temporality of the Yoknapatawpha The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that 100 years later when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. (Faulkner, Lion in the Garden) 3.1. Introduction Jean Paul Sartre makes this observation of William Faulkner s fiction: A fictional technique always relates back to the novelist s metaphysics. Now, it is immediately obvious that Faulkner's metaphysics is a metaphysics of time. Man s misfortune lies in being time-bound (Sartre, On The Sound and the Fury ). A recurrent concern with time is manifest in the narrative methods of the modernist writers. It gained the centre stage of fictional aesthetics through the stream of consciousness novels of Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Stein, Woolf, Aiken and Richardson. They radically reconstituted the structural principles of the novel by rejecting the realist clock time in favour of experiential time. Realist time structure implied causality and objectivity manifest in the well-made plot. On the contrary, the modernist approach was constituted by the notions of multiplicity and subjectivity based on the view of reality that Virginia Woolf expressed in her disputable assertion that in or about December1910, human character changed ( Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown 320). In Modern Fiction she further asserted: Life is not a series of jig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. ( 189 ) and

2 177 that the task of the novelist was to convey this varying unknown and uncircumscribed spirit....with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible (189). This change of human character meant a new narrative paradigm shaped by a variety of influences; a new universe that was being shaped by Freud, Bergson Einstein, Heisenberg and Planck. Just as realism with its beginning-middle-end constructions represented the philosophy of the Enlightenment, the modernist novel attempted to project the fluidity and open endedness of the modernist philosophy and cosmology. E. M. Forster s idea of the story and plot held well in the case of realist fiction. Forster deals mostly with the 19 th century writers and does not advance much with Gide, Wolf or Joyce. He dismisses Joyce s Ulysses as essentially fantastic, classifying it with Tristram Shandy, Flecker s Magic, Zuleika Dobson and The Magic Flute (115). Obviously, Forster s idea of plot and character did not jell with the principles of experimental modernism Plot and Temporality in the Modernist novel. The modernist experimental novel developed a new structure that drew analogies with modernist music and painting. This was a radical rejection of the realist linearity and causality. Incidents narrated in the novels follow a free flowing pattern of the past, present, outward impressions, and inner thoughts interpenetrating or overlapping, narrated from multiple points of view. However, instead of a total rejection of the clock time, there often appeared the implied contrasts between the objective and the subjective perceptions of time. Linear chronology juxtaposed with

3 178 the inner, experiential time or the Bergsonian durée challenged the traditional fictional structures. Mark Currie observes that it is just possible that the rejection of chronology in the Modernist novel might be viewed in this way as a rejection of the external in favor of internal reality, and therefore as a shift from cosmological to phenomenological time (About Time: Narrative 97). The spatialised form of the novel made time visible to the reader s consciousness. In fact, the complex temporality of the modernist novels appeared to project the time-boundedness of man as a recurrent theme. In the U. S.A., Theodore Dreiser, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos and William Faulkner took structural experimentation further through techniques designed to reveal the inner lives of their characters and the clash of their strikingly different perspectives on experience. William Faulkner was the most remarkable among these. His technical virtuosity challenges the imagination. His methods show the influence of the vision of Bergson and Proust, Braque, Breton and Picasso. His sense of history and of the change and decline of a civilization appears to develop as he passed from novel to novel; it displays a kinship with the historical vision of Oswald Spengler, though within the context of the American South. Faulkner s novels are polyglossic in the Bakhtinian sense. He tries to express the complexities of time vision through a radical reordering of the temporal structure of fiction, without falling into meaningless mannerism or tasteless idiosyncrasy. 3.3 Faulkner s Yoknapatawpha Thematic Concerns Faulkner s Yoknapatawpha novels mark the highpoint of his creative achievement. The period marking Sartoris (1929) to Intruder in the Dust (1948) is the

4 179 most important segment of Faulkner s oeuvre. With Sanctuary, he started to localize his tales in the mythical Yoknapatawpha. This was immediately followed by The Sound and the Fury (1929), continuing through As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), and Intruder in the Dust (1948). The interconnectedness of these novels is based most importantly on the localised setting of the mythical Yoknapatawpha, which embodies the myth of the South where Faulkner recaptures and immortalises the geography, history and social milieu of the American South. This interconnectedness is enhanced by the fact that his stories overlap in terms of history, character and themes. Through these novels, Faulkner boldly experimented with the narrative technique, which helped him explore the experience of time at different levels. His postage stamp of native soil seems to have grown on him over a period of two decades and reached full bloom through the Yoknapatawpha novels. Four of these are taken up here for a brief analysis from the point of view of their temporal structures, since they stand out as quintessentially modernist with their variant chronotopes. Philosophically speaking, Faulkner s Yoknapatawpha is the microcosm of the larger world. His famous comment that beginning with Sartoris I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it, and that by sublimating the actual into the apocryphal I would have complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute top (qtd. Cowley 141), embodies Faulkner s regionalism which provided him with enough scope for the experimentalism of his European contemporaries. Latter day criticism is not so much concerned with analyzing Faulkner from the mimetic approach and psychological realism or regionalism, but

5 180 with Faulkner the experimentalist, a true modernist, a writer who sought to subvert technically the conventions of realism and naturalism with their emphases on coherent plotting, mimetic characterization, and causal conceptual relationships. This criticism variously suggests that Faulkner s fiction, like most modernist fiction, displays that movement away from more realistic narrative designs and is one more example of that self-conscious experimentation that demonstrates a distrust of pre-modern fiction and the philosophies of Being that supported it. (Hedeen 623) The importance of temporality in Faulkner s novels began to preoccupy the critics when Sartre raised the question: Why has Faulkner broken up the time of his story and disarranged the fragments? ( On The Sound and the Fury ). Frederick J Hoffman sees the treatment of time as central to Faulkner s concerns. It involves historical time, tradition, as well as narrative rhythm and pace (24). Hoffman argues that while literal lineal ( sic) time has no place of appreciable significance in Faulkner s work, the pressure of past upon present is seen in a variety of complex and interesting ways as affecting the psychology and morality of individual actions (24). Hoffman s diagram (Figure1) represents the several time patterns in Faulkner s work. Despite its admitted oversimplification, it is helpful in foregrounding our discussion on the temporalities in the four novels under consideration. It demonstrates his historical vision.

6 181 Figure 1. Hoffman s Diagram A B C D E Edenic Actual Major ( Was ) Present Past Past Event Recent No historical past ( Is ) + Time 1920 (Hoffman 24) A. is the pre-historical or a non-historical time, or a non temporal existence (24) B. is the beginning of recorded history according to Faulkner. He sets the date as 1699 in the appendix he added to The Sound and the Fury (24). C. is 1861 the beginning of the Civil war; in which the accumulated tensions and the moral crises received a catastrophic and a significantly violent expression (25). Hoffman explains: The most important use of time in Faulkner is the pattern or movement of it largely in the consciousness of his major characters, not in terms of narrative exposition from this major event through the Recent past (D) to the present (E).This movement is reciprocal, and it alternates in terms of symbol and forms of psychological reaction, so that there is much shifting back and forth between C and E, in what he calls the momentary avatars of individual people. (25)

7 182 Formally and symbolically, Faulkner s structural innovations embody his theme(s). The four novels discussed here possess spatial structures which highlight Faulkner s attempt to explore the issue of time from different angles. Faulkner s novels are characterized by formal heterogeneity. Martin Kreiswirth observes how practically all of his works are structurally discontinuous, technically fragmented, and composed of diverse almost self-contained parts.... It seems at bottom, in fact, that Faulkner viewed fictional construction in terms of the fitting together of different (and sometimes disparate) units of narrative discourse. Form in these texts, then, is multiple and dynamic rather than singular and fixed. And structure resides in patterns of juxtaposition, parallelism, montage, and counterpoint. (56) Faulkner s formal heterogeneity involves radical temporal patterns making use of anachronies in an extensive manner. Faulkner began to develop his complex vision of time experience with Sartoris, though still retaining the conventions of realism. Thematically and formally this was the prelude to his later novels. After Sartoris he became more radical and experimented with different chronotopes. Time is primarily in terms of the historical past which deeply affects the moral and psychological condition of the individual characters such as Bayard Sartoris. Faulkner contrasts the public (historical) time with the private (experiential) time of individual characters. Time is also expressed as cyclic and static.

8 183 The now-story of Sartoris covers barely a year. This serves as the scaffolding upon which various dimensions of time are explored. The story of the three generations of the Sartoris clan is explored mostly in flashbacks (temporal retroversions or analepses). It displays an obsession with the presentness of the past depicted through the memories of the characters and their retellings of historical events (especially in the mythmaking mind of Miss Jenny Sartoris Du Pre). Time is recounted mostly as memory. The events unfold through the minds of the characters as memories and reflections that is to say, in terms of the effects of events rather than the events themselves. The success of this work gave him confidence to move to greater fictional experiments manifested in The Sound and the Fury and the three other masterpieces that followed Temporality of the Four Novels General Observations The four novels mentioned can be classified into two groups based on the nature of Faulkner s historical sense. As I Lay Dying falls in the category of ahistorical narratives in the sense that it does not directly use Southern historical background. In Light in August, set in the post World War I era, history is reminisced by some characters. Historical dates assume importance in the case of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom Absalom! As Yoknapatawpha novels, all these invoke the world of the American South through historical dates directly or indirectly as well as through references to particular landmarks and presenting the social milieu. They are also connected by the presence of certain recurrent characters and themes racial violence, sexual infidelity, religious, moral and economic decline of the South.

9 184 Our special interest lies in the temporal structuring through which Faulkner renders the fictive experience of time. One primary observation that we can make at this point is the way Faulkner juxtaposes the past and the present in these novels. The temporal scheme of the novels can be understood in terms of the now-time juxtaposed with the Fabula time (the total time span covered by the plot), as shown below. TABLE 1 Comparative Study of the Temporal Scheme of the Four Novels Novel Date Fabula Now- Max. reach time time of analepses The Sound and the Fury yrs 18 yrs 35 yrs Absalom Absalom years 4 months 103 yrs Light in August yrs 1 month 118 yrs As I Lay Dying 1890s-1920s ( no exact date given ) 35 yrs 10 days 35 yrs A common feature of these novels is the comparatively shorter span of external action time (the now- time ) that the author employs for the narratives compared to the total time span of the fabula in each case. As shown above, the time span of the fabula is the longest in The Sound and the Fury. (This is a moot point because in this case we take the Appendix also into consideration, which many critics prefer to ignore). Light in August is the lengthiest in terms of textual space and the time span of the fabula used, divided as it is into 21 lengthy chapters covering a historical period of 103 years. The now-story covers events of about a month, though events covering nearly a century are used as a reminisced background.

10 185 As I Lay Dying is a novella. It is narrated mostly in the present tense. The disproportion between the now-story and the reminisced past is the lowest here. The narrative covers the experience of nine days and almost completely avoids analepses into distant past. It may be the nearest possible approach to a zero degree present tense narrative, where the narration time is closest to the action time. The narrative maintains a reasonable level of continuity from day to day to the very end. On this aspect The Sound and the Fury is drastically different. It cuts up the plot into four dated pieces with a fifth section included as the Appendix a later addition. Its temporal ordering suggests discontinuity at all levels. The now-story itself is rendered problematic by the jumps in time back and forth in the most asymmetric and asynchronous manner with changing points of view, which overlap and retrace the same events. The authorial Appendix in the end adds the frame of historicity to the whole narrative, by linking the lives of the characters with the history of the South. Absalom Absalom! is historically linked to The Sound and the Fury. It covers a now-span of less than four months, though its fabula spans two centuries. Together these two novels reveal an artistic consciousness that questions the common assumptions about time as regular, measured, progressive and predictable. In each of these novels, Faulkner creates different narrative structures, that reveal the temporal complexity and variety that is possible in the creation of fictional narratives The Sound and the Fury Many critics have looked at The Sound and the Fury as an American demonstration of the Bergsonian time-vision, which Faulkner acknowledged many times. The philosopher s primary doctrines of mind, time, and language re-echo in the novelist s theory of fictive language, form, and structure, and the underlying

11 186 psychology of art and metaphysics (Jellife 53). A closer look at the work reveals much more. The tone and temper of the work tends more towards the compactness of drama than the diffusiveness of the novel. The use of memory differs significantly from that of Proust s work. The salient technical feature is its use of multiple narrative voices embodying variant time perceptions. Five different narrative voices-the three Compson brothers, the third person, and finally the authorial are presented in a series of differing temporal perspectives beginning with the presentness of time experience to the historical perspective. This is built on the matrix of the decline of the once aristocratic Compson family. Cleanth Brooks observes how in the presentation of the break up of the Compson family.... the story is told through one obsessed consciousness after another, as we pass from Benjy s near mindlessness to the obsessed mind of Quentin and then to the very differently obsessed mind of Jason (325). He identifies the first three sections as examples of the stream of consciousness method, and notes how different they are in movement, mood and effect! (325). Brooks observes how the reading of The Sound and the Fury is a progression from murkiness to increasing enlightenment, and this is natural, since we start with the mind of an idiot, to on next through the memories and reveries of the Hamlet like Quentin, and come finally to the observations of the brittle, would be rationalist Jason. Part of the sense of enlightenment comes simply from the fact that we are traversing the same territory in circling movements, and the cumulative effect of names and characterizations begins to dramatize for us with compelling urgency a situation we have come to accept almost as our own.( )

12 187 This is the effect of the novel s spatialised structure. Brooks does not provide a detailed structural analysis of the work. He also does not consider the mutual relationship of the four different sections in terms of time scheme, and completely ignored The Appendix. Considering Faulkner s vision of history, this paratext is also a part of the temporal structure. Figure 2. Narrative Structure of The Sound and the Fury Benjy (1st person) April Quentin (1st person) June Jason (1 st person) April Dilsey (Omnisient) April Appendix (Authorial) The structural analysis of The Sound and the Fury must begin with an identification of the narrative voices in the novel, each of which provides different perspectives on the shared experience of a southern family and its travails. Through the voices of the three Compson brothers, the author provides three different but related views of temporal experience rounded off with Dilsey s concluding coda. Each of these sections may be viewed as providing different chronotopes to the same set of events in the Fabula. As Brooks observes: The states of consciousness of the three brothers provide three quite different modes of interpretation.... Benjy s section is filled with a kind of poetry, a poetry of the senses, rendered with great immediacy, in which the world for Benjy a kind of confused, blooming buzzregisters with great sensory impact but with minimal intelligibility. Quentin s section is filled with poetry too, though his is essentially

13 188 decadent: sensitive but neurotic and hopeless, as it rings sadly through a series of dying falls. Entering Jason s section, we have no poetry at all, since Jason, the sane man, has consciously purged his mind of every trace of this perilous and impractical stuff... With the last section we again encounter poetry, but of a more usual kind, especially in those passages which reveal Dilsey s reaction to the Easter Service; and here it is neither primitive nor decadent, but whole, complex, and mature. ( ) Faulkner employs temporal structuring in such a way as to provide insight into a multilayered articulation of time experience depending on the perceiver / narrator. As Perrin Lowrey has noted: Each of [the major characters] holds an idea of time which is appropriate to the theme Faulkner wishes to express and which serves the total structure he has created as well....in the final structure the characters time concepts are correlated artistically with the various time devices which serve the telling of the story.(53) The very structuring of the narrative thus becomes symptomatic of the narrators mental state. Moreover, the first three sections contrast with the fourth, providing the reader with a standard by which the Compson family could be assessed. Their disintegrating inner and outer worlds provide the Compson brothers with only a skewed sense of time. Benjy s perpetual present provides the first level of time consciousness the level of pure instinct, the animal level at which intellection is impossible, without past or present, reliving the past as if it is present. In his long interior monologue, past and present jumble together in the mind, and so in the first

14 189 section of the book the reader moves from one event to another, sometimes, without warning, across a gap of years, since for Benjy events are related only through some casual and accidental association (Brooks 328). In Quentin s section, time-awareness takes on a different aspect. Here we have a sensitive, conscious narrative voice that is obsessed with time in the form of memory, haunted by guilt and a sense of loss. In the long stream-of-consciousness meditation which occupies his section of the book, his obsession comes out in dozens of ways, including his avoidance of looking at clocks (328).Quentin s breaking of his father s watch at the very beginning of the section and getting hurt in the process is a powerful symbolization, demonstrating his condition. In section three, the worldly, cold-blooded cynic Jason, presents a third aspect. He too is harried by time, but in a very different way: far from wishing to obliterate it, he would like to catch up with it. Throughout his section Jason is always racing the clock and is usually late because he always thinks of time.... in a mechanical and minute-to-minute sense (328). His attitude is entirely rational, completely surrendered to the materialistic notion of time. Clocks do not bother him. He runs according to their ticking. He is the man of the future, the greedy grasping upstart, the like of whom are going to inherit the South when its decline is complete. None of the three brothers has a meaningful vision of time. They live in the experience of Kronos and not of Kairos (redeemed time). Sartre compared Faulkner s heroes to those traveling towards the future in a speeding car, always looking back. They face backwards as the car carries them along ( On The Sound and the Fury ). Brooks comments that this obsession with the past does apply to Quentin but not to many others (328). He notes:

15 190 Perhaps a more accurate way of stating the truth that inheres in Sartre s view is to say: man s very freedom is bound up with his sense of having some kind of future. Unless he can look ahead to the future, he is not free. The relation that the three Compson brothers bear to the future and to time in general has everything to do, therefore, with their status as human beings. (329) Dilsey s section rises above all and provides an eternal transcendent experience of time. Significantly, this section is presented from an extradiegetic omniscient point of view, standing outside of the Compson drama. Dilsey s perspective is symbolized in the incident where the defective kitchen clock strikes five on Easter morning but she correctly interprets it as eight o clock (S F 203). Her ability to make sense of the clock is simply one aspect of her ability to make sense of past, present, and future. All are aspects of eternity, and Dilsey, in her simple religious faith, believes in an order that is grounded in eternity (Brooks 328). Dilsey lives in the state of Kairos time a. Structure General Observations The structure of the novel demands rereading like in the case of Joyce s Ulysses. Perhaps even more than in the case of Joyce, Faulkner can only be reread. A knowledge of the whole is essential to an understanding of any part (Frank 21). The temporal order of the four sections, along with the Appendix presents a classic example of modernist spatialisation. However, Faulkner provides sufficient indications or road signs to direct the reader with historical dates for each section. The first three sections of first person narratives progressively lead us from vagueness to clarity, culminating in the fourth (Dilsey s) section signifying a restoration of order

16 191 out of chaos. Faulkner added an Appendix 17 years after the original publication, putting the whole Compson saga in a historical frame, providing data not covered in the original narrative. The structural ingenuity that the author displays provides a multilayered view of the possibilities of temporal experience in fiction. This can be analyzed at the macro and micro levels b. Macro Structure: The Sound and the Fury is a five-part narration with five different voices and five different points of view that are set in five different temporal perspectives. By radically violating the principle of sequential narration, Faulkner presents a new image of time. The first four sections of the work cover approximately eighteen years of fabula time, though the individual sections narrate separate now-stories of one day each in the life of the characters Benjy, Quentin, Jason and Dilsey. The first, the third and the fourth sections cover the events of the three Easter weekend events in now-time, whereas the second Quentin s section is dated eighteen years (17years,7 months and 9 days) back and is set immediately after the first section, thus disrupting the temporal order of the now-story. Since the events that happen in the family between 1910 and 1928 (but for the events of Baby Quentin s arrival and Mr.Compson s death) are hardly relevant, the time span between the three other sections and Quentin s section is a remarkably long period of ellipsis. Even in the case of the other three sections, the linear narrative order is discarded. In the Fabula sequence, the arrangement would be Quentin (June ) Jason (Good Friday) Benjy (Holy Saturday) Dilsey (Easter Sunday). Conventionally speaking, we may

17 192 say that Faulkner s narrative begins in medias res (Benjy s April ), then makes a jump to a date 18 years behind (June second 1910), returns to a day before (April ) and jumps forward to two days later (April ). Such chronological jumbling is a symptom of more subtle complexities of time explored within the individual sections. The Appendix was added 15 years after the novel s first publication. By then the major Yoknapatwpha novels have all been published. Critical opinion about its relevance is divided. Consequently, many later editions of the novel have omitted it. However, in terms of its temporal structure, the Appendix cannot be ignored. Taken as part of the narrative, it increases the structural complexity by extending the time of the fabula to more than three centuries and linking the Compson family saga to Faulkner s historical vision of the South. The extensive fabula time does not reduce the tempo of the actual narration because the external action deals with four separate days only and the past is woven into the now-time in each section through a series of repetitive analepses which are mostly external in nature. Instead of embedding the past episodes scene by scene through the retrospections of the characters, the author builds them up bit by bit, creating an image of experiential time as dependent on the perceiving mind. An understanding of the novel s structure leads to a perception of the peculiar rhythm of the quintessential Faulknerian narration that is distinctive compared to the methods of the other stream of consciousness novelists of the modernist era. Because of its fragmented appearance, many readers presume that although on the one hand the multiplication of points of view makes it impossible to see the

18 193 novel as a whole from any single point of view, the singular perspective of each section, on the other hand, offers the view of a single unified whole (Lester 143). Faulkner provides calendar dates that head each section along with the dates given in the Appendix, so that the reader can connect the sequences together in the mind. Chronology,... is... invoked to identify and order the sections (Lester 145). The drama that Faulkner creates in The Sound and the Fury is effected by cutting up the main part of the fabula time and focusing on four single days in which the respective protagonists inner and outer worlds are presented as continuous. Here the present and the past interpenetrate. In the Benjy and Quentin sections, this is made possible by a sort of dramatic interior monologue sequencing in which the past events in memory are not described but simply alluded to. Thus, the micro level narration in a way reflects the macro level in the sense that both leave out temporal linking through explanations, description or commentary. The narration begins in medias res, in the homodiegetic first person mode, moves back and forth facilitating fluidity of temporal shifts. Jason s section relies very little on memory and mostly moves forward without many analepses. Dilsey s section presented in the heterodiegetic third person perspective describes the events of Easter morning continuously. The Appendix is a summary covering the longest period of fabula time providing information from the past and also events up to the 1940s. Analepses Most of the decisive events in the novel are reminisced events; that is to say, there is a larger section of the story that is drawn from the memories of the characters than from the extradiegetic narratorial comments.

19 194 As already established, Faulkner s characters are deeply affected by the past. This experience is reiterated through the various forms of analepses in the work. The amount of text devoted to analeptical passages provides an idea of the structural design that creates this effect. Faulkner s method of bringing in the past is dramatic in the sense that the images and short statements connected to past events intrude into the present action abruptly and merge with the present of the characters. The method is unlike that of Proust or Woolf where temporal markers signify the shift in time without straining the syntax and continuity of the passages and the scenes are established clearly. Faulkner s method is telegraphic and often brings together multiple events in one short passage. The reader has to reconstruct the scenes by separating the contexts of the statements and refer back and forth to the same events brought to focus in other sections of the narrative c. Microstructure With more than two hundred external analepses covering nearly thirty five years of the Compsons family history, the ratio of the now-time to the historical (time elapsed and time anterior to the now- time) time is indeed exceptional. Since Caddy, the lost sister obsesses the Compson brothers most; the major events are all brought into the narrative through the series of analepses surrounding Caddy. These analepses signify the differing attitudes of the brothers to the events and lay bare their minds. The first two sections Benjy s and Quentin s contain nearly the whole of these analepses. This is because it is with them that Caddy was most emotionally involved; her loss haunts them. But their memories are differentiated by the differing modes of perception. Benjy the idiot does not distinguish between past and present. Quentin on the other hand is too deeply conscious of the past, tyrannized by it to the

20 195 extent of self destruction. Together, these two sections provide a subjective level of the time experience. Jason follows public time which is objective and mechanical. Dilsey perceives time at the level of eternity, the experience of time redeemed. It is possible to draw up a list of the events in the Fabula in chronological sequence from the text (Table 2). Some of the dates have been inferred from the text or taken from sources outside the novel. Certain dates and events cannot be fixed exactly because of conflicting data given by the author. For example, the years of birth of Caddy and Quentin are slightly different if we follow Faulkner s remarks elsewhere or even some of his other works where they are mentioned. However, this is a matter of no serious concern here. In the following analysis, the order of individual sections will be that of the fabula. Quentin Jason Benjy Dilsey Appendix. TABLE 2 Timeline of the Compson Family Saga No Date Event Narrated in Birth of Quentin MacLahan The French Appendix settlement of Louisiana in the Mississippi valley MacLahan flees to America following defeat in Appendix the battle of Culloden Quentin MacLahan Compson flees to Kentucky Appendix with grandson. His son Charles Stuart wounded in the war of independence in Georgia Quentin s death. Charles Stuart returns to his Appendix family. 5 Late 1780s Charles Stuart Compson attempts to secede the Appendix Mississipi valley Jason Lycurgus Compson arrives in Jefferson. Appendix The glorious years of the Compson dynasty Establishment of the Compson Estate and house. Appendix

21 196 Ends with the Governor Quentin MacLahan II The Civil War. Beginning of the decline of the Appendix Family The decline of the Compsons under Brigadier Appendix Jason Lycurgus II following the Civil War ruination and the fall into penury (90?) Birth of Quentin III. Appendix Candace (Caddy) s birth. Not mentioned Birth of Jason IV. Appendix Benjy (Maury) born Quentin s Damudy s death. Quentin s & Benjy s Gen Jason Lycurgus Compson II dies. 2.Maury renamed Benjy Natalie episode. Quentin s 1.Appendix 2.Quentin s & Benjy s Jason Senior returns from St Louis World Fair. Quentin s &Jason s (6?) Caddy uses perfume. Benjy s Caddy kisses a boy. Benjy (09?) December 21 Summer 1909 The Mrs. Patterson- Uncle Maury letter episode. Caddy s loss of virginity Quentin meets Dalton Ames. 22 Fall1909 The sale of the last piece of Compson property. Quentin sent to Harvard.Caddy meets Herbert. 23 April 22 Quentin meets Herbert Head April Caddy s hasty wedding. Benjy s & Quentin s Appendix-Quentin s & Benjy s s Appendix Quentin s Quentin s 25 June Quentin s suicide. Benjy s Birth of Quentin. Caddy s divorce. Compson Jason s brings baby Quentin home Death of Jason Lycurgus Compson III. Benjy s Death of Roskus Gibson Benjy s Appendix Quentin & Benjy s

22 Benjy s castration. Benjy s Jason s & Appendix Caddy marries a moving picture magnate. Appendix Caddy divorces again in Mexico. Appendix 31 April 6 Quentin Jason fight Quentin s affair with the Quentin s 1928 pitchman in the circus. 32 April Benjy s 33rd birthday. Quentin elopes with a man from the street show. Appendix Benjy s Jason s 33 April 8 Discovery of theft.dilsey takes Ben to Easter Dilsey s 1928 service Death of Mrs. Compson. Dilsey fired from Appendix Compson service, settles in Memphis. Benjy committed to Jackson asylum. The house sold Caddy attached to a Nazi officer in Paris. Appendix Librarian shows the photograph of Caddy to Jason and Dilsey. Appendix It is clear from the table that the events narrated in the first four sections cover the fabula time between 1898 and 1928 only. The Appendix fills up the gaps providing the history before and after the dates mentioned, linking it to the history of the South from its colonial past to the mid twentieth century. In our analysis, we follow the sequence of the fabula. Hence, Quentin s section comes first. Tables pertaining to it are given separately in order to signify the time gap that exists between Quentin s section and the Holy Week Sections that closely follow one another c.1. Quentin s Section This is the lengthiest section. More than fifty percent (57 %) of the text in this section covers the now-story, double the amount of Benjy s. Though Quentin s analepses cover a lesser span of the fabula ( ), it is the most problematic of

23 198 the four sections. It is by far the most segmented, consisting of 222 fragments. A large portion of these consists of Quentin s thoughts. The total number of past episodes number about 30 only. The frequency of temporal narrative shift is very high and often confusing, despite the fact that the time span of the fabula is less than half that of Benjy s section 12 years and less disjointed. The fragmentation of Quentin s section reflects his abstract but quick mind, which intellectualizes experience. The shift from one reference to the other in quick succession is without proper linguistic or typographic signals. A crowding effect is created by references to several memories at once. An episode from the past is referred to in a word or a phrase or perhaps a sentence at one point and later on added to in an incremental manner by repetitions and expansions later on. These analepses are often linked to episodes in the nowstory. The frequency of analepses becomes greater and greater towards the end, emblematic of Quentin s increasing psychological disintegration (S F ). Extreme spatialisation is carried out through the dissolution of punctuation and syntax. In the scene at the branch with Caddy (124) and the crucial conversation with his father about the alleged incest (133) are culminations of this. Quentin s memories are differentiated from those of Benjy because his ratiocinative mind makes him consider the social and moral consequences. Faulkner describes him as one who loved not his sister s body but some concept of Compson honor precariously.... who loved not the idea of the incest which he would not commit, but some Presbyterian concept of its eternal punishment... ( 242). Quentin s section complements Benjy s by the repetitive analepses in which Caddy is the central figure. The only difference is that Quentin s memories are

24 199 charged with sexual guilt. Both share a sense of loss. The repeating analepses in the two sections share the following events mainly: 1. Damuddy s death. 2. Benjy s name change. 3. The Patterson episode. 4. Caddy s loss of virginity. 5. The selling of the pasture. 6. Caddy s wedding. The largest sequence of memories in Quentin s section are allied to the following episodes: 1. Caddy s loss of virginity. 2. Caddy and Quentin consider suicide / murder by the brook. 3. Quentin s encounter with Dalton Ames following Caddy s deflowering (the shooting part of this episode is Quentin s imagination). 4. Caddy s being advised to go to French Lick by Mr Compson. 5. Quentin s encounter with his father about the alleged incest. 6. Quentin s meeting with Herbert Head. 7. The Eve of the Wedding. 8. The Wedding day. Total number of temporal shifts 168. Analepses The number of external analepses cannot be determined as in the case of the previous sections because of the jumbled manner of presentation.

25 200 Quentin s obsession with the past amounts to the sense of having no future.... He would like to do away with time, locking himself into some past from which there would be no development and no progression. Hence that dream appeals to Quentin: time congealed into a changeless moment; he and Caddy in some cozy private niche in hell, enclosed in the clean flame, isolated from everything else. (Brooks 329) Thus Quentin s attempt to smash his watch and his recall of his father s remark the mausoleum of all hope and desire (S F 59) foreshadows his suicide, his way of escaping time. Quentin s section is spatially and temporally removed from the other three. The other sections take place in the Compson household within a time span of three days running through the Holy weekend of Quentin s takes place in Harvard on June 2, 1910 and is rarely reminisced in the other three sections. Thus, we may think of Quentin s section as standing apart or as temporally external to the other three. Since Faulkner has inserted Quentin s section immediately after Benjy s section, the temporality of the structure takes a dramatically new aspect. It is a quantum jump in time, reaching back to a distant past, a long ellipsis. The readability of the section poses a slightly different challenge compared to Benjy s section. Benjy s reminiscences come to us in larger individual units and the shifts in the temporal sequences are typographically demarcated. Quentin s section moves from the past to the present and vice versa with greater speed and frequency. This is often indicated by fragmentation of the sentences and the bringing together of events belonging to different chronological sequences in one single unit of sentence.

26 201 A fragment of an event indicated in a broken phrase at one point will have to wait for its completion much later in the section for a completing analepsis. For example the phrase One minute she was standing in the door (62) recalls Caddy s loss of virginity. This passage breaks off to present Quentin in his Harvard room (narrative present) shifts to his father s gifting of the watch-charm to Jason on return from Saint Louis, returns to the present and resumes with: only she was running already...., merging the loss of virginity episode with Caddy s wedding and shifting to the present again with Shreve said (62 63). All this happens in a text length of 46 lines. The chronological jumping clearly indicated by typographical changes in the earlier sequences. But this disappears in the closing sequences. The technical contrast between the first two sections distinguishes the two different modes of time perception embodied by the narrative voices: Benjy s mind is instinctive and triggered by physical sensations; Quentin s mind is ratiocinative and abstract but deranged. TABLE 3 Quentin s Section: June Events in the Now-story Sequence Events Time 1 Quentin wakes up, hears clock striking. Early morning after 7 2 Bathes and dresses. He smashes his watch. Hurts his thumb At the post office Packs his trunk writes two letters. Around 9 5 Goes looking for Deacon. past 9 6 Visit to Jeweler s shop. Buys flat irons Rides in a streetcar sees Gerald Bland. Looks for Deacon

27 202 7 Writes a note to Deacon. Goes to Post office Gets on a streetcar then returns at the stone bridge to hide flat irons. 9 Sees Gerald Bland. Noon 10 Hands letter to Deacon. Early after noon 11 Walks a long the river. Meets the anglers. Afternoon 12 Meets an Italian girl at the bakery. 13 Julio appears Quentin accused. 14 Gerald Bland and others rescue him. He pays fine. 15 Rides in the car again with his friends. Mid afternoon 16 The fight with Gerald Bland. 17 Back in his room he cleans blood off his face. Late afternoon 18 Gets dressed in preparation for suicide. 19 Leaves room heading for the river. TABLE 4 Quentin s Section Reminisced Events No Events in Chronological order Date of event No of analepses Proportion of text used approx % 1 Damuddy s death Benjy s name changed. Nov The Patterson affair Less than 1 4 Compson s return from St Less than 1 Louis. 5 Jason and the kite business. 1 Less than 1 6 Kissing Natalie Caddy kisses a boy Less than 1 8 Quentin s broken leg. undated 1 Less than 1 9 Hunting possums. undated 1 Less than 1 10 Compson gifts watch to undated 1 Less than 1

28 203 Quentin. 11 Selling of Benjy s pasture. undated 2 Less than 1 12 Caddy meets Dalton Ames Accusation of spying Benjy smells loss of virginity Quentin and Caddy at the creek considering murder/suicide. 16 Quentin meets Dalton Ames Caddy and Mrs. Compson go to French Lick. 18 Quentin tries to convince his father of incest Less than Less than 1 19 Quentin home for Christmas. December Quarrel with Spoade Less than 1 21 Caddy s wedding Late April Less than 1 announcement. 22 Quentin meets Herbert Head He talks to Caddy. 23 Eve of Caddy s wedding. April Caddy s wedding. April The table above bears out the following points: 1. It is in this section that Faulkner deploys the most complex of his techniques of presenting subjective time. 2. The now-story is structured as continuous and linear action from morning till evening. 3. Experiences in the present frequently recall events from the past. Like Aeschylus s Orestes, Quentin is haunted by the furies of the past. He has no escape except through suicide. 4. The memory is not evoked descriptively as scenes but are in the nature of allusions. 5. This section uses the repetitive analepsis most.

29 The largest number of analepses deals with Caddy s sexual promiscuity and its consequences. Her encounter with Dalton Ames is recalled 24 times. Quentin s meeting with Ames is repeated 26 times, the largest number of analepses. Other analepses are the events on the eve of Caddy s wedding (21) Caddy s accusation of Quentin spying on her (6 times) and Benjy s dismay at Caddy s loss of virginity (6 times). This highlights the sexual theme more than anything else does. Caddy is thus present by her absence. This applies to both Benjy and Quentin. Time for them is loss, which is expressed in terms of a harping back to the past. Quentin s flawed sense of time is indicated in several ways, the starting point of it is recalled in a crucial though only-once-narrated external analepsis. Compson s gift of the watch to the son I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it (S F 59). The more he tries to escape from or annihilate time the more he gets trapped in it. Repeated references to watches and clocks in this section suggest this.

30 c.2. Jason s Section No Events in Chronological order TABLE 5 Reminisced Events Jason s Section Date of event No of analepses 1 Caddy kissing a boy Proportion of text used 2 Benjy chases girl and hit by Mr. Burgess. May Less than 1 3 Adoption of baby Quentin Death and Funeral of Compson Caddy s visit home Lorraine Sometime before April Less than 1 In the Appendix the author introduces Jason as the first sane Compson since before Culloden, (S F 247) thus linking him historically with the founder of the Compson family. Jason is the embodiment of the future, as Brooks observes: if the lack of a future entails a lack of freedom for both Benjy, who is little more than an animal, and for Quentin, who cannot look at the future, Jason at least, with his rejection of the past and his constant gaze into the future, ought, one might suppose, to have complete freedom. But Jason, by insisting on seeing time only with regard to something to be done, is incapable of any real living.... Jason is so committed to the future that he is almost as enslaved as are his brothers. (330) Jason s section also fills up certain gaps in the previous sections going over some events mentioned in the previous sections. For example, the episode of Luster s

31 206 looking for the lost quarter on the golf course (in Benjy s section) is explained by the episode where Frony provides a quarter to her son for the show on Saturday night, following Jason s destruction of the free tickets (Jason s section) which Luster begged for. Comparing the frequency of the analepses in the three sections narrated by the Compson brothers and the number and nature of the episodes described, we notice that Jason is the least bothered about the past. Jason s analepses are lengthy and descriptive, incorporating features of the scene that slows down the pace of the nowstory. The Lorraine episode is only mentioned in passing (183 84) and is useful only in enhancing Jason s callous treatment of women in general. The adoption of Baby Quentin and Mr.Comspon s funeral and allied events relating to Caddy ( ) appear together as part of one lengthy analeptical unit. They are linked by Mrs. Compson s whining phrase thank God you are not a Compson except in name, because you are all I have left now, you and uncle Maury (147, 150). The two events happen over a period of one year time span. In the long section that recalls the arrival of baby Quentin in the house and the events surrounding Compson s funeral, the analepsis begins with the eve of Compson s funeral and then goes further back (an analepsis within analepsis) to the arrival of the baby. The reason for Jason s recall is that both these events happened on the same date (26th of the month). After describing the events in the house on the infant s arrival, the narrator returns to the funeral and continues to narrate the burial and the encounter with Caddy now returned home to attend the funeral and see her child. The passage relating to Caddy s visit is arguably two or three separate episodes divided by a one-year period. Jason s refusal and cold-blooded bargain for money in exchange for seeing her child is countered by

32 207 Caddy with the help of Dilsey by sneaking a visit to the house in Jason s absence another time (S F 155). However, Jason senses it by the sign of Benjy s bellowing that evening when he returns home. So the next time I told her that if she tried Dilsey again, Mother was going to fire Dilsey and send Ben to Jackson and take Quentin and go away ( 156), reports Jason. This must be a reference to the third meeting after Compson s death. Jason treats time the same way he treats money, measuring and counting and trying to get ahead by cold calculation, becoming the most dehumanized character in the process. The analeptical passages in the section are detailed enough for the reader to understand. None of them except the adoption of baby Quentin and the events following Compson s death link up with the analepses in the previous sections. These events are important to Jason because they involve money. In the second event Jason successfully extracts money out of Caddy who has come to see her child Quentin under his protection c.3. Benjy s Section Faulkner describes Benjy as one who could not remember his sister but only the loss of her (S F 249). In the fabula, Benjy s section follows Quentin s. It is Holy Saturday. All the decisive events are narrated in Benjy s section, and returned to in the later sections. Centrally located in the chronological order, it is divided into 99 narrative segments, which merge into one another by the principle of free association without chronological sequencing. Benjy s consciousness of loss is highlighted through his thoughts. In terms of temporality, the different fragments can be classified into the past and the present. The proportion is as follows The past segments 67 The Present 32