The Structure of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: A Gebserian Approach

Abstract

The Structure of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: A Gebserian ApproachPerchan, Robert J.The mutational series of the four structures of consciousness outlined in Jean Gebser’s The Ever-Present Origin provides a comprehensive approach to understanding the four-part structure of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. The congenital idiot Benjy Compson inhabits the “pre-causal” spaceless-timeless world of the Magical Structure of Consciousness in which past, present and future are experienced as undifferentiated and waking and sleeping as a single, unbroken borderless continuity. Quentin Compson, the “sensitive” suicide and romantic idealist, is torn apart psychically in the polar world of circular time of the Mythical Structure of Consciousness and believes he can escape this torment only by annihilating his soul through suicide by drowning. The “hairsplitting,” hyper-rational misogynist Jason Compson quantifies time and human relationships in terms of dollars and cents as befits a representative of the “deficient” phase of the Mental Structure of Consciousness. Finally Dilsey, the heroic and self-sacrificing Compson family servant, experiences in Rev. Shegog’s sermon a glimpse of “transparence” and communal love suggestive of an incipient Integral Structure of Consciousness.