A Freudian Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of The Sound And The Fury

William Faulkner, one of the greatest American novelists, is well known for his brilliance of narrative technique, complexity of characterization, and innovation in time sequence. His masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury, displays his perfect combination of experimental techniques and psychological violence. It exhibits the disintegration of the Compson family and the psychological state of each of the family members.This thesis intends to undertake a psychoanalytic study of The Sound and the Fury in the light of Sigmund Freud's theory of the structures of mind. Freud proposes that the mental apparatus is composed of the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the reservoir of the instinctive impulses seeking satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle, regardless of time, morality, and outside forces, etc. The ego, which is the portion of human personality modified by the influences of the external world, tries to reconcile the claims and demands of the three tyrants—the external world, the superego, and the id. It endeavors to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle. The superego retains the character of the father and cruelly and severely exercises moral censorship in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt.The thesis falls into four chapters. The first chapter introduces William Faulkner and his novel The Sound and the Fury, the relevant definitions of terms, and the purpose of the study. The second chapter reviews the psychoanalysis of The Sound and the Fury and the relationship between the novel and Faulkner. Chapter Three is the most significant part, which mainly consists of two sections. The first section argues that Benjy is the representative of the id from the perspective of Oedipus complex with no sense of time, but instincts only; Quentin is the embodiment of the ego in view of his death as a result of his dilemma between the strength of passions and the external world; and Jason is the incarnation of the superego in terms of his efforts to obtain father's role and his cruelty toward others. The second section contends that the three interior monologues of the Compson brothers reveal the different phases of Faulkner's inner world and that Faulkner's personality is split into the id, the ego, and the superego as well. Benjy's Oedipus complex recalls Faulkner's special devotion to his mother, which reveals the id of Faulkner; Quentin's part reflects the mental state of Faulkner as a young man, which demonstrates the ego of Faulkner; Jason's part recollects Faulkner's ambivalent attitudes toward women, which indicates the superego of Faulkner. The last chapter reiterates the relationships between the three brothers, the three structures of mind, and William Faulkner. Therefore, Faulkner transmuted his life experiences into creative materials, presented "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself, and, ultimately, reflected "the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths."...