Tragedy in The Sound and the Fury

Wadlington, Warwick. “The Sound and the Fury: A Logic of Tragedy.” American Literature, Vol. 53, No. 3. Duke University Press, Nov. 1981 (p 409-423).

For my scholarly article about William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, I chose an interesting and incredibly confusing article that discussed in what ways the novel is a tragedy and also the dichotomous nature of the novel. Wadlington uses the character Quentin as the basis for his argument of the novel as a tragedy; if he can show and highlight the tragic elements of Quentin, a central character to the novel, then he can effectively argue of the whole novel’s status as a tragedy. Near the beginning of his article, Wadlington attempts to point out the difference between pathos and tragedy, and ultimately prove to the reader of his article that The Sound and the Fury is the latter as opposed to the former.

Wadlington highlights the suffering of Quentin—and indeed the entire Compson family—as well as his deep passion as reasons for his story to be considered a tragedy. Wadlington crafts a very convincing argument by recognizing counter arguments to his thesis and explaining reasons why they can be overlooked or by proving the counter argument to be false. Two specific counter arguments that Wadlington notes are the lack of tragic closure in the novel as well as Quentin’s failure to be a heroic figure. After he had laid out his thesis, Wadlington stated that “the absence of tragic closure in the novel, then, does not stem from a view that there can be no momentous catastrophe in a modern ‘everyday’ world for reasons unrelated to the tragic process,” and also saying that “the tragic heroic crisis must also eventuate in devastating everydayness.” (413). In this first line, I believe that Wadlington is trying to show how the setting and format of the novel—a novel about basic events of a family’s history in a modern (relative to Faulkner’s writing) time—explains the lack of tragic closure and excuses it. Waldington also later commends Faulkner for his ability to overcome his novel’s inherent flaws and to make his story a good and modern tragedy. In the second quote about the “tragic heroic crisis,” Waldington again uses the status of “everydayness” to cover up for the lack of heroic qualities of the novel, of which tragedies usually rely heavily upon.

Another interesting point that Waldington makes that manages to stand out from all of the other evidence is the dichotomous nature of the novel and the absolute thinking that is present in many of the characters. Waldington uses Benji and the first scene in the novel to illustrate his point; he comments that “to be immersed into Benjy’s perspective, which reduces everything to an unqualified opposition (Caddy and not-Caddy), is our proper introduction to the Compson experience of life. As in the novel’s first scene, the mental landscape is without middle ground or nuance—there is only this side of the fence or that side of the fence.” (414). Indeed, this way of thinking in the Compson household is prevalent throughout the novel. Mrs. Compson, for example, sees things as either Compson or Bascomb, and makes a clear distinction between the two, shown in her occasional statements that her favorite son Jason is more a Bascomb than a Compson. The mother’s thinking also affects Quentin: he believes that from his mother he will either receive a strong feeling of maternal love or utter abandonment, and unfortunately for him he feels the latter due to mother’s favoritism of Jason.

Overall, Waldington’s article was a good read, but personally for me very confusing and at times frustrating. A lot of the language went over my head, and I fear that at times I completely missed the point of what he was trying to say. Maybe it was my confusion that caused me not to be convinced of Waldington’s overarching point that the novel is a tragedy. Personally, I do not consider the novel a tragedy, but I cannot truly back up this claim, considering that at this point I’m not too sure what to consider the novel. (692 words)