William Faulkner Call it Charisma, Call it

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 and rigid nature that makes him refuse to place in perspective either his sister's pregnancy or her marriage.

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 condemnation of her promiscuity: "Did you ever have a sister? One minute she was. *****es... Why must you do like nigger women...hot hidden furious in the dark woods." (Faulkner, 111) Benjy's love for Caddy, on the other hand, displays all the childlike innocence, trust and dependency that a child holds for a loving parent.

In spite of the fact that he is mentally challenged, Benjy feels the loss of Caddy as deeply as Quentin but without the complex and at times, negative nuances evident in Quentin's own reflections. Benjy's memories constantly make him search and cry out for Caddy though he is not able to express the source of his distress. Only T.P. realizes that Benjy is capable of registering emotional loss: "You can't do no good, holding to the gate and crying.

She can't hear you." (Faulkner, 70) Contrasting Quentin and Benjy's anguish over Caddy's loss is the denial of Caddy's very existence by Jason and Mrs. Compson: "If she could grow up never to know that she had a mother, I would thank God." (Faulkner, 217) Mrs.