Abstract Faulkner has a special feeling to The Sound and the Fury because this work is his first mature work, and he takes an effort to write it among all of his works. The thesis analyzes Jason’s personalities through enumerating his specific acts and analyzes the reasons for the formation of his personalities from the fall of the South, the “desertion” of his family and mental maturity to give him a fair and objective evaluation. 54644
Keywords: specific acts; personalities; the fall of the South; the “desertion” of his family; mental maturity
摘要福克纳对《喧哗与骚动》有着特殊的感情。因为这部作品是福克纳第一部成熟的作品,也是作家花费心血最多、本人最喜欢的小说。本文通过对杰生具体行为的列举分析其性格,并从南方的没落,家人的“遗弃”,心智成熟三个方面分析康普生•杰生四世性格形成原因,给杰生一个公平客观的评价。
毕业论文关键词:具体行为;性格;南方的没落;家人的“遗弃”;心智成熟
Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Literature Review 3
3. Analysis of the Reasons for Jason’s Behaviors and Personalities 4
3.1 The fall of the South 7
3.2 The “desertion” of his family 8
3.3 Mental maturity 10
4. Conclusion 11
Works Cited 12
1. Introduction
William Faulkner is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century in American literary scene, even in the world. He was particularly interested in the decline of the Deep South after the civil war. He made an exploration of the deterioration of the Southern aristocracy after the destruction of its wealth and way of life during the Civil War and Reconstruction. He projected his reputation for his famous Yoknapatawpha series of novels, such as As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Hamlet, and Go Down, Moses. The most prestigious novel, The Sound and the Fury, is the most representative one of this series, which Faulkner loved at the bottom of his heart. His other novels include The Unvanquished, Intruder in the Dust, Requiem for a Nun, A Fable, and The Reivers. The latter two books made him awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Faulkner’s reputation as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century is largely due to his highly experimental style. In his novels, he mastered a usage of the artistic device—the stream of consciousness so proficiently. Stream of consciousness is used to indicate a literary approach to the presentation of psychological aspects of characters in fiction. It presents unspoken materials directly from the psyche of the characters, or makes the characters tell their own inner thoughts in monologues. The realm of life with which stream-of-consciousness novel is concerned is mental and spiritual experience, such as sensations, memories, imaginations, conceptions, intuitions, feelings and the process of association. Stream of consciousness writing is a variant of the third person point of view, in which the narrator relates only to what is experienced by a character’s mind from moment to moment. The Sound and the Fury, because of the using of the stream of consciousness, is rated as one of the three representative masterpieces for “the stream of consciousness” novels, together with Marcel Proust’s Time Regained and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury plays an important role in the stream of consciousness novels. He described the whole story through using the flow of consciousness to describe characters with different personalities, different misfortune and different quality in different periods, resulting in a complex flow of consciousness. Although some of its parts are repeated, but there is no similar sense. The reason is that the author does not focus on the fall of Katie and her daughter. He focuses on the different impacts on different people’s hearts the event has and the changes it results in people’s mind. The story is an integral part of the process by being pided into three characters’ awareness. Faulkner does not describe the story in the chronological order. So readers need to be involved in the creation when they read the story and assemble the whole process of the event completely, which shows that under the reverse and disordered timing sequence, the story has its own intrinsic order. Perspective of the narration of the fiction is inside-out. The changing thoughts of the narrator become the main line of the content of the work. Jumping and changing thoughts are described without clear words, instead of using the transformation of fonts, tone, title and other means. Readers need to distinguish carefully.