Technique and Story Telling

Faulkner’s use of the stream of consciousness technique enhanced the telling of the Compson family’s tragic tale. The narrating (if steam of consciousness is considered “narrating”) of the family’s destruction is presented through multiple perspectives and through the broken flow of thoughts. The disjointed story telling mirrors the disjointed Compson family. Faulkner forces us to be literary detectives and piece together the fragments of the family puzzle. Faulkner keeps us engaged by planting clues in our scavenger hunt. Through the process of collecting ideas, deciphering clues, and completing the jigsaw puzzle that is The Sound and the Fury, we are given a unique perspective into the family’s demise.

Benjy’s steam of consciousness creates a broken path for the reader to follow. When I started reading the novel my own stream of consciousness kept connecting Benjy to Christopher Boone, the autistic child from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. However, further into the novel I realized Benjy was much harder to understand than Boone. Perhaps because we are inside the mind of Benjy, meaning we experience his thoughts in real time--unlike with Chris Boone. Faulkner’s exploration of the human psyche’s leaping thoughts makes the novel more challenging and consequently more compelling. If the Compson family’s struggle were told as a conventional story, the effect would be completely different. Because we are inside Benjy’s mind, we feel his emotions and experience the story on a personal level—a level that could not be achieved through say an omniscient narrator.

A scene that really demonstrated this emotional connection was when Benjy wanted Caddy to wash herself to rid her of the deeds she’s committed (an allusion to Lady Macbeth of course). Benjy pushes Caddy into the bathroom, but instead of washing, Caddy cowers against the wall. She has just lost her virginity, and therefore cannot wash away this action like she had previously done. The violent scene is dramatic with flowing tears and yelling. Through Benjy’s perspective we see his pain as well as Caddy’s. Faulkner gives us enough of the scene to paint a picture in our mind of what happened. However, this picture is abstract—like splatters of a scene against a murky canvas. The rest of the painting is to be painted in later.

Quentin’s narration on June 2nd, 1910 is another great example of how the technique of steam of consciousness enhances the story. Our understanding of Quentin comes from memory fragments and his consciousness on the day of his suicide. Faulkner gives subtle, but later obvious hints, about Quentin’s strange actions. Quentin’s obsession with time, his packing of clothes, and his writing of letters-to-be-mailed-tomorrow are all clear signs that he has decided to commit suicide. Towards the end of this section, all marks of punctuation, grammatical rules, and even spelling are disregarded. This deterioration of logical sentence formation is indicative of Quentin’s state of mind: that of a suicidal man who no longer cares for trivial things or the rational of grammar.

Overall, Faulkner’s use of steam of consciousness may have been unconventional. However, it proves essential to the telling of the Compson’s tale. The coupling of unique perspectives, broken bits of memory, and interconnected thoughts create a fuzzy mental image of what exactly happened. While there are still two more sections to explore, the readers are well on their way to (hopefully) understanding the complete story. Faulkner keeps us attentive and engaged throughout this process.
(573)

Invocation of the Muse

To Wilde, my Muse:




Why post a portrait of Oscar Wilde?

Here is my reasoning:
By posting this rather large image of Wilde, my blog will be infused with his enigmatic greatness. I’m hoping that Wilde’s portrait (like the picture of Dorian Gray) will have an opposite, but equal effect on my blog: Wilde's soul will be reflected in my blog. And if not, hopefully it just seasons my writing with a little Wilde spice.

Fun Wilde fact of the week: As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of gross indecency. (source Wiki)

Why am I not surprised?

"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."

The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of the best novels I have ever read. Unfortunetly, I discovered that it is Oscar Wilde’s only novel. His epigrams and philosophical comments on life are fascinating. I can only imagine how a conversation with Wilde would have been. I imagine the chaos of Flail’s philosophy class nicely organized into beautiful prose. A hard task indeed.

Being an artist myself, I was intrigued most by the preface. Wilde defines art and the artist by telling us what art and who the artist is not. I actually had to reread the last line (“All art is quite useless.”) because I didn’t make the connection to the previous paragraph. Wilde says, “…The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.” I was more comforted after I understood this statement. At first I didn’t understand the importance of the preface. But after reading most of the novel, some of Wilde’s statements really resonate through The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Wilde says, “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” Since the portrait is hidden in a secluded room, Dorian is the only man who can see the portrait changing. In the special case of Dorian, the art literally reflects the spectator’s soul. The premise of the story is that the soul of Dorian Gray is supernaturally emulated in Dorian’s portrait. And through the novel Gray’s sense of morality shrivels and deteriorates. While he remains flawlessly beautiful and angelic on the outside, Dorian’s soul is corrupted and ugly. But Dorian’s portrait does not simply become hideous. It expresses the wickedness of Dorian’s soul. Every ugly, immoral act is reflect in his eyes, his smile, and his face. It is one thing to be ugly on the surface, but another to be ugly within.

Basil Hallward’s masterpiece is the portrait of Dorian. In the beginning, Basil does not want the world to see this portrait because “there is too much of myself in the thing…too much of myself!” (13). Dorian also feels that the portrait is “part of myself” (26). Could it be that Basil’s intense admiration of Dorian actually allowed the artist to capture Gray’s soul in his artwork? Wilde says in the Preface, “Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.” At first Dorian was the embodiment of innocence and virtue. These qualities first attracted Basil to Dorian. However, Basil’s friend Lord Henry Wotton infuses Dorian with the thought that beauty and youth are only ephemeral. The thought that one day he might be old and ugly consumed Dorian and disturbed him. In a moment of despair, Dorian screams, “…If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that--for that--I would give everything…I would give my soul for that!” (25). He did.

My question is what was Wilde trying to convey through this exchange of souls? The portrait contradicts the theory that art and morality are disjointed. The theory, paraphrased, states that if art is intended to have a moral purpose, it is no longer art for art’s sake: It is propaganda for a certain belief. However, the portrait of Dorian Gray, is the reflection of his moral soul. (581)

I still have a lot of exploring to do with this novel. I am thinking about writing my essay on morality and art. Do you have any ideas for it Mr. Coon?