Quentin, the Narcissus Incarnate in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury
2
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Caddy is often compared to Eve as the evil source who caused the male Compsons’ loss of Eden by violating the forbidden tree, which is tragically represented by the eldest son’s suicide and the downfall of the Compson family. On the night of Dammudy’s funeral, the little girl Caddy climbed a pear tree to look in the window so that her three brothers could look up at the muddy seat of her drawers. Many critics assert that it emblematically foreshadows her sexual misconduct in the future that will trigger the gradual ruining of “the sterile Compson male line.”However, this essay argues that what “Eden” signifies in the novel is the male Compsons’ phallic fantasy of “total being" which their narcissistic monologues represent. Faulkner called it “the blind self-centeredness.” It is epitomized by Benjy’s infant-like idiocy. Therefore, if Caddy is associated with the exile / fall from Eden by escaping the seemingly Edenic innocence, Caddy’s climbing up the tree should be read as the initial moment of her ex-orbitance stepping outside the Compson family's dungeon-like ego-centricity suggesting new possibilities, rather than her sexual falling. In these contexts, if the condemnation of Caddy for being the very cause of her family's fallen ruins is indeed based on her three brothers’ narcissistic self-enclosed narratives, especially Quentin’s shattered monologue, this essay examines how Quentin fails to escape his fatally phallic narcissism which is symbolized by his irredeemably broken mirror, and thus how he fails to get the story of Caddy “right” in his distorted and shattered memories of her.
Abstract
Caddy is often compared to Eve as the evil source who caused the male Compsons’ loss of Eden by violating the forbidden tree, which is tragically represented by the eldest son’s suicide and the downfall of the Compson family. On the night of Dammudy’s funeral, the little girl Caddy climbed a pear tree to look in the window so that her three brothers could look up at the muddy seat of her drawers. Many critics assert that it emblematically foreshadows her sexual misconduct in the future that will trigger the gradual ruining of “the sterile Compson male line.”However, this essay argues that what “Eden” signifies in the novel is the male Compsons’ phallic fantasy of “total being" which their narcissistic monologues represent. Faulkner called it “the blind self-centeredness.” It is epitomized by Benjy’s infant-like idiocy. Therefore, if Caddy is associated with the exile / fall from Eden by escaping the seemingly Edenic innocence, Caddy’s climbing up the tree should be read as the initial moment of her ex-orbitance stepping outside the Compson family's dungeon-like ego-centricity suggesting new possibilities, rather than her sexual falling. In these contexts, if the condemnation of Caddy for being the very cause of her family's fallen ruins is indeed based on her three brothers’ narcissistic self-enclosed narratives, especially Quentin’s shattered monologue, this essay examines how Quentin fails to escape his fatally phallic narcissism which is symbolized by his irredeemably broken mirror, and thus how he fails to get the story of Caddy “right” in his distorted and shattered memories of her.
참고문헌 (19)
- Anderson, John P., "The Sound and the Fury in the Garden of Eden: William Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury and the Garden of Eden Myth" (2002), Universal Publishers
- Bleikasten, André, "The Most Splendid Failure: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury" (1976), Indiana UP
- Bleikasten, André, "William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: A Critical Casebook" (1982), Garland
- Bleikasten, André, "The Ink of Melancholy: Faulkner's Novels, from The Sound and the Fury to Light in August" (1990), Indiana UP
- Bloom, Harold, "William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury" (2008), Infobase Publishing
- De Man, Paul, "Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism" (1983), U of Minnesota P
- Faulkner, William, "The Sound and the Fury" (1994), Norton
- Freud, Sigmund, "On Narcissism: An Introduction, In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV", pp.67~102 (1959), The Hogarth Press
- Freud, Sigmund, "Mourning and Melancholia, In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV", pp.237~243 (1959), The Hogarth Press
- Gwin, Minrose C, "The Feminine and Faulkner: Reading (Beyond) Sexual Difference" (1990), The U of Tennessee P
- Kartiganer, Donald M, "The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner’s Novels" (1979), The U of Massachusetts P
- Kerr, Elizabeth M, "William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha: A Kind of Keystone in the Universe" (1983), Fordham UP
- Meriwether, James B, "Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner 1926-1962" (1968), Random House
- 박수정, "나의 이웃, 나의 박해자인 가족: 이창래의 『비상』과 타자와의 대면", 현대영미소설, 18(1), pp.35~61 (2011), 한국현대영미소설학회
- Ross, Stephen M., "Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury" (1996), UP of Mississippi
- Thompson, Lawrance, "William Faulkner: An Introduction and Interpretation" (1963), Barnes and Noble
- Trouard, Dawn, "Faulkner’s Text Which Is Not One, In New Essays on The Sound and the Fury", pp.23~69 (1993), Cambridge UP
- Warren, Robert Penn, "Faulkner: A Collection of Critical Essays" (1966), Prentice-Hall
- Žižek Slavoj, "Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture" (1991), The MIT Press