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William Faulkner
Call it charisma, call it verve, call it a self-contained personality with a zest for life; any of the aforesaid descriptions seem to fit the bill in describing Caddy, the only member of the Compson family in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to escape the almost self-fulfilling tragic prophecy of a family clearly obsessed with the seemingly more romantic past of its ancestors. With such a personality, it is inevitable that Caddy is the one with the deepest impact on all the Compson family members, albeit in different ways. If two of her brothers, Quentin and Benjy share a deep abiding love with Caddy, her other sibling Jason has a deep resentment and hatred for his sister.
Quentin's love for Caddy is as complex and obsessive as his own personality. In fact, the root cause of Quentin's suicide is not his love for Caddy or his devastation at her perceived loss through her marriage, but his own obsessive...
Quentin obsesses over his sister's virginity, seeing it as "...some concept of Compson honor...loved not the idea of incest...but some Presbyterian concept of its eternal punishment...cast himself and his sister both into hell, where he could guard her forever...." (Faulkner, 9)
Though Quentin's wishful thinking is shattered with Caddy's loss of virginity, he nevertheless suffers from guilt over his obsession with his sister's sexuality and thereby his self-perceived sin: "I have committed incest I said Father it was I not Dalton Ames...." (Faulkner, 98) Obsession, misguided symbolization of family honor, guilt and to top it all shame over his perception of his sister's wanton sexuality finally lead Quentin into the last act of desperation - suicide. Quentin's love for Caddy gets all mixed up with his jealousy and…
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. "The Sound and the Fury." Modern Library, 1946.
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