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Humanities—Faulkner and Morrison

Research Paper June 6, 2014

John Brandt

Nihilism Verses Christianity in Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury

“I Decline to accept the end of man” (Faulkner’s Nobel Prize

Speech 1950)

“What has always made the state a hell on earth has beenprecisely that man has tried to make it heaven.” FriedrichHolderlin

In the decades old argument of whether Faulkner intended to

leave the reader with a Christian message of hope and redemption

in The Sound and The Fury or whether the novel is a modernist

portrait of suicidal nihilism played out on the battlefield of

earth, we must ask ourselves the age old philosophical question

of “what is the meaning of life,” and then decide if there is

hope for humankind, a species marred by death and destruction,

seemingly caught in an earthly purgatory. While some critics

suggest that the novel ends on a hopeful note with Dilsey’s visit

to church on Easter Sunday, others argue that the closure, in

light of the overwhelming negativity and disintegration of the

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Compson family in the majority of the novel, is essentially

nihilistic.

Up to the point of a possible Christian ending to the novel

which is the chapter on Dilsey during Easter Sunday, April 8th

1928, we are exposed to Mr. Compson’s negative view of life, his

nihilism if you will, the selfish Mrs. Compson who wallows in

self-pity, the romantic escapades of Caddy and her daughter

Quentin, the Harvard bound Quentin who is pushed to suicide by

his father’s belief in “the reducto absurdum of all human

experience,” Jason’s mad desire for wealth, and Benjy the idiot’s

desire for orderliness expressed by his bellowing when his

routine is altered.

This chapter according to the critics begins the argument of

whether Dilsey’s journey to Nigger-Hollow with Benjy and Frony to

attend Easter services constitutes a Christian closure to the

tragedy of the Compson family, or whether the final chapter

concerning Benjy and Luster’s trip to the cemetery reinforces the

nihilistic activity which takes place in the majority of the

novel. We must ask ourselves then whether Dilsey’s Easter

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journey, buttressed by the Reverend Shegog’s sermon, provides us

with Christian closure, or whether it was an Easter marked by

events which make a mockery of Christian hope and faith, allowing

the novel to end with the notion that life is meaningless,

thereby supporting the “nihilistic” closure theory.

Evelyn Scott Portrays Dilsey as a Strong Moral Character (1929)

Beginning with Evelyn Scott’s 1929 review of The Sound and the

Fury we can begin our examination of the “nihilism verses

Christian” closure argument in order to decide whether the novel

contains an underlying theme of hope. In this article Scott

cautions researchers against speculation when trying to decipher

the writing of Faulkner, thereby allowing for “a body of real

criticism” sans speculation. In discussing the Dilsey chapter of

The Sound and the Fury, the few pages Faulkner uses to describe

Dilsey’s visit to the church with Frony and Benjy, Scott says

that Dilsey, the old colored woman…provides the beauty of

coherence against the background of struggling choice.” For Scott

Dilsey “isn’t searching for a soul…she is the soul.” She is, to

quote, “the conscious human accepting the limitations of herself,

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the iron boundaries of circumstance, and still, to the best of

her ability, achieving a holy compromise…” (Scott 8-9).

Evelyn Scott, then, is perhaps the first one to argue that

Dilsey did in fact offer Christian hope in that last episode

telling of the crumbling Compson family. In her review of the

book she praises Dilsey as being “stoic as some immemorial

carving of heroism…which makes of her life something whole, while

her ‘white folks’ accept their fragmentary state, disintegrate”

(Scott 9). Scott ends by saying that Dilsey “recovers for us the

spirit of tragedy which the patter of cynicism has often made

seen lost.” In other words she is saying that Dilsey offers hope

for a better world in spite of the pattern of cynicism displayed

in the disintegration of the Compson family, and she bolsters her

theory by comparing Benjy to a Saint, comparing him to “Adam,

with all he remembers in the garden and one foot in hell on

earth” (Scott 7).

Sumner Powell supports the Christian closure ending.

Jumping twenty years ahead then, around the time that Faulkner

gave his Nobel Prize speech, let us examine Sumner Powell’s essay

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titled Dilsey’s Easter Conversion. And it is here that Evelyn Scott’s

words of caution concerning speculation in deciphering Faulkner’s

novels come into play. First of all no one doubts that Dilsey was

a Christian, and hence there was no need for a conversion, the

real argument being that of Christian closure to the novel or the

inherent meaninglessness of life put forth in the majority of the

novel. Powell argues that “the threads of order and history are

drawn together, significantly on Easter Sunday,” with Dilsey’s

character offering hope for resurrection. This is supported by

Dilsey’s statement to Caddy that “she knows her name is “Dilsey”

because it has long been “writ out” in the Lord’s Book, to be

read by the angels” (Powell 213).

But this Christian “leap of faith” argument, so-called by

philosophers, is questioned by researchers who believe that it

doesn’t nullify the nihilistic thread that runs throughout the

firsts sections of the novel, and that the thread reoccurs in the

chapter following Dilsey’s Easter Sunday experience. If Dilsey,

as Powell states, is caught in “historic continuum,” then she is

in the same existential trap as the Compson family, as evidenced

by the clock on the kitchen wall which has only one hand. She

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cannot see through time, and her life is ordered so that the past

is combined with the present, and she is focused on her loyalty

to the Compson family. It would seem then that her only way out

is the Christian hope and redemption that she experiences in her

Easter Sunday church visit, and that Powell’s belief that her

quote, “I see de beginning, en now I sees de ending…I seed de

first and the last,” was referring not only to the demise of the

Compson family, but also a Biblical allusion which was a common

Faulkner technique, which provided her with a way out of the

trap.

Yes “the ticking of the clock” is combined with “the harsh

jangling tones” of Jason who is cursing the name of God and Mrs.

Compson who is shouting orders to Dilsey. And Dilsey’s

exasperation: “But on Sunday morning, in my own house…when I’ve

tried so hard to raise them Christians,” again reinforces the

failure of the Christian hope, and in fact makes a mockery of it

(Powell 214). Powell then goes on to state that Dilsey, a pillar

of faith who stands “against this wreckage,” anoints Benjy a

Saint, and takes him to church in spite of the what people might

think, and even sees the ragged and ugly preacher as a blessing

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as he give her a vision of a hope for a better life in a promised

land.

In the closing arguments of the essay then we are told that

the Negro congregation and Reverend Shegog’s sermon represented

Faulkner’s belief that there is a “necessity for a realization of

history and the necessity of an order to life.” And thus Dilsey,

aware of this conundrum, can only hope and cry out, “Dis long

time, O Jesus…Dis long time,” and “she has the fortitude to bear

the incongruities and the insults of the Compson’s, realizing

that there can be no order for this family (Powell 214). Powell

makes the Christian Dilsey the central character of the novel,

the bulwark against historical calamity, and he uses Faulkner’s

Biblical allusions to support his claim for a Christian ending.

In the last scene Powell says that the Faulkner restores a sense

of order as Benjy’s mind is calmed when Luster turns the carriage

back to the right of the statue, and he relates this to the fact

that Benjy’s name means “the son of my right hand,” another claim

to support the message of Christian closure.

Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel Prize speech: Tribute to the Human Spirit.

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In a quote regarding Faulkner speech in Stockholm Richard

Ellmann said that Faulkner wanted to set the record straight

regarding “the misrepresentation of his work as pessimistic.”

Before we continue on then with the pessimistic closure argument

verses the Christian closure argument, let us look at what

Faulkner said in that speech, one of the few he ever gave. In

this short speech he says that “the problems of the human heart

in conflict with itself” offer to key to hope and that we must

not allow fear to cloud “the old verities and truths of the

heart, the universal truths…love, honor and pity and pride and

compassion.” He states that without these truths “any story is

ephemeral and doomed…”

So here we can detect that he is offering a glimmer of human

hope, which can be seen in Dilsey’s Easter visit and that by

portraying the human tragedy of the Compson family he is urging

us to look into our hearts to find values and hope for a better

world. So the subtle message of The Sound and the Fury may be that in

witnessing the disintegration of the Compson family the reader is

urged to look into the subtleties of the human heart to

understand and recapture universal human values. This is why he

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stated, “I refuse to accept the end of man,” the state of the

world in 1950 notwithstanding, and said that “man is immortal…

and that he will endure and prevail…because he has a soul, a

spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Hagopian Deconstructs the Christian Closure Argument (1982)

Given these thoughts then, we return to the view concerning

Dilsey’s supposed Christian conversion which is put forth by John

V. Hagopian. In his essay he argues that the overwhelming

negativity of the novel is not overcome by Dilsey’s visit to

church, and that furthermore the negativity and cynicism is

reinforced in the final scene when Luster turns left around the

Confederate statue which sends Benjy into a meaningless rage.

Hagopian says that the best way to discern the meaning of a

writer’s intentions is to look at his “technique.” He points to

“closure” as the key “by which the action is rounded off and

rendered whole and the meaning fully embodied, and that an

analysis of closure is one of the most economical ways of

reaching an understanding of the total form of a work.”

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Hagopian then points out that the final chapter of The Sound

and the Fury has four distinct parts: “a prologue and three

distinct actions” reflecting “motifs” that take place in the

prologue. He further states that the “three movements

recapitulate themes and motifs of the first three chapters---the

Quentin, Jason and Benjy sections…and each ends on a semblance of

closure” (Hagopian 46-48). Thus we have the prologue, “Dawn to

9:30 a.m.” in the Compson home, i.e. Dilsey fixing breakfast,

followed by the three actions foreshadowing closure: Dilsey’s

trip to church, the possible Christian ending, Jason’s journey in

socio-economic madness foreshadowing a socio-economic ending, and

the third possible ending where Benjy erupts in the carriage,

thereby, as Hagopian says, nullifying the first two closures,

which he says are false, and placing the entire novel in a

“nihilistic” panorama of negativity.

In analyzing the last chapter Hagopian deconstructs the

events that critics claim foreshadow a Christian interpretation

of hope and redemption in The Sound and the Fury by comparing Dilsey’s

sense of order with the disorder that encompasses her. He begins

by noting that Dilsey’s church clothes of “colour regal and

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moribund” are nullified by “the border of mangy and anonymous

fur,” and that…Dilsey’s days or the years had consumed her body,

leaving only a ruin.” This is followed by the terrible screaming

of the jaybirds that swooped down on the startled church-goers

causing Luster to order them back to hell, the commotion caused

by Mrs. Compson demands on Dilsey while she is trying to fix

breakfast, and Jason’s anger at finding his window broken and

Quentin gone, making Dilsey’s Easter appear to have been invaded

by “hellish forces.” Hagopian then states that when Mrs. Compson

informs him that the Negroes have gone to church he mistakenly

assumes she means the carnival, and Jason becomes a malevolent

“man in motion,” throwing Dilsey’s order into disorder and making

a “mockery of the rituals of Easter” (49).

Hagopian then makes his argument that Faulker abandons the

Christian motif by taking us back to the episode of April 6, 1928

(chapter 3), and relating it to the final scene with Benjy and

Luster at the Confederate Statue. He says that this earlier motif

with Benjy’s “slow bellowing sound, meaningless and sustained”

when he gets near the golf course and hears the word Caddy

reinforces the scene at the statue, where Benjy is once again

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thrown into disarray until Luster drives to the right of the

statue. He make the claim that the novel ends in a meaningless

and pessimistic manner as seen in Luster’s answer when Dilsey’s

asks what Benjy is bellowing about and Luster replies, “I ain’t

lying, ask Benjy if I is.” Hagopian asserts that “Benjy can never

affirm or deny anything: he can only be, and his being is

nothingness (49).

Thus he sets the novel up as a meaningless journey through a

chaotic universe, symbolized by the frenzy of Easter morning in

the Compson house; the church bells ringing in accord with

Dilsey’s exit from the house in “symbolic theological and royal

colors,” contrasted with Jason’s erratic behavior, Benjy’s loud

bellowing, the screaming of the Jaybirds as they swoop down: “all

time and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of

the planets.” (50). Further then he contrasts the slow movement

of the Negroes to church and the Reverend Shegog’s heavenly

laments with Jason’s burst of fury when he imagines himself

fighting both the legions of heaven and hell, as he charges into

the carnival, which he mistakenly thought was the church, to

accost Miss Quentin.

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Hence we have order and disorder, or as Hagopian says, “A kind

of dissonant counterpoint; “the first two movements toward

closures 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; Dilsey to and from church and

Jason to and from the carnival (50). Commenting then on these two

contrasting passages, Hagopian comes to the gist of his argument

for nihilistic closure; he argues that Faulkner abandoned the

Christian closure interpretation by expounding on “the irony of

Dilsey’s faith in the Christian message of Reverend Shegog…and

the irony of her certainty that she can see through the disorder

of time…” (51). In other words Dilsey’s realizes that the Compson

bloodline, “which ain’t got de milk en de dew of the old

salvation,” has come to an end without redemption.

Further, Hagopian says, this argument for Christian closure,

which he says is nullified by Dilsey’s Christian irony, is

further nullified by Quentin’s suicide after he realizes that he

is “unable to prove false his father’s nihilistic

pronouncements…” In a profound statement of philosophy he then

expounds on the nature of time: “just as surely as Quentin’s

watch without hands, Dilsey’s broken kitchen clock confirms Mr.

Compson’s observation that “Christ was not crucified: he was worn

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away by a minute clicking of little wheels” (51). So we have the

first argument against Christian closure; Dilsey’s ironic belief

that the Compson bloodline has decayed beyond repair and

Quentin’s realization that life is meaningless and that he should

take himself out of time by committing suicide.

The second possible argument for closure Hagopian puts forth

is the economic one and it is exemplified by “Jason’s pursuit of

his niece and his money,” and Hagopian compares this scene to a

scene in The Great Gatsby where the all-seeing eye of the Mottson

billboard is looking down on Jason. He states that Faulkner

derived this idea from “the degenerate technological God

manifested by Fitzgerald’s Dr. T. J. Eckleburg (51). Thus, he

says, the novel could have ended here with Jason speeding around

“in a power-driven machine, symbolic of the money-drives of the

industrial age…the final perspective being a “socio-economic one,

evoking the thirty pieces of silver rather than the milk and dew

of the old salvation. But then Hagopian states, Faulker “bends

the novel back to the beginning…the terms of closure being

neither Christian nor socio-economic…but instead nihilistic. It

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is, as he says, the reducto absurdum of the experience of Easter

Sunday and the Easter week-end (51-3).

Castille Resurrects the Christian Closure Argument… (1992)

In Philip Dubuisson Castille essay “Dilsey’s Easter

Conversion in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury” he notes that

the interpretations have ranged from “Christian spirituality to

existential nothingness,” then offers his opinion in support of

Dilsey’s spiritual renewal as a proper closure to the novel “as

the Reverend Shegog’s sermon revitalizes her faith in the

Christian God…and she begins to distance herself from the

Compson’s and to reaffirm her membership in her African-American

family.” The powerful sermon given by Reverend Shegog, he

states, displays Faulkner’s use of the “modern mythical method”

in the voice of the Christian Holy Week to create the structure

of The Sound and the Fury, thereby making the Reverend Shegog’s

sermon a “masterpiece of showmanship…whose exegesis combines

material from Christian, Hebraic, and Near Eastern sources” in

his passionate portrayal of the Passion week. This he says allows

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“Dilsey to break free from the Compson’s and to renounce her

years of resignation and denial” (Dubuisson 423-24).

Thus in rebuttal to Hagopian’s assertion that the Compson’s

existential plight was universal and portrayed mankind in a

hopeless struggle for redemption, we have a positive view, which

fits into Faulkner’s ideas that man should look to the troubles

within human heart to create a more hopeful outlook. Dubuisson

points out that Faulkner “combines myth with Biblical allusions”

for organizational structure, and that in fact the four chapters

of The Sound and the Fury can be compared to the four Gospel

narratives concerning the Passion Week. This structural technique

he points out was derived from Faulkner’s reading of The Golden

Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, which says that the “Christian

Easter story derives from the Near Eastern springtime practice of

worshipping “dying and reviving gods” (425).

Dubuisson notes that Faulkner was impressed by the pagan

origins of religion, and so impressed with Frazier’s The Golden

Bough… that he named his house Rowan Oak, the name of the tree on

which the “golden bough” grew, and that the house was built by an

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Irishman named Robert B. Shegog, and that these links underlie

the novel’s Easter service (426). The main point of this argument

is that Faulkner used this idea of cult imagery in the Dilsey

section of the novel “to dramatize anew the ancient mystery of

springtime resurrection,” and that by doing this he offers not

necessarily a Christian closure, but moreover a hope through

Shegog’s sermon that “the past is transfigured and time begins

again,” and offering the reader the vision that “existence is no

longer a curse or affliction but a means of revelation and

transformation.” Dubuisson says finally that Faulkner uses

“metaphors for the exalted moment when spiritual discovery

transcends time, as evidenced by his poetic undertaking in Vision

in spring (427).

In summary then Dubuisson says that Dilsey’s Easter conversion

stirred by Shegog’s use of the mythical “death and rebirth” cycle

causes her to not only give up hope on the Compson’s, liberating

herself from the struggle to save them, but also causes her to

overcome the years of neglect that she has shown her family in

favor of the Compson’s, thereby taking her back to her African-

American roots. As Dilsey returns from church and views the

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“square, paintless house with its rotting portico” she realizes

that the Compson’s have been “swept away on the dark flood,” and

then suddenly she understands the idea of “self-transcendence.”

The message we get from Shegog’s sermon Dubuisson tells us is

“the mystery of rebirth calls upon us personally to rise up from

deep hurt and hopelessness to start over,” and that this fits in

perfectly with Faulkner’s attempt to “stress the transforming

presence of the divine in the human,” as expressed in Dilsey’s

Easter conversion” (430-31).

In this sharp rebuttal of Hagopian’s nihilistic view of The

Sound and the Fury then we witness the Pagan cycles of death and

rebirth blended in with the Christian episodes of Passion Week,

and we see that Faulkner used the Pagan metaphors to support his

allusions to Christianity, keeping in mind Cleanth Brooks’ notion

“that Faulkner makes no claim in The Sound and the Fury for

Christianity, ‘one way or another.’ (430). Yet this hope for a

resurrection of the human heart, a call to through off evil and

be born again in Spring, does not nullify the negativity in the

crux of The Sound and Fury.

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We come to the realization then that nothing is black and

white and that it is not so easy to block out the past and move

forward into the future or to become “supermen,” as Nietzsche

exhorted us to do. But let us delve a bit further into how we can

maintain hope when values fail, and how we can resurrect those

values through the idea of “self-transcendence,” which seems to

be the underlying theme of The Sound and Fury.

Marco Abel: Nietzsche and the idea of Structureless Reality in

The Sound and the Fury (1995)

In his brilliant analysis of The Sound and the Fury titled “One

Goal is Still Lacking: The Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s

Philosophy on William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury,” Marco Abel

expands on the modernist notion that life is meaningless and the

manner in which Faulkner expressed the futility of human

experience by placing his characters in a nihilistic time-trap

from which they all struggled to escape. Nietzsche’s idea of

course would be to escape the trap through self-realization,

thereby bringing the idea of “the superman” into play. This would

mean that characters such as Jason, Quentin, Caddy, and Mr.

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Compson would somehow overcome the past and begin to live in the

present, regaining a sense of structured form.

To begin with Abel resurrects the mythical Apollonian-

Dionysian dichotomy and applies it to The Sound and the Fury, and

ironically these terms can be applied to the turmoil going on in

Quentin’s mind. The Apollonian concept is the idea of logical

thinking while the Dionysian concept represents chaos and

darkness. In Dionysian theory emotions and instincts are the

rule, and Quentin is definitely ruled by his emotional feelings

for his sister Caddy, and thus his life is chaos. If Apollo is

the god of the Sun, then there is no sunlight for Quentin, as

well as the rest of the characters in the novel. But Abel’s

argument is that Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy believed that the

two opposites, Apollo and Dionysius, could be synthesized, using

the technique of paradox, by “seeing them as two sides of the

same coin, separated and opposed, yet unified by the result of

their struggle with each other (Abel 39).

In practical terms then Nietzsche is talking about the “human

condition,” and Abel tells us that this is precisely what

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Faulkner was expounding on in The Sound and the Fury. And since

Abel’s argument is that Nietzsche’s philosophy might offer hope

for Faulkner’s characters, the human race moreover, which is

being boiled in a cauldron of Apollonian-Dionysian brew, let us

follow the trail to discern whether there is a way out of the

existential human trap. Abel quotes John B. Foster from pages 86

and 87 in Heirs to Dionysius to expand on Nietzsche’s belief that the

Christian value system could no longer provide meaning to the

paradox of existence, and that “the situation of nihilism…appears

as soon as the system that provides some meaning collapses.” When

this happens then, “people confront the essential chaos of the

universe from which all cultural meaning has disappeared, and

they experience a total loss of coherence” (39).

Thus we have The Sound and the Fury in a nutshell: Faulker is

lamenting on the sorry state of the human condition and is

challenging us to find a way out of the trap. And in league with

Nietzsche Faulkner is telling us that Christianity is no long

offering a coherent set of values, and according to Abel, if

these values are a failure then we must confront Nietzsche’s

belief, as expressed so well through Faulker, that “Christianity,

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the dominant form-giving power in Western civilization, is in

itself a nihilistic system” (Abel 39). And with these thoughts in

mind a poem by Friedrich Holderlin comes to mind:

“I can think of no people more fragmented…Craftsmen you see, butno humans, thinkers, but no humans, priests, but no humans, lordsand servants, boys and established peoples but no humans—is thisnot like a battlefield, where hands and arms and all limbs liechaotically in pieces, while the spilled blood of life runs intothe sand?”

And what is Nietzsche’s solution to mop up the blood in the sand

that was splattered by Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury? Abel tells

us that solving the “paradox of nihilism” is an age old problem

and that Nietzsche approached the problem with terms such as the

“superman, i.e. overman, eternal Recurrence, and will to power,”

terms “that gave names to the philosopher’s vision of how

humankind could achieve reconciliation in a chaotic world” (Abel

40).

Starting with Nietzsche’s notion that “God is dead” Abel

expands on the notion of “eternal repetition,” an allusion to the

Compson families plight, and it can easily be applied to Jason’s

obsession with money, Mr. Compson’s “time-phobia” which he passes

on to Quentin, Benjy’s desire to have everything in order, and

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Dilsey’s realization that she is caught in purgatory. Abel then

states that Nietzsche’s solution to end the “recurrence” is to

focus on the present…denying any hope for transcendence or an

after-life,” in order to overcome the nihilistic situation of contemporary

existence by means of action in order to avoid becoming trapped in nothingness

forever” (Abel 41).

Be this a truism then, we can see that Faulkner deliberately

gave us “unstructured reality” in The Sound and the Fury in order to

urge mankind to seek a high cultural structure, one that deals

with the reality of the present. And we can take Dilsey’s “will

to overcome” and add this to the fact that Faulkner comes back

twenty-eight years later to tell us that the Compson family

members did in fact escape the trap. And while these notions take

the edge off of Hagopian’s nihilistic view of the novel, it

leaves us with the paradox that nothing is black and white.

Able, however, see the answer in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: we

“since we cannot create a god…we could instead create the

overman” and what we “have called the world, that shall be

created only by [us]: [our] reason, [our] image, [our] love shall

thus be realized” (41).

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And this fits in nicely with what Faulkner said in his Nobel

Prize Speech in which he urged us “to create out of the human

spirit something which did not exist before.” But continuing with

the similarities between the thinking of Faulkner and Nietzsche,

Abel points out that “Nietzschean philosophy is marked by its

inherent lack of structure, the abundant use of paradoxes, and a

general break with traditions…,” and thus we uncover a valuable

technique used by Faulkner and we can delve into the quagmire of

modernism. (42).

Able talks about how the structured Victorian novel gave way

to realism and psychology, and how Nietzsche used his philosophy

to explain “rapidly vanishing social orders,” and he quotes

Kartiganer to state that “Nietzsche’s writing style and the

content of his books are a “celebration of the collapse of

structure (42). And if we look at Quentin’s state of mind, his

disability being the “loss of order and traditions,” we can begin

to understand the thinking of Nietzsche and its effect on the

writing of Faulkner as it relates to modernism, and we can better

understand the meaning of following excerpt from King (138-142)

given to us by Abel:

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…the German philosopher [Nietzsche] looks permanently forward, into the dark future, he not only stands in a tradition of modernthought, but has initiated what is now known as “existentialism,”which considers appeals to the past to justify actions (or inactions) as cowardly self-exculpation, as what [Jean Paul] Sartre called ‘bad faith’ (Able 42).

Staying with the idea of the “collapse of structure” and

“characters consciously or unconsciously haunted by their

nihilistic beliefs,” Able notes that the Spirit of Nietzsche’s

nihilistic thought haunts the writing of Ernest Hemingway and F.

Scott Fitzgerald, but that the idea of “meaninglessness” is most

pronounced in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and he reaffirms

Hagopian’s assertion that “the very structure of the novel gives

sufficient reason to interpret the end, and therefore the whole

story, as pessimistic and nihilistic.” But he also notes that

Hagopian did not look at Nietzsche’s thoughts on how to escape

the existential trap (Able 42).

Able reiterates Quentin’s way out, that of “Non fui. Sum.

Fui. Non sum,” i.e. I wasn’t. I am. I was. I’m not,” as written

by Faulkner and it is from these words and the life of Quentin

that we can understand how Nietzsche, the eternal Schopenhauer

oriented pessimist, provided a way out of a meaningless world,

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void of traditional values. “By a re-establishment of

relationships through the will to power;” and no doubt Faulkner

was challenging the reader to do exactly this, precisely because

his characters were “characterized by antipathies, envy, hatred,

and the absence of love.” (Able 47-48). What we are left with

then is Nietzsche’s thoughts on the Epicurean paradox:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is no omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence come evil? Is he neitherable or willing? They why call him God?

Faulkner’s brilliant portrayal of the Compson family as they

traverse a maze of existential turmoil no doubt causes us to ask

these questions, and because of this involvement, as Able says,

“Faulkner shows that he is one of the true modernist writers,”

since he forces us to deconstruct and rebuild the disassembled

characters. (Able 48). The laments of Macbeth, notwithstanding

then, how can we sum up Faulkner’s attempt to “give form to a

structureless reality” and the ensuing arguments of whether The

Sound and the Fury provides us with an episode of “suicidal

nihilism” through the thoughts and actions of Quentin and his

father, or whether Dilsey’s Easter journey leaves us with hope

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for a better world through redemption and the hope for an

afterlife in heaven?

Abel’s conclusion is to take Nietzsche’s advice and to

recognize that “nihilism can be overcome by recognizing the

present state of the human condition…to escape the fangs of

dreary eternal recurrence,” which was exactly what Faulkner was

urging us to do. And he notes that Faulkner did indeed come back

seventeen years later to tell us that the Compson family did live

on and that “they have found their place in our culture, in our

heads, and in our hearts…” (Able 49).

And thus in summation to this Nihilism verses Christianity

argument for closure in The Sound and the Fury we must admit that

nothing is black and white, and that even if the novel is largely

nihilistic Faulkner left us with an underlying exhortation to

“look into the problems of the human heart…and to create out of

the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist

before.” Faulkner’s lamentations then fit in perfectly with the

thoughts of Friedrich Holderlin, and I can think of no better way

to close this argument, at least for the moment, than by

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admitting: Wir sind nichts; was wir sachen ist alles. (We are

nothing, what we search for is everything).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Castille, Philip Dubuisson. “Dilsey’s Easter Conversion in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.” Studies in the Novel 24.4 (1992): 423. Academic Research Elite. Ebscohost. Web. 22 May 2014.

Faulkner, William. (1950) Nobel Prize Speech. Retrieved from http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/faulkner/faulkner/.html

Hagopian, John V. “Nihilism in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.” Ed. Arthur F. Kinney. Hall, (1982): 197-206. Proquest. Web. 24 June 2014.

Marco, Abel. “Our Goal is Still Lacking: The Influence of Nietzsche’s Philosophy on William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.” South Atlantic Review 60. 4 (1995): 35-31. Jstor. Web. 18 May 2014.

Powell, Sumner. “William Faulkner Celebrates Easter, 1928.” Perspectives on Faulkner 2.4 (1949): 195-218.

Scott Evelyn. (1929) On William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. New York. Retrieved from http://www.drc.usask.ca/projects/faulkner/main/criticism/e_scott.html

Apollonian and Dionysian: Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org

After Fifty Years by William Faulkner: The Poetry Foundation.html

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