As I read through the articles, I came upon “Meaningful Images in The Sound and The Fury.” While other articles were overtly complex, this one, written by Eben Bass, made perfect sense to me and shed a new light on the symbolic aspects of this novel as a whole. Bass acknowledged images including the white slipper, the pear tree, the mirror and the fire. Many of these I had not even come near to realizing were significant. Yet, his arguments convinced me that these symbols actually play major parts in recurring themes throughout The Sound and The Fury.
While Eben Bass mentioned multiple “meaningful images” in The Sound and the Fury, his discussion of the pear tree made the greatest impact upon me and made the most sense. He makes the connection between the habits of Caddy and the habits of Quentin, Caddy’s daughter, through their mutual use of the pear tree. According to Bass, either symbolically (Caddy) or physically (Quentin), both Caddy and Quentin reveal their promiscuity through climbing or descending the tree. Quentin’s situation is much more obvious; she literally descends this tree repeatedly “to meet her many lovers.” On the other hand, Caddy’s relation to the tree and her sexuality has a much more obscure connection. Bass refers to the event in which Caddy climbs the tree, after getting muddy, in order to see what the “party” was like in the house. While climbing the tree, Caddy reveals her dirty drawers. From this, Bass makes an observation that I would never have noticed on my own. He said, “It is Caddy’s dirty drawers that offend Quentin [her brother] in the childhood scene; these anticipate her many ensuing love affairs.” I thought this statement was extremely interesting and fits perfectly into the rest of the story. In conclusion, I look forward to finishing The Sound and The Fury with these new revelations about the various symbols in this novel. (341)
“Meaningful Images in The Sound and the Fury”, by Eben Bass
Modern Language Notes ©1961 The Johns Hopkins University Press.
1 comment:
Dev--good comment on an interesting article. Others who read that mostly commented on the slipper, so I'm glad you chose the pear tree.
If I forget, ask me about my poem about that tree.
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