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ON THEIR HIND LEGS CASTING SHADOWS
A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CHARACTER IN FAULKNER

BY

Marjorie Burton Haselswerdt

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1981

ABSTRACT

ON THEIR HIND LEGS CASTING SHADOWS
A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CHARACTER IN FAULKNER
By

Marjorie Burton Haselswerdt

The mimetic aspect of Faulkner's work was very im-
portant to him. He often spoke of his desire to create a
character that could ”stand up on its hind legs and cast a
shadow," and his frequent references to his characters as
independently living and breathing outside of the works for
which they were created indicate that he knew himself to
have succeeded in the effort. The ambiguity of at least
some of his major novels, reflected in the abundance of
critical disagreement about their significance, hints that
he may have done so only too well. So complex and life-like
are the major characters of these novels, so rich with the
nuance that is typical of life itself, that it is difficult
to fit them into thematic categories. This study uses Third
Force psychology, a branch of modern psychology based on the
writings of Abraham Maslow and Karen Horney, as a means of
understanding and appreciating these carefully drawn charac-
ters outside of their thematic roles, and as a way of treat-

ing the ambiguity that results from their complexity and

Marjorie Burton Haselswerdt

independence. It also employs the theories of Horney and
Maslow in psychological analyses of the "guiding conscious-
nesses," or "implied authors" of the works in question.

The implied authors of The Sound and the Fury, As I
Lay Dying, and Light in August see their worlds in terms of
what Horney calls the self-effacing "solution," one of the
three methods she describes for combating basic anxiety.
With their subtle rhetoric, they ask the reader's identi-
fication with characters who are victims, or whose sensi-
tivity and self-sacrifice go largely unappreciated by a
world seen as unjust: Quentin Compson, Dilsey, Darl and
Addie Bundren, the young Joe Christmas. As a result, these
novels present a picture of the human condition as frustra-
ting and bleak. Existing alongside this dominantly self-
effacing approach, however, is a disguised attraction to
aggressive trends, revealed in the tendency of the implied
authors of these novels to use subtle rhetorical devices to
outline their own identification with aggressive tendencies
in their characters, and to ask their readers to share it.
It is this trend (hardly the only important aspect of
Faulkner's work, but perhaps the one that has been least
explored) that provides the primary subject of the chapters
on Jason Compson, Anse Bundren, and Joe Christmas, and their
roles in the novels they inhabit. Jason Compson is allowed
to undercut our concern with the rest of the Compsons. Anse
Bundren is used by his creator in an aggressive way, as a

kind of weapon against the other characters and themes of

(\(V

Marjorie Burton Haselswerdt
As I Lay Dying. In Light in August these trends receive
their fullest indulgence. The portrayal of the aggressive
Joe Christmas dominates the novel. Joe's way of seeing the
world becomes the implied author's way of seeing it, and
through the novel's rhetoric the reader is asked to join
in this view. In the final study (on V. K. Ratliff and
The Hamlet), however, the primary concern is with the robust
mental health of Ratliff, and its strong impact on the novel
and its rhetoric.

This particular psychological approach, then, seeks to
bring us new insight into the achievements of Faulkner's
most creative period: the highly effective realistic charac-
terizations, the rhetorical power that transcends the objec-
tive mode and allows the reader to participate in some com-
plex and fascinating perspectives, the creation of varied
and vivid worlds for our delighted observation. The study
attempts to use modern psychological theory in a positive
and illuminating way, as a means of dealing with the often

neglected human element of the novelistic experience.

To my parents, Hattie and Ed Burton

whose belief in me made it impossible to quit.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the inspiration and guidance required to bring this
long project to completion, I am very much indebted to
Bernard J. Paris. I am grateful for his encouragement, his
close attention to my work, his willingness to read Faulkner
along with me, and his promptness as a correSpondent.
Without his ideas, this dissertation never would have been
conceived, and without his careful readings, it would have
been a far poorer thing.

But my greatest debt is to my husband, Mike, who has
stood by the same old love for all these years, and who
has given so generously of his intelligence, his time, and

his patience in this unaccountably lengthy effort.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

A CKNOW'LEDGMENTS O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O O O O O 111
Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l

A. The Psychological Approach Justified . . l

B. The Psychological Approach Described . . 10

C. The Psychological Approach Applied . . . 21

II. THE APPEAL OF THE GOOD OLD BOY: A HORNEYAN
ANALYSIS OF JASON COMPSON AND THE SOUND
A ND THE FURY O O O O O O O O O C O O O O O 36

III. 'IT NEVER BOTHERED ANSE MUCH:' A HORNEYAN
ANALYSIS OF ANSE BUNDREN AND AS I LAY
DYING O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 76

IV. 'KEEP YOUR MUCK:' A HORNEYAN ANALYSIS OF
JOE CHRISTMAS AND LIGHT IN AUGUST . . . . . 111

V. 'HE'S DONE MORE THINGS THAN ANY MAN I KNOW:'
A MASLOVIAN ANALYSIS OF V. K. RATLIFF AND

THE “MLET o o o o o o c o o o o o o o o o 152

VI. CONCLUSION o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 193

BIBLIOGRAPHY O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 203

iv

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. The Psychological Approach Justified

Most critical work on William Faulkner's novels has
focused on his stylistic and technical innovations or on
his thematic concerns. Beginning with Conrad Aiken's essay
on Faulkner's style in 1939,1 there has been much interest
in Faulkner's ability to depart from traditional stylistic
and novelistic technique in his attempts to match matter
with manner. And beginning with George Marion O'Donnell's
essay on Faulkner's mythology, also published in 1939,2
there has been a critical tendency to think of Faulkner
primarily as a purveyor of truth, a moralist, whose im-
aginary worlds are constructed mostly in order to comment
on the human condition.3 Faulkner himself seems to have
joined in this trend after he was awarded the Nobel Prize
in 1950, and began to speak about his desire to convey
”eternal verities" in his work.

But for Faulkner, and for many of his most smitten
readers, the particular pleasure to be found in his work is
related not to its technical expertise or its moral pro-
fundity, but to its ability to establish the illusion of
reality, to imitate life.4 In other words, the mimetic

l

2
impulse and its appreciation takes precedence, for them,
over the aesthetic (or formal) and thematic impulse. The
intention of the present study is to recognize this aspect
of Faulkner's talent by departing from the critical main-
stream (which often seems to consider his work more as
poetry than as traditional fiction) and treating him as
primarily a realistic novelist. Although he was certainly
touched by the Hawthornian wand of "romance," and charged

"5

with the desire to "make it new, and the need to define

the human condition in the twentieth century, Faulkner seems
most happily and most successfully occupied when he is en-
gaged with the task of creating plausible peOple and worlds
for our delighted observation.

Henry James writes, "The main object of the novel is to
represent life . . . the success of a work of art, to my
mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a

certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for

the time that we have lived another life . . ."6 And when

Richard Chase seeks to define the novel in order to place it
in the context of American fiction, his emphasis is similar:

. . . the novel renders reality closely and in
comprehensive detail. It takes a group of people
and sets them going about the business of life.

We come to see these pe0p1e in their real com-
plexity of tempermant and motive. They are in
explicable relation to nature, to each other, to
their social class, to their own past. Charac-
ter is more important than action and plot and

. . . the tragic or comic actions of the narra-
tive will have the primary purpose of enhancing
our knowledge of and feeling for an important 7
character, a group of characters, or a way of life.

3

A realistic novel, then, is a work of art primarily
concerned with the imitation of life, a value it places
above all others. It pleases us by conveying the illusion
of reality, particularly by convincing us to take its charac-
ters as real people in whose lives we can, in effect, par-
ticipate. This does not mean that it is the stepchild of
sociological research; mimesis is an artistic effect, an
illusion created by artistic technique. But it does mean
that it is intimately connected with living, breathing
humanity, that it depends for its success on its convincing
treatment of human motivation and behavior.

Faulkner himself certainly saw his fictional achieve-
ment in this light. Time and again, when asked about the
germination or intent of his work, he insisted that he was
"interested primarily in people . . ." rather than in
"ideas" or "style," that the important thing to him was to
create a character that could "stand up on its hind legs and
cast a shadow."8 Though he detested interviews, and was
generally loathe to discuss his creative processes, he often
seemed to perk up when given the chance to discuss his suc-
cess in creating the illusion of reality Spoken of by James.
For him his characters had lives of their own that never
ceased to fascinate and please him. They taught him things;
they surprised him; they got into "devilment: behind his
back; they walked out of his books "still in motion, still
talking, and still acting."9 It even seemed to him that

the creative process itself was fueled and controlled by

4
these imitations of life: "Once these people come to life,"
he often said, "they take off and so the writer is going at
a dead run behind them trying to put down what they say and
do in time . . . they have taken charge of the story."10
For him his characters do not exist at the mercy of tech-
nique or for the sole purpose of conveying thematic truths.
These are characters that seem exuberantly alive on their
own terms, and their very aliveness is the central reason
for the existence of the works they inhabit.

Many critics mention Faulkner's affinity with the
realistic tradition described by James and Chase, though
their own criticism may choose to focus on things other than
his mimetic achievement. It is common, for example, for
critics to emphasize Faulkner's role as "sole owner and
proprietor" of the vividly realized imaginary world of
Yoknapatawpha County. Critics like Cleanth Books and Warren

Beck,ll

who make much of this aspect of Faulkner, see him

as having a close connection to the great realistic tradi-
tion of Balzac and Dickens. Other critics follow Faulkner's
own lead by dwelling on the centrality and integrity of
characterization in his work. For Olga Vickery, character
is Faulkner's "figure in the carpet," the very wellspring of
his creativity. His concern, she says, is not with "manipu-
lating his characters nor with documenting the stages in
their development," but with "exploring and revealing their

12

complexity." And Irving Howe's description of the vivid-

ness of Faulkner's portrayals is typical of the appreciation

5

often given this aspect of his work.

. . . his characters seldom fail us. They have a

marvelous way of seeming to break out of their

fictional bonds and of achieving the illusion of

independent existence, so that in reading Faulkner's

books one does not accept very easily the doctrine

of modern criticism that characters 'live' only

between the first and last page . . . One retains

not only the impression of their distinctive moral

traits, but one also remembers their inflections

of speech, their mannerisms, their idiosyncracies

of dress, the way they walk and stoop and

crouch . . . 3
These tributes to Faulkner's ability to create the illusion
of reality, made by some of his most prominent critics, in-
dicate that it is justifiable to consider his mimetic
achievement a central source of the impact and importance
of his fiction. And yet Faulkner criticism has little to
tell us about how or why his characters and situations
"live” so vividly, or in what sense his characters assert
their independence of the fictional bonds of form and theme.
Perhaps any alert and appreciative reader could isolate the
moments and details in Faulkner's works that seem to exist
solely to delight both us and their creator with their life—
likeness, but such insights do not lend themselves to crit-
ical exegesis. Rosa Coldfield's little feet do not touch
the floor when she sits on a chair. Mr. and Mrs. Hines
spend a grimly hilarious night on the town at the mercy of
the train schedule. Jason Compson uses camphor-soaked rags
to combat his headaches because he is sure that aspirin is
made of flour and water.‘ Samson repeatedly interrupts a

fairly purposeful narrative to complain that he cannot

remember a name that is totally irrelevant to the significance

6

of his story. We can name the moments that have this sort
of impact on us as readers, but where can we go from there?
Can we generalize or theorize about this impact? Can we,
in short, write criticism about it? James says,

The characters, the situations, which strike one

as real will be those that touch and interest one

most, but the measure of reality is very difficult

to fix . . . Humanity is immense, and reality has

a myriad forms; the most one can affirm is that

some of the flowers of fiction have the odor of it,

and others have not . . .14

If the appreciation of mimetic achievement involves

merely the detecting or not detecting of a particular "odor,"
then the mimetic impulse and the audience's enjoyment of it
will not be appropriate subjects for deep critical analysis.
But much has been learned about the nature of "humanity"
since Henry James's time, or, more prOperly, much has been
done since then to make sense of human thought processes
and behavior. From the work of modern psychological thinkers
and clinicians who have studied interpsychic and intra-
psychic phenomena come theories about how certain kinds of
people are likely to think and behave in certain situations.
Properly used, these theories can provide us with a system-
atic way of analyzing the lifelikeness of literary charac-
ters and situations so that we may heighten our capacities
for the understanding and appreciation of a given mimetic
achievement. Since the aim of the realistic novelist, as
James and Faulkner and others tell us, is to convey the

illusion that literary characters are living, breathing,

shadow-casting people, and since much of the reader's

7
pleasure in realistic fiction comes from his participation
in this illusion, it is logical for the critic to deal with
the products of mimesis as if they were indeed real, using
the methods and standards of those whose business it is to
analyze and evaluate real human beings.

This is not to ignore the obvious truth that a liter—
ary character is in fact the artificial creation of a human
consciousness which has complete control over the charac-
ter's nature and his fate, which shapes him according to its
own artistic goals and psychological imperatives rather than
to the demands of existence in the real world. Insofar as a
character is £31 a real human being, he is the product of a
recognizably human creating consciousness whose nature can
also be explored through psychological methods. Indeed, our
study will concern itself extensively with this guiding
consciousness and with its place in the experience of fic—
tion, though we shall do nothing so ill-advised as to
"analyze" the psyche of William Faulkner himself merely on
the basis of his literary output.

According to Wayne C. Booth,15 the guiding conscious-
ness of a fictional work is not exactly the author—as-
historical-personage himself, but a version of himself that
he creates for the purpose of presenting a particular fic-
tional world. Thus it is not William Faulkner of Oxford,
Miss., horse lover, whiskey drinker, recluse, whose inten-
tions the critic must plumb in order to grasp the nature

of one of his novels, but the fictional ”Faulkner" who is

8
revealed by the loves and hates and idiosyncracies of the
novel itself. This consciousness is responsible for the
"core of norms and choices," the "emotions and judgments"
that compose "the very stuff out of which great fiction is

made."16

It is the implied author who controls the universe
of the novel, who presents and evaluates the characters, who
makes the thematic judgments and the choices regarding form.
The measure of a writer's success, as E. M. Forster
tells us, is his ability to "bounce the reader into accepting
what he says . . ."17 This "bouncing" takes place in Booth's
scheme by means of the implied author's "rhetoric," the var-
ious means that he uses to bring the reader to share his
perspective on the characters and events of the novel. As
Booth describes the relationship between author and reader:
It is . . . as I read that I become the self whose
belief must coincide with the author's. Regard-
less of my real beliefs and practices, I must sub-
ordinate my mind and heart to the book if I am to
enjoy it to the full. The author creates, in
short, an image of himself, the implied author,
and another image of his reader; he makes his
reader, as he makes his second self, and the most
successful reading is the one in which the created
selves, author and reader, can find complete
agreement.18
No matter how "modern" or "objective" a piece of fiction,
according to Booth, the implied author will attempt to guide
the reader's response, to persuade him to participate in
his view of the world. If the demands of his form require
that he eschew direct comment, he will find other ways to

"bounce" us.

9

With commentary ruled out, hundreds of devices

remain for revealing judgment and molding re-

sponses. Patterns of imagery and symbol are as

effective in modern fiction as they have always

been in poetry in controlling our evaluation of

details. Decisions about what parts of a story

to dramatize and about the sequence and propor-

tion of episodes can be as effective in The

Hamlet as they are in Hamlet as decisive in Ulysses

as they are in The Odyssey. In fact all of the old

fashioned dramatic devices of pace and timing can

be refurbished for the purposes of a dramatic im-

personal narration. And manipulation of dramatized

points of view can, as hundreds of studies follow-

ing upon Percy Lubbock's Craft of Fiction have

shown, convey the author's judgment with great

precision.l9
In Faulkner's work direct interpretation of characters and
events through commentary or obviously reliable narration
is rare indeed. Nevertheless, each work implies an idio-
syncratic, clearly drawn creating consciousness, a fictional
human being who judges his characters and their world, and
who asks our agreement with those judgments through various
rhetorical devices. The rhetoric of each novel requires
the reader to enter into a triangular human relationship
with the implied author and his characters. Since this re-
lationship is human; since it is based on human "emotions
and judgments,” motivated by human desires and needs, it is
an appropriate subject for psychological study.

The following study uses modern psychology to study the
nature of four characters from four major Faulkner novels,

The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dyigg, Light in August, and

 

The Hamlet, and to analyze the dynamics of the implied
author-character-reader relationship in the novels they

inhabit.

10

B. The Psychological Approach Described

While literary works that are largely symbolic or meta-
phorical, that resemble, in other words, the product of the
deepest levels of the unconscious, such as dreams, are well
suited to Freudian or Jungian critical technique, the real—
istic novel, with its emphasis on the details of the every-
day that are the matter of conscious human existence calls
for a different psycho-critical approach. Interesting
psychological studies have been done of the symbolism and
deep structures of Faulkner's work using Freudian theory,20
but traditional psychoanalysis cannot tell us why Anse
Bundren's eulogy for his wife Oflod's will be done. Now I

)21 is such an effective stroke of the

can get them teeth"
realist's brush; nor can it explain the nature of the es-
sential health and goodness of a character like the V. K.
Ratliff of The Hamlet. For such exploration and explana-
tion the theories of Third Force psychology, theories which
deal with the nature of the human psyche particularly as

it is manifested in one's daily behavior and one's relation-
ships with others, and with the innately human drive towards
self-fulfillment (the "third force") are far better suited.
In A Psychological Approach to Fiction, Bernard J. Paris
explains that he chooses to use the theories of Karen

Horney (a Third Force clinician and theoretician) in his
critical studies of realistic novels because, ". . . though

her psychology (like any other) is far from providing a

complete picture of human nature, Karen Horney deals

ll
astutely with the same patterns of intra-psychic and inter-
personal behavior that form the matter (and often the struc-

22 With her detailed

ture) of a good many novels and plays."
descriptions of the thought patterns and behavior of her
patients, her acquaintances, and even of herself and of lit-
erary characters, she provides much useful material for the
analyst of realistic fiction. She was primarily a clinician,
however, and most concerned with the defensive strategies of
those whose relationship to the world is in some way im—
paired. We must look to Abraham Maslow for detailed theories
about the process of the fulfillment of human potential that
is essential to our understanding of Third Force psychology
as a whole, and to our analysis of a ”healthy" character

like Ratliff.

Maslow puts forth a scheme for analyzing human motiva-
tion that is essentially separate from Freudian instinct
theory. Maslovian theory is based on the concept that human
beings are governed by a hierarchy oftfirflogically based needs.
The hierarchy begins at the lowest level with the most basic
requirements of the human animal for survival--food, shelter,
and safety--and proceeds through the middle needs for love
and belonging, to the highest needs, those for self esteem
and self actualization. This is a hierarchy in the sense
that the lower needs must be satisfied before the higher
ones are felt. A man who does not have food, for example,
does not feel a strong need for.love, while a man whose

physiological and safety needs are satisfied will feel a

12

strong desire for the warm regard of his fellow man. Like-
wise, a man who feels secure in his relationship with his
fellows will feel a desire to raise himself in his own
estimation, and a man who is able to think well of himself
will desire to fulfill his potential as a human being, to
"actualize" his self. Although the higher needs are not as
strongly felt as the lower ones, all of them are "instintoid"
in that they are included in man's biological make—up. They
are part of the biologically based "inner nature" of man-
kind, which is "in part unique to each person, and in part
species wide."23

Maslow's work is primarily concerned with that part of
human motivation and behavior based on the higher needs.
In other words, he is interested in the process of self-
actualization, in the movement that a healthy person makes
toward the "actualization of his potentials, capacities and
talents."24 His findings indicate that a human being whose
lower needs are satisfied will strive for what the existen-
tialists refer to as authentic humanness, will actively
seek a kind of mental health far more profound than our
common notion of "normality" which, according to Maslow, is
nothing more than a "psychopathology of the average."25
The healthy person will be occupied with the cultivation of
his unique human potential, defined by his own unique bio-
logical make-up. He will be open to himself, and this open-

ness will make him more "transparent" and more Spontaneous

than those who have not reached his level of development.

13

In other words, he will know what he thinks and feels, and
he will express his feelings and thoughts honestly in ac-
tions and words, and he will behave spontaneously according
to his inner dictates. By observing such peOple, according
to Maslow, we should be able to draw conclusions about
man's essential nature, and thus about what it means to be
a "good" or healthy human being. He says, ". . . we can
discover (rather than create or invent) which values men
tend toward, yearn for, struggle for, as they improve them-
selves, and which values they lose as they get sick."26
This would provide us with a standard for judging human
development and worth, something currently lacking in our
culture.

Every age but ours has had its model, its ideal.

All of these have been given up by our culture;

the saint, the hero, the gentleman, the knight,

the mystic. About all we have left is the well-

adjusted man without problems, a very pale and

doubtful substitute. Perhaps we shall soon be

able to use as our guide and model the fully

growing and self fulfilling human being, the one

in whom all his potentialities are coming to full

development, the one whose inner nature expresses

itself freely, rather than being warped, suppressed,

or denied.27
In his descriptions of such human beings, particularly in

Motivation and Personality, Maslow offers us a means for

 

evaluating the comparative health or "goodness" of a charac-
ter whose creator asks us to see him as a model.

Horney's writings, on the other hand, are largely con-
cerned with those who, because of the inferior conditions
provided for their growth, do not function at the upper

levels of Maslow's hierarchy. Her subjects are not able to

l4
seek fulfillment because their lower needs were not met by
those who surrounded them in their childhood, and they have
become the victims of what she describes as "neurosis"28 or
the process of self—alienation. Life being what it is,
most people are at least partially the victims of this
process, and this is why Horney's theories have such a wide
applicability. Maslow's self-actualizing man is the excep-
tion rather than the rule.
Neurosis, according to the Horneyan scheme, begins as

a way of coping with the basic anxiety that results when a
child is deprived of the sense of safety and love and belong-
ing that are as essential to the growth of a fully human
being as water is to the growth of a plant. Such a child
comes to feel that he is "isolated and helpless in a world
conceived of as basically hostile,"29 and that it is not
safe to respond to others spontaneously. He must instead
develop a strategy for dealing with them that will allay
his basic anxiety and allow him to function, albeit at the
expense of his "real self," that which he could become if
the conditions of his existence had permitted him to follow
his spontaneous inner dictates. The process is best de-
scribed by Horney herself.

The cramping pressure of his basic anxiety pre-

vents the child from relating himself to others

with the spontaneity of his real feelings, and

forces him to find ways to cope with them. He

must (unconsciously) deal with them in ways which

do not arouse, or increase, but rather allay his

basic anxiety. The particular attitudes resulting

from such strategical necessities are determined
both by the child's given tempermant and by the

15

contingencies of the environment. Briefly, he

may try to cling to the most powerful person

around him; he may try to rebel and fight; he may

try to shut others out of his inner life and

withdraw emotionally from them. In principle,

this means that he can move toward, against, or

away from others.30
The healthy person moves toward, against, or away from
others depending on the situation in which he finds himself.
He can be flexible in his human relationships because he is
secure in the world. But for the self-alienated person,
these moves become rigid and compulsive. As Horney describes

Affection . . . becomes clinging; compliance be-

comes appeasement. Similarly, he is driven to

rebel or to keep aloof without regard to his real

feelings and regardless of the inappropriateness

of his attitude in a particular situation. The

degree of blindness and rigidity in his attitudes

is in proportion to the intensity of the basic

anxiety lurking within him.31
These various rigid "moves" in relation to others, designed
to avoid conflict with the threatening outer world, contra—
dict each other, and thus lead to a secondary inner conflict.
In order to solve this conflict, the sufferer "chooses" one
strategy as his dominant method of dealing with others. He
becomes predominantly "self—effacing," or ”aggressive," or
"detached."

He who adopts the self-effacing solution to his inner
conflicts defends himself against his basic anxiety by com-
pulsively "moving towards" others. He is compliant, cling-
ing, dependent, profoundly love-oriented, and determinedly

"good." In return he expects that others will protect him

from his anxieties by rewarding him with the love and

16
protection that he feels is his due. It is as if he has
struck a bargain with fate: "I will give up all of my drives
to assert or defend myself, and I will consistently sacrifice
myself for others, if only you will make sure that others
love me and take responsibility for me." The self-effacing
type has a strong but misguided preoccupation with ”justice."
Because he has given up his capacity to defend himself, he
must rely for his very survival on rewards for his "good-
ness," and if they do not appear he will become obsessed
with the "injustice" of existence.

The detached, or resigned, personality, on the other
hand, combats his basic anxiety by retreating from the field
of human relationships. His preoccupation is not with jus-
tice, but with the freedom from tension that he hopes to
find by avoiding entanglements with others altogether. This
strategy of avoidance extends eventually to a shrinking from
virtually all contact with life; the subject becomes an ob-
server rather than a participant in his own existence. He
may succeed to a large degree in avoiding tension, but it
will be at the expense of his ability to enjoy life. As
Horney describes it, ". . . the picture of resignation, when
maintained consistently, is one of life at a constantly low
ebb--of a life without pain or friction but also without
zest."32

The aggressive or expansive type moves compulsively
against his fellow man, eschewing all weakness, dependence,

and desire for love in exchange for a feeling of mastery

17
over others, indeed over life itself, designed to compen—
sate for his feelings of isolation and helplessness. For
the aggressive personality the essence of life is the pur-
suit of triumph, and his continual effort is to deny any
imperfections or shortcomings in himself in any way he can.
Other peOple are, at best, obstacles that he must overcome.
At worst, they are the enemy whom he resents bitterly for
interfering with his pursuit of mastery.

Since all three of these "solutions" are designed to
cope with the same psychic phenomenon, the anxiety that re-
sults from the denial of basic human needs, the relation-
ships between them are close and complex. As we have seen,
they first appear as alternate ways of dealing with the
world; only later is the "choice” made that will "stream-
line" the person's method of reacting to others. So it is
important to point out that these personality types are not
"pure." Every self-effacing person, for example, has buried
within him aggressive trends he must repress in order to
make his solution work, and those trends may have a profound
effect on his way of being. In fact, analysis of the be-
havior of any self—alienated person, as we shall see, must
take into account the role of repressed trends.

It is important, also, to see these defensive strat-
egies that govern interpersonal behavior in relation to the
intrapsychic phenomena that allow them to flourish. Horney
refers to these phenomena as the "pride system." When a

person bargains with fate for a reduction of his basic

18

anxiety, the first thing that he must give up is his "real
self," the self he would inevitably desire to become if the
conditions for his growth and progress through the hierarchy
of needs were good. He becomes self-alienated because he
is not secure enough in the world to be guided by this self
that would have him feel and behave and function spontaneously,
according to his authentic needs and capabilities. Such
alienation would leave a person entirely without direction
or sense of identity, were it not replaced by another moti-
vating force. Horney says

. . . the individual alienated from himself

needs--it would be absurd to say a "substitute"

for his real self because there is no such

thing--something that will give him a hold,

a feelinggof identity. This could make him

meaningful to himself and, despite all the

weakness in his structure, give him a feel-

ing of power and significance.33
This "substitute" is provided by the "idealized image," a
product of the imagination that endows this basically in-
secure and anxiety ridden person with "unlimited powers and
exalted faculties."34 These powers and faculties may be
glorified aspects of his dominant solution, or they may be
related to his repressed trends. In his imagination the
self—alienated person begins to identify with this fictional
"ideal self." The self-effacing person becomes in his own
mind a saint. The aggressive person becomes the heroic
master over all. The detached person becomes the god-like
embodiment of freedom. Gradually the idealized self assumes

control of the self—alienated person's life. As Horney says,

"The energies driving toward self-realization are shifted to

19
the aim of actualizing the ideal self."35 The subject de-
sires to become his idealized image, and he embarks on what
Horney calls the "search for glory," an imaginary and un-
realistic drive to actualize an imaginary and unrealistic
self.

As compared to the authentic drive towards self-
fulfillment, this search for glory is of necessity rigid,
unresponsive to the demands of reality, and lacking in
spontaneity. It brings its victim not the real self confi-
dence that comes with the development of real assets, but
"a glittering gift of most questionable value: neurotic
pride."36 The person embarked on a search for glory is
proud, not of the person he actually is, but of the qualities

"37

he "arrogates to himself in his imagination, where he
unconsciously transforms his needs into his assets. He needs
to feel loved; therefore he is lovable. He needs to feel
superior; therefore he is superior. Motivated by his need

to see himself in ideal terms, and rewarded by the kind of
(falsely) glorious satisfaction that comes with the achieve-
ment of perfection, he exists in a rarefied atmosphere far
removed from mundane reality. Unfortunately, however,
reality is bound to intrude; the neurotic pride is bound to
be threatened. And, since this pride is at once very highly
valued and very vulnerable, these threats must be defended
against at the cost of further restrictions on spontaneity.

Were neurosis merely a matter of existing gloriously

as the product of one's imagination, it would be a rather

20
pleasant state. But threats to neurotic pride are not the
only drawbacks to the search for glory. Identification with
the ideal self leads inevitably to contempt for the "actual
self," that inglorious being inside whose skin even the most
imaginative of us must exist. Whenever the self—alienated
person is forced to come in contact with what and who he
actually is, he is reminded of the gap between that and his
idealized image, and is stricken with intense feelings of
self hate. This hatred is experienced in the form of "re-
lentless demands on self, merciless self accusation, self-
contempt, self-tormenting, and self-destruction."38 Self
hate is a profoundly painful business, and the self—alienated
person will attempt to avoid it at all costs. But this
avoidance has its price. It also must be purchased at an
expense, the lessening of the subject's grip on and apprecia-
tion of the reality that is associated with the dreaded
actual self.

"Neurotic claims" are also part of the pride system
that provides the structure of self-alienation. Since the
self-alienated person has substituted in his mind his ideal
for his actual self, he feels himself to be godlike, above
the demands of reality that restrict others. He feels jus-
tified, in fact, in presenting claims to the outside world,
in demanding that it conform to his wishes. In short, he
believes that, "He is entitled to be treated by others, or
by fate, in accord with his grandiose notions about himself.

Everyone ought to cater to his illusions. Everything short

21

of this is unfair. He is entitled to a better deal."39
When fate and his fellow man do not comply with these as-
sumptions, the self alienated person's sense of injury is
profound, and this adds further to the accumulation of dis-
content that marks neurosis.

The "tyranny of the should" is Horney's way of refer-
ring to the rigid inner dictates developed by her subjects
in their efforts to become their idealized selves. In his
efforts to become godlike, the self alienated person makes
excessive and irrational demands on himself, demands that
vary in nature according to his solution, but are always
inconsistent with the realities of human nature. Perhaps
he feels that he "should" always feel loving, or "should"
never feel fear-—rigid and unfair demands that exist in
opposition to human realities. The penalty for not living
up to one's shoulds is self hate, that dreaded symptom of
confrontation with the despised self. The stakes are high.

The shoulds become a "regime of terror,"40

imposing further
restrictions and inhibitions on the neurotic's dealing with

the outer world.

C. The Psychological Approach Applied

i. Third Force Psychology and Literature

Horney's description of the pride system and the de-
fensive strategies that she calls "solutions" to our inner
conflicts are well suited to describing the natures of
literary characters and the human interactions of many

implied author-character—reader triangles as well. Novels,

22

after all, are created by and about and for human beings with
the same potential for self alienation as the rest of man-
kind.41 Most of us are the victims of at least some basic
anxiety, and our psychic make-up and behavior is affected by
our need to defend ourselves against it.

As an imitation of life, a "round" character created by
a great mimetic artist like Faulkner often exhibits the
symptoms of self alienation described by Horney. His pat-
terns of motivation and behavior, his ways of thinking about
and acting in his fictional world can be analyzed in terms
of his general "solution" to the problem of basic anxiety
and his grapplings with the demands of his pride system.
As a critical technique, this type of analysis has two ad-
vantages. To begin with, it allows us to deal with the
abundant life of these characters, the wealth of detail that
makes them seem to move and talk and act independently of
their creator, to have their own integrity as human beings.
As we sift through this detail, observing the patterns into
which it falls, we come to appreciate the sheer reality of
such a portrait more than we can when we view it from a
thematic or formal point of view. The other primary advan-
tage of the technique has to do with the evaluation rather
than appreciation. Horneyan theory allows us a way of
judging the nature of a character that is independent of
the author's rhetoric. This means that we can determine
how well his human nature, his mimetic aspect, suits his

aesthetic purpose. But before we can understand the basis

23
for this kind of evaluation, we must examine the relation-
ship between self—alienation and the process of literary
creation itself.42

A literary work, to begin with, is the product of the
imagination, that same imagination that inflicts on the self—
alienated personality the ideal self, the rigidity of the
pride system, the all-encompassing strategy of the neurotic
solution. If the creator of a literary work is suffering
from any degree of self-alienation, and the chances are very
good that he is, then the product that emanates from his
imagination will be somehow related to his drive to combat
his basic anxiety. The literary work, in fact, will become
itself a defensive strategy, a method of relieving tension,
a means of projecting the ideal self, a way to convey the
world view that is the product of the general defensive
solution.

A novel that concerns itself with the matter of every-
day existence (a realistic novel) will "imply" an "author"
with a particular psychological identity, a particular com-
bination of defensive strategies. When we are able, with
the aid of Horneyan theory, to describe this identity, we
can come to understand a good deal about the novel's dynamics.
The rhetoric of a given novel, be it ever so subtle, will
reveal a guiding consciousness with particular intrapsychic
and interpsychic patterns of being that have a profound
effect on the nature of the characters and world created.

An implied author may, for example, "identify" with a

24
character who shares his dominant solution, and in this case
he will manipulate his rhetoric so as to indicate his approval
of that character. Or he may resent excessively a character
who represents one of his repressed trends, and this too
will be revealed in his rhetoric.

An author's rhetoric, as we have seen, is designed to
"create" his "ideal reader," the reader who will share his
perspective on his fictional world. In the context of our
psychological analysis, this means that the reader will be
asked to adopt temporarily the implied author's dominant
solution. On a very simple and general level, for example,
if the guiding consciousness of a work is predominantly de-
tached, the reader will be asked to accept freedom as the
highest value, and to identify with the character who tries
to divest himself of all entanglements. As simple as it may
sound, however, this relationship between implied author and
reader is fraught with uncertainty and complexity. This is
because the success of the rhetoric is not automatic. For
example, a character may "escape" an author's rhetoric. As
E. M. Forster has described them, "round," life-like charac-
ters are likely to assume an independent existence. They
"arrive when evoked, but full of the spirit of mutiny,"43
and, to shift to Faulkner's equally fanciful description,
the author who runs along behind them with pencil in hand
may not be able to present them in exactly the light that
his defensive strategies would dictate. In this case the

novel may be plagued by a lack of unity. The rhetoric will

25
claim things for and about the character that are not borne
out by the way he speaks or thinks or behaves. When this
occurs, Horneyan analysis allows us to explore the nature
of the character as he really is, and thus makes it possible
to measure the gap between representation and interpretation.
Another obstacle to rhetorical effectiveness is a lack of
rhetorical clarity brought about by the implied author's
ambivalence toward a given character. If a character repre-
sents an implied author's barely repressed trends, for ex-
ample, he may simultaneously despise him and wish to glorify
him. In these cases, as we shall see, Horneyan theory can
be of assistance in understanding the ambivalence of rhetoric
and audience response regarding the character in question.
Yet another obstacle may be created by the reader's own
defensive strategies. A predominantly aggressive reader,
for example, may feel that a self—effacing character is too
dependent on others,'kx>much the self-pitying complainer,
and may reject him as a result, even though the implied
author's rhetoric clearly asks him to sympathize with the
victim's plight. In this case, Horney's theories will help
us to understand the unsuccessful relationship of author
and reader.

This last obstacle is of special interest to the
critic. He must, after all, predicate his discussion of
reader reaction on his own response, which may be as defen-
sive or idiosyncratic as the next person's. It is necessary

for him to strive to analyze the author's rhetoric in

26
objective detail, and to consider the responses of other
critics, in order to avoid revealing more about himself
(not necessarily a subject of widespread interest among those
who will read his criticism) than about the work in question.
Nevertheless, a critical endeavor that is not, to use
Frederick Crew's descriptive term, "anesthetic," that does
not neglect the human nature of a literary work,44 is likely
to involve some self-revelation on the part of the critic.
Malcolm Cowley says in commenting on "deep" psychological
criticism of Faulkner's work, ". . . I begin to be dubious
about that 'depth' now that so many critics have plumbed it
at no inconvenience to themselves."45 The critic who uses
the method outlined above becomes part of the psychological
phenomenon to be studied. He occupies the reader's place
in the implied author-character-reader triangle, and he
must "inconvenience" himself by analyzing and considering

his own reactions.

ii. Horney, Maslow, and Faulkner

Using the Horneyan method of psychological analysis,
we find that there are similarities in the characterizations
and in the the psychological interactions of the implied
author-character-reader "triangles" in The Sound and the
Quay, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August. These similar-
ities revolve around the conflict between the predominantly
self-effacing stance of the implied author of these works,
and his fascination with and indulgence of aggressive char-

acters. As we have seen, the stance of the predominantly

27

self—effacing type is that of the martyr who sacrifices his
independence and his opportunities for personal fulfillment
to others, but expects the "payment" of their love and at-
tention in return. His value system is based on justice:
sensitivity and self—sacrifice should be rewarded. When
they are not, he feels cheated and resentful. We would ex-
pect such a person to abhor any evidence of the kind of ag-
gressive behavior or attitudes that threaten the weak, and
he very often does. But, since he has repressed aggressive
trends himself, his response is not always so predictable.
Horney describes it:

He does abhbr aggressive, arrogant, or vindictive

traits in others but also secretly or openly

adores them, and does so indiscriminately--without

distinction between genuine self confidence and

hollow arrogance, between real strength and ego-

centric brutality. We easily understand that,

chafing under his enforced humility, he adores in

others aggressive qualities which he lacks or

which are unavailable to him. But gradually we

realize that this is not the complete explanation.

We see that a more deeply hidden set of values is

also operating in him, and that he admires in an

aggressive type the expansive drives which for the

sake of his gntegration he must so deeply suppress
in himself.4

It is this pattern of alternating abhorrence and adoration
of aggressive trends on the part of the basically self-
effacing, justice-oriented personality that we will be ex-
amining in our study of the first three of Faulkner's great-
est novels.

To generalize, the implied authors of The Sound and
the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August see their worlds
in terms of the self—effacing solution. With their subtle

28

rhetoric, they ask the reader's identification with charac-
ters who are victims, or whose sensitivity and self-
sacrifice go largely unappreciated by a world seen as un-
just: Quentin Compson, Dilsey, Darl and Addie Bundren, the
young Joe Christmas. As a result these novels present a
picture of the human condition as frustrating and bleak,
though man's ability to "prevail" over this frustration and
grimness, exemplified by characters like Dilsey or Addie
Bundren, has been the subject of much thematic criticism.

Existing alongside this dominantly self-effacing ap-
proach, however, is a disguised "adoration" of aggressive
trends, revealed in the tendency of the implied authors of
these novels to use subtle rhetorical devices to reveal
their own identification with aggressive tendencies in their
characters, and to ask their readers to share it. It is
this trend (hardly the only important aSpect of Faulkner's
work, but perhaps the one that has been least explored)
that provides the primary subject of the first three studies
which follow. In our analyses of Jason Compson, Anse
Bundren, and Joe Christmas and their roles in the novels
they inhabit, we shall uncover an indulgence in aggressive
fantasy on the part of their implied creators that is at
odds with the dominant value systems of the works involved.
As we shall see, Jason Compson, who is well described by
Horney's theories about the arrogant—vindictive personality,
a sub-category of the aggressive type, is allowed to under-

cut our identification and concern with the rest of the

29
Compsons. And Anse Bundren, who is profoundly self-
alienated though he seems to be just too lazy to "choose"
a dominant solution, is used by his creator in an aggres-
sive way, as a kind of weapon against the other characters

and themes of As I Lay Dying. It is in Light in August,

 

 

however, that these aggressive trends receive their ful-

lest indulgence. The portrayal of the predominantly arrogant—
vindictive adult Joe Christmas comes to dominate the entire
novel. Joe's way of seeing the world becomes the implied
author's way of seeing it, and through the novel's subtle
rhetoric, the reader is asked to join in this view.

Ultimately the aggressive content of the novel becomes so
overwhelming as to be disturbing to its creator, and he
withdraws to the self effacing position and makes an abused
martyr of his masmmy-seeking creation.

Coming to The Hamlet after Light in August we notice

 

a pronounced change in atmosphere which can be accounted
for by Third Force theory. Here we find that the theories
of Maslow regarding self—actualization are more relevant
than the theories of Horney regarding self-alienation. Our
analysis will demonstrate that this novel is controlled by
a guiding consciousness at ease in the world, and thus able
to approach it without the interference of defensive strat-

egies. In the case of The Hamlet the act of creation appears

 

to be part of the drive towards self fulfillment, rather
than part of the search for glory. Here our primary concern

is with Ratliff, whose robust mental health is allowed to

50
dominate the novel and its rhetoric.

The analysis outlined above will inevitably raise
questions that it is not equipped to answer. How does the
psychological analysis of the implied author of these vari-
ous Faulkner works reflect on the psychological make-up of
Faulkner himself? What happened to Faulkner between Light

in August and The Hamlet to account for the dramatic con-

 

trast between these two novels? These are legitimate sub—
jects for the psycho-biographer; after all, Faulkner-in-
the-flesh47 did create the "second selves" and the charac-
ters that are the subject of our analysis. But the present
study carefully limits itself to the individual fictional
worlds in question. Each of these worlds has its own
separate boundaries, and all must, for our purposes, remain
separate from the life of the'man ultimately responsible
for their creation.

I do not intend, then, to "analyze" Faulkner, the
man, but to provide readers with a new way to appreciate
his great mimetic achievements. The theories of Horney and
Maslow offer us considerable insight into the complexity
and abundant life of his human creations. By studying com—
mon interpsychic and intrapsychic strategies we become more
aware of the nuances of human behavior, and the gesture or
remark that might otherwise appear to be meaningless if
enjoyable "business" now can be seen as part of a coherent
psychological portrait of a human being. Critics have

always appreciated Faulkner's characterizations, but through

51
our use of Horney and Maslow we are able to eXplain why they
are so effective. The other major advantage of the approach,
as we have seen, is that it allows us to analyze the dynamics
of the implied author-character-reader triangle. The method
and manner in which the implied author attempts to "bounce"
the reader into accepting his "emotions and judgments" pro-
vide the basis for the fictional experience. By giving us
a means of understanding these "emotions and judgments,"
their relationship to the creation and evaluation of charac-
ter, and their interaction with the "emotions and judgments"
of the reader, our psychological approach greatly increases
the depth and quality of our insight into the novels con—
cerned.

Of course it remains to be noted that, while we may
find Horney and Maslow useful in understanding and describing
characters, Faulkner did not need them to tell him how a man
like Jason Compson or V. K. Ratliff would think or behave.
The insight of the great mimetic artist into human motiva-
tion and behavior is at least as profound as that of the
modern psychologist. Just as we go to Horney or Maslow for
the tools that will allow us to understand Faulkner's work,
the student of psychology might well go to Faulkner to in-
crease the breadth and depth of his understanding of human

nature.

52
NOTES

lConrad Aiken, "William Faulkner: The Novel as Form,"
in Faulkner: Three Decades of Criticism, Frederick J. Hoffman
and OIga Vickery, eds. (East Lansing{_I960), pp. 135-42.

2George Marion O'Donnell, "Faulkner's mythology,"
Three Decades, pp. 82-93.

3Most critics consider both meaning and technique, of
course, but for the purpose of summary it is perhaps useful
to separate those whose primary concerns are aesthetic from
those whose primary concerns are thematic.

To mention-a few prominent critics whose explorations
of Faulkner's form and technique are especially useful:
Warren Beck, "William Faulkner's Style," Three Decades,
pp. 142-56, and Faulkner: Essa a (Madison, 1976); Andre
Bleikasten, The Most Splendid ailure: Faulkner's The
Sound and the Fugy (Bloomington and LOndon, 19767, and
Faulkner's As I La D in (Bloomin ton and London, 1973);
Jose h Reed, Faulkner's Narrative New Haven and London,
1973 ; Walter J. Slatoff, Quest‘for Failure: A Study of
William Faulkner Westport, 1972); Linda Wagner, Hemin wa
andIFéulkner: Inventors/Masters (Metuchen, N. J., 1975;.
Some recent studies have used psychological or linguistic
theory to explore Faulkner's technical or formal achieve-
ment: John Irwin, Doubling and Incest,R§petition and
Revenge: A Speculative Study of Faulkner (Baltimore, 1975);
Judith Slater;_wOuentin's Tunnel Vision: Modes of Percep-
tion and their Stylistic Realization in The Sound and the
Fur ," Literature and Psychology (1979); Stephen Ross,

oice in Narrative Texts: The Example of As I Lgy Dying,"
PMLA, 94, 2 (March 1979), 300-310.

Many of the best known Faulkner critics seem to be
primarily interested in theme: Cleanth Brooks, William
Faulkner: The Yoknapatatha Countr (New Haven, I953); John
W: Hunt, WilliamIFEulkner: Art in hgological Tension
(Syracuse, 1965); Michael Millgate, The Achievement of
William Faulkner (New York, 1966); OI’a Vickery, The Novels
ofWilliam Faquner (Louisianna, 1964 ; Joseph Gold, William
Faulkner: A Study in Humanism from Metaphor to Discourse
(Norman, OK, 1966). Mbre recently, Myra Jehlen has used
the theories of Marxism to examine what she sees as the
motives behind Faulkner's themes in Class and Character in
Faulkner's South (New York, 1976), and Albert J. Guerard
has used psychoanalytic theory to examine the buried con-
tent of some of his most powerful work, The Triumph of the
Novel: Dickens Dostoevsky,_Faulkner (New York,'l976).

 

4A8 Wagner points out, the interest in "craft" or
technique is closely related to the interest in realism.
Part of the reason for Faulkner's success as a creator of
realistic characters is flexibility of presentation.

55

Jason Compson, for example, would hardly seem so vivid had
he been presented only by a traditional omniscient narrator.
See Wagner, p. VII. But in order to make my topic more
manageable, I will usually take Faulkner's technqiue rather
for granted, focusing on effect rather than cause.

5The phrase is probably Pound's, and,as Wagner says,
it "echoes throughout this period of experimentation in all
the arts," p. VII.

6Henry James quoted in The Theory of Fiction: Henry
James, James E. Miller Jr., ed.OTLincoln, Nebraska, 1972),
p. 93.

7Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition
(Garden City, New York, 1956), p. 12.

 

8Quoted in Faulkner in the University, Frederick L.
Gwynn and Joseph Blotner, eds. (Charlotsville, 1959),
p. 118.

 

9Universit , p. 198.

10University, p. 120.

11See William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country, or
Faulkner: Essay_.

 

l2Vickery, p. 296.

13Irving Howe, William Faulkner (New York, 1962),
p. 4.

 

l4James, p. 54.
15Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago
and London, 1961).

16Booth, p. 86.

17E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1954),
p. 118.

18Booth, p. 158.

19Booth, p. 272.

208cc Guerard, Irwin, or Slater.

21William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (New York, 1930),
p. 51.

54

22Bernard J. Paris, A Psychological Approach to
Fiction (Bloomington and London, 1974). p. X.

23Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psyphology of Being
(New York, 1968), p. 5.

24Maslow, p. 23.

25Maslow, p. 16.

26Maslow, p. 167.

27Maslow, p. 5.

28Horney consistently uses the terms "neurotic" and
"neurosis" to describe her subjects and their way of dealing
with the world. Since terms like these can prove rather
off-putting in a non-clinical context, I will avoid them
except when making direct reference to Horney.

29Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth (New York,
1950), p. 18.

30Horney, p. 19.
51

52

Horney, p. 19.
Horney, p. 260.
33Horney, p. 21.
34Horney, p. 22.

35Horney, p. 24.

36Horney, p. 87.

37Horney, p. 99.

38Horney, p. 117.

39Horney, p. 41.
40

41For a discussion of the issue of the relative
"health" or wisdom of the novelist, see Paris, pp. 17-23,
and pp. 278-81, where he claims that most novelists, like
most other people, are self—alienated, and that we err in
looking to them for superior interpretations of characters
and events. It is their ability to represent that we must
value most highly.

Horney, p. 85.

55

421 leave Maslow out of this part of the discussion,
since, for my purposes, his theories apply only to 2p;
Hamlet. The discussion of the relationship of the drive
toward self—realization and literary creation will be taken
up specifically in connection with this novel.

43Forster, p. 102.

44Frederick Crews, Out Of My System (New York,
1975). pp. 77-78.

45Malcolm Cowley, And I Worked at the Writer's Trade
(New York, 1978), p. 227.

46Horney, p. 220.

47The phrase is Cowley's. He describes the distinc-
tion between Faulkner and his "second self": "That need to
dramatize everyone in his world, and himself along with the
others, was among the fixed laws of Faulkner's imagination.
He even Spoke of himself in the third person--'Fau1kner
might have thought,' he was heard to say-~as if Faulkner-
who-wrote-the—novels was another dramatized character to be
sharply distinguished from Faulkner—in-the-flesh."

CHAPTER II

THE APPEAL OF THE GOOD OLD BOY:
A HORNEYAN ANALYSIS OF JASON
COMPSON AND THE SOUND AND THE FURY

Critical studies of The Sound and the Fupy tend to

 

focus on the section "narrated" by Quentin, the failed
romantic and suicide whose plight seems to have a special
connection to the meaning of the novel as a whole. As
Joseph Reed says, Quentin's section is "theme dominated";1
by virtue of its style (much of it what Warren Beck calls
Faulkner's "full style")2 and content, it asks us to gen-
eralize from Quentin's emotions and experiences, to find in
his tortured ramblings a message for and about modern man.

In other words, it would seem that the implied author of

The Sound and the Fupy asks us to share his concern for and

 

identification with Quentin, to see the world with Quentin's
eyes, and most of the classic analyses of the novel do so.

It is most often read as the story of the decline of a family
brought about by the erosion of love and traditional values,
and by an inability to deal with a present that is insensi-
tive to human needs and dominated by what later comes to be
known as Snopesism.3 The fourth section of the novel, that
part narrated by Faulkner himself, and containing most

reference to Dilsey, usually considered Faulkner's most

56

57

morally admirable character, is also important to this
standard interpretation of the novel. Dilsey's response
to injustice, hardship, failure, and abuse is acceptance,
endurance, and love, and this provides a hopeful counter-
point to Quentin's despair and capitulation.

In this context Jason Compson, the middle brother,
is seen as representative of the world that destroys Quentin
and makes of Dilsey's life an endless round of suffering.
His section is a masterpiece of irony. The reader is in
complicity with the implied author in seeing through Jason's
self serving interpretations of people and events, and in
rejecting out of hand his views about his family and about

4 But there is a body of criticism that

life in general.
offers some opposition to this view of the thematic con-
sistency of The Sound and the Fury. Irving Howe offers a
hint of it when he says that Quentin's section seems unable
to bear the thematic weight that Faulkner intends it to
carry.5 Some critics6 contend that a certain amount of
this thematic weight is transferred to Jason's section by
virtue of the appeal of his voice, or the practicality of
his outlook, or the irresistibility of his humor. The as-
sumption underlying interpretations such as these is that
the implied author of The Sound and the Fury identifies in
some way with the middle Compson brother, and promotes
reader identification with him as well, thus disallowing

the total thematic dominance of Quentin and Dilsey. This

although almost no one disputes Jason's shortcomings as a

58
human being.7 This study follows the lead of these critics,
but uses Horneyan psychology to examine the nature of
Jason's character and its effects on the dynamics of The
Sound and the Fury.

In a controversial essay on Jason, Linda Wagner looks
more closely at his personality than other critics have
done, making use of the "surplus margin of life" that is
part of his portrait, examining the origins of his be-
havior instead of merely describing his villainy. She
emphasizes the lack of love and comfort given Jason in the
scenes Faulkner shows of his childhood, and notes that his
unappealing personality is the direct result of this neglect.
At the same time, she contends that much of his behavior in
sections three and four stems from his desire to preserve
the family honor;8 and, along with other critics, she makes
the point that his practical sense allows him to function
well in the world that defeats Quentin and stymies Dilsey.

Though Wagner's essay, particularly those sections
that deal with Jason's childhood, allows us necessary in-
sight into Jason's habits of mind and motivation, Horney's
theories regarding the arrogant-vindictive type will allow
us to explain the complexities of his character more
thoroughly. The wounds of Jason's childhood go even deeper
than Wagner imagines; his adult behavior is not that of a
rational survivor, nor is it the result of common sense or
enlightened self interest. Instead it is controlled by

his compulsive needs for triumph and revenge.

59

The arrogant-vindictive person is perhaps the least
sympathetic of all Horneyan types. Deprived of love and
approval in his childhood, he can deal with others only by
seeking to revenge himself on them for the wrongs done him
in the past. His ideal self is master over all; his search
for glory takes the form of a drive toward vindictive
triumph. Injuries to his neurotic pride produce rage; self
hate finds an outlet in sadism. Those who surround the
arrogant—vindictive type thus inevitably become his victims,
and we can clearly see this victimization of others taking
place as we follow Jason. Even the reader begins to feel
himself put in the position of the victim, as we can perhaps
guess from the strong language used in critical analyses of
his character. Naturally a person like this is bound to
provoke the resentment of those around him. But it is not
enough merely to hate and resent Jason. Horney emphasizes
that however objectionable the arrogant-vindictive type may
appear, he is a suffering and struggling human being (NEG,
p. 209) whose unattractive personality is not a matter of
choice, but of compulsive response to the very bad condi-
tions for human growth provided him in his childhood. In
spite of what John L. Longley, Jr. says, attention to the
causes of Jason's behavior is not designed to excuse him,
to make him appear "the innocent victim of bad sociology
(sic)."9 Rather it is designed to take into account the
considerable detail on Jason that Faulkner provides, detail

that makes it impossible to view Jason as a one dimensional

40
villain.

Horney describes the typical childhood of the arrogant-
vindictive type:

Sheer brutality, humiliation, derision, neglect

and flagrant hypocrisy, all these assailed a

child of especially great sensitivity . . . He

may make some pathetic and unsuccessful attempts

to win interest, or affection, but finally chokes

offall tender needs. He gradually 'decides' that

genuine affection is not only unattainable for him

but that it doesn't exist at all . . . so he is no

longer anxious to please but can give free range,

at least in his mind to his ample supply of bitter

resentment (NHG, p. 202).
As Wagner's essay reveals in some detail, Jason's childhood
was indeed a disaster, his obnoxiousness a response to the
failure of everyone around him to treat him as if he were
a lovable and worthwhile human being. His mother's hypoc-
risy, the neglect of the rest of the family, the derision
of the black family retainers, all of these things con—
tribute to Jason's "decision" to turn aggressor.

The Jason of the Benjy and Quentin sections is the fat
little boy, the odd man left out of the golden aura sur-
rounding Caddy in which Quentin and Benjy bask. Landing on
the ground with his hands in his pockets like a "trussed
fowl," chewing paper in the corner, he is the dull child
that everyone tries to ignore. "It was always her and
Quentin," whines his mother, whose support comes too late,
"they were always conspiring against me. Against you too

10 For once we

though you were too young to realize it."
know she is right, except for the "realizing." When

Quentin and Caddy splash each other in the branch, or when

41
Caddy talks the others into slipping out and climbing the
tree to see Damuddy's death bed, Jason's role is not that of
co-conspirator, but that of stool pigeon. "Jason will
tell," says Caddy repeatedly. "I'm going to tell," says
Jason, over and over, seeking in the role of tattle tale the
time honored refuge of the rejected child.

Mr. Compson, whatever his other faults, appears in the
first two sections as a man who loves and enjoys children.
His general stance is one of amused tolerance and concern.
He notices and approves when Quentin gets in a fight at
school. He goes along with Caddy's authentically childlike
demand that everyone "mind" her. He picks up Benjy, and is
the only one who wants to pick Caddy up after her profoundly
disastrous fall. But, as Wagner points out, when Jason
lands in front of him "all trussed up," he does not move.
"Where's Quentin," he says (SF, p. 27). Jason tries again,
"Caddy and Quentin threw water on each other." "They did,"
Father says. The only hint we have of Mr. Compson as dis-
ciplinarian is that the cries of Jason can be heard from
the other room after he has cut up (accidentally he says)
Benjy's paper dolls. "We could hear Jason too, crying
loud behind the wall" (SF, p. 80). From what we know of
Mr. Compson, we can speculate that the rather average and
unattractive middle son showing no particular intellectual
aptitude would have less appeal for a manvflnl"sat all day
long with a decanter of whiskey and a litter of dogeared

Horaces and Livys and Catulluses, composing (it was said)

42
caustic and satiric eulogies on both his dead and his liv-
ing fellow townsmen" (SF, p. 410), than would his beautiful
and doomed little daughter, or his intelligent and dreamy
eyed first son. He will hold Jason on his lap if the latter
does not snuffle too much, but there is little warmth be-
tween them.

There are four mother figures in Jason's childhood,
but they too neglect and disappoint him. His grandmother,
Damuddy, deserts him with her death, which occurs on the
day that Faulkner picks up the story of the Compson family.
She alone has loved the fat little Jason, letting him sleep
with her, and "spoiling" him so badly, Mrs. Compson com-
plains, that it takes two years to wean him of the habit of
being loved. Wagner's essay makes the case that Jason's
obnoxious behavior in the famous family scenes--the branch,
the kitchen, the tree-~ref1ects his fears about Damuddy's
illness. Further exploration of Jason's childhood will
convince us that he has a right to his grief. His relation-
ship with Damuddy is virtually his only experience of "love
and belonging."

In his portrayal of Mrs. Compson's relationship to
Jason, Faulkner seems to have depicted the perfect condi-
tions for the development of an arrogant-vindictive person—
ality. From the already mentioned comment she makes to
Caddy about the latter's treatment of Benjy, it is evident
that during his very young years she Showed no interest in

him. "You humor him too much. You and your father both.

45
You don't realize that I am the one who has to pay for it.
Damuddy spoiled Jason that way and it took him two years
to outgrow it . . ." (SE, p. 77). Mrs. Compson is self-
alienated herself, of course, and her claims—-she should
never be called on for any physical or emotional effort,
everyone owes her recompense for the failure of reality to
live up to her expectations, nothing should ever happen to
disturb her peace, everyone should recognize her great
strength and her martyrdom-~make her the worst possible
mother. To Quentin and Caddy she is no mother at all ("If
only I had a mother," says Quentin, and at Mrs. Compson's
insistence Caddy's name is not even Spoken in the house)
and to Jason She is worse. Because once he is past the
stage of desiring to "move towards" others, once Damuddy has
been dead a while and he has made the unconscious "decision"
that affection is not only unattainable for him but non-
existent, an illusion, she takes him up. She elevates him
to the position of number one in what passes for her heart,
glorifying him, reinforcing his compulsive notion that he
must be master over all. Jason, she now says, is her only
real baby, the "only one her heart went out to without
dread" (SF, p. 126). "He has never given me one moment's
sorrow since I first held him in my arms" (SF, p. 127).
He pulls at her heart, this boy who is ". . . the only one
of my children with any practical sense" (SF, p. 116).
Later he becomes the head of her household. Having invested

her considerable false pride in him, she names him lord over

44
all, and is at pains to nurture his sense that the world
has injured him.

'I know you haven't had the chance the others had,

that you've had to bury yourself in a little

country store . . . I knew your father would never

realize that you were the only one who had any

business sense' (SF, p. 275).
What his mother gives Jason is not the warmth and affec-
tion that would have nurtured the growth of his real self,
but the kind of support perfectly designed to confirm him
in his self-alienated search for glory. She is a kind of
grotesque and saturnine cheerleader who, having given up
on her own life, all but does handstands to Show her ap-
proval of Jason's compulsive drives for vindication and
mastery. _

That Caddy is a mother figure for both Benjy and
Quentin has been mentioned by many critics. She carries
Benjy around until he is at least five, and tries to com-
pensate for everything his life must lack, "You're not a
poor baby. Are you. You've got your Caddy. Haven't you
got your Caddy" (SF, p. 8). And, according to John Irwin,
Caddy is not only Quentin's double and the object of his
incestuous desires, but also a mother substitute, his
desire for her signifying both Oedipal drives and a need
to return to the peace of the womb. Quentin and Benjy
suffer immensely as a consequence of their involvement
with Caddy, but as boys they move within her golden glow.

Jason most emphatically does not. "Are you going to tell

Jason," She asks in her first recorded words to him.

45
"Crybaby," she taunts when he cries for Damuddy. "Ifi sit
in Damuddy's chair," she announces, "she eats in bed" (SF,
p. 27). "He's chewing paper again" (SF, p. 88). "You shut
your mouth. You dirty little beast" (SF, p. 49). Faulkner's
"heart's darling" unquestionably derides and neglects her
middle brother, denying him out of who knows what natural
antipathy or inbred disgust, her considerable maternal
skills. "You never had a drop of warm blood in you" (SF,
p. 259), she tells him later, and she seems to be right.
But Faulkner has shown us that this lack of warmth has a
source.

Dilsey takes up much of the maternal slack in the
Compson household: lecturing, feeding, putting to bed, com-
forting, but we never see any of her notorious warmth ex-
tended in Jason's direction. Faulkner says in the appendix
that she has been his "sworn enemy since birth" (SF, p. 420);
and Mrs. Compson seems to be right when she tells Dilsey,

"I know you never had any tenderness for Jason" (SF, p. 559).
Of the group in the kitchen she is the only one who knows
that Damuddy is not only sick but dead, but she does not
undertake to comfort Jason. As any fat person would, he
manages to eat his dinner despite his emotional state, but
then he begins to cry. "Hush," she keeps telling him.

Then finally, "You wantib get whipped" (SF, pp. 89-90).
Dilsey is ordinarily the essence of selfless, giving love,
but by the time we see her with Jason the vicious circle

is revolving. She cannot love Jason because he is not

46

lovable. He is not lovable because no one loves him.

Certainly the implied author does not intend the reader
to fault Caddy or Dilsey for not serving as mother figures
to Jason. Much of the novel encourages us to admire them
and detest him. As soon mother a rat or a snake. But the
creator of this novel understood human nature well enough
to know that the Jason of sections three and four could not
have Sprung from a childhood in which his sister was asso-
ciated in his mind with the light and warmth of fire, or
in which an old black servant coddled and cuddled him.
Jason's childhood has little to do with the over all design

of The Sound and the Fury; but it is part of its abundant

 

life, life that has often been passed over in favor of con-
cern for technique or theme.

The adolescence of Caddy and Quentin is an explosive
one, presented to us in a series of striking scenes-—Caddy
in the branch with the water flowing about her hips, Quentin
with his nose to the ground to escape the odor of honey—
suckle, the two of them in the hog wallow. In the back-
ground, providing an horrific chorus, is Benjy, bellowing
at Caddy's new dress, bellowing at her perfume, bellowing
at her fall from grace. But at this time of intense family
romance Jason is hardly mentioned, except by his mother,
who would like to have him accompany her on an unlikely
journey of escape (too late she volunteers a role in the
Oedipal drama). While Quentin's and Benjy's grief at

Caddy's "unvirgin" status is at the very center of the

47
novel, Jason's lot is the derision and neglect due the comic
book little brother. A rare exchange with Caddy: "He don't
like that prissy dress. You think you're grown up don't
you. You think your're better than anybody else, don't
you. Prissy." "Shut your mouth you dirty little beast"
(SE, p. 49). Again he lurks outside the family circle, de-
veloping a defense that will save him from suicide and cas-
tration, certainly, (by now the family circle is a dangerous
place to be) but that will exclude him, as Horney says,
". . . from all that makes life worth living--from joy,
happiness, love, creativeness, growth" (NHG, p. 211). His
positive feelings are crushed; the seeds of his vindictive-
ness are planted. He has "chosen" his "solution."
As Horney describes it,

He is and will be infinitely better than 'they'

are. He will become great and put them to shame.

He will Show them how they have misjudged and

wronged him. He will become the great hero, the

persecutor. Driven by an understandable need for

vindication, revenge, and triumph, these are not

idle fantasies. They determine the course of his

life (NHG, p. 205).
Jason's adulthood as an aggressive type begins with a vin-_
dictive triumph. A vindictive triumph involves the achieve-
ment of revenge and mastery. It is motivated by . . .
impulses to take revenge for humiliations suffered in
childhood and momentarily establishes the ascendancy (at
least in his own mind) of the compulsively vindictive person
over those against whom it is perpetrated. For this reason

it is extremely gratifying to his pride in his ideal self--

producing feelings of exhilaration as he is released from

48
his self hate. At the moment of vindictive triumph he is
his ideal self; his hated actual self disappears.

Jason's first and most important vindictive triumph
occurs on the day his father is buried. Until now his at-
tempts at vindictiveness have been childish and not very
satisfying, but on this day he achieves a triumph of great
significance, one that colors the rest of his life.

Things are going badly for Jason on this day. He
has a new suit, but it is raining and no one seems to care
that he is getting wet. Since his father came back with
baby Quentin and news of Jason's lost chance for a bank
job, Jason has been working in the hardware store and wit-
nessing his father's ever more energetic attempts to drink
himself to death. As he watches the men filling his father's
grave ". . . throwing dirt into it, slapping it on anyway
like they were making mortar or something" (SF, p. 250),
he begins to feel "sort of funny." Later as he talks to
Caddy this funny feeling turns to one we come to recognize
as rage ("kind of mad or something") as he thinks about his
lost job, about his hopeless position in a household with
the clove-sucking Uncle- Maury as its head, and, no doubt
most importantly, about ". . . when we were little" (SF,
p. 252). Reality is closing in. His hated actual self
looms before him—-the least favored child stuck in a dead
end job in a small town, unloved and unrespected. He sees
his chance for revenge, his chance to externalize his self

hate, when Caddy offers him money if he will let her "see"

49
her daughter. The resulting maneuver with Mink and the car-
riage resembles nothing so much as a childish pun (Can I
see your brother for a minute? Sure, take a look at him),
but the sight of Caddy running after them and jerking with
rage in the hardware store the next day is extremely satis-
fying to Jason. His pride is gratified because he has
proved to Caddy, as he says years later, still savoring the
victory, that he is ". . . a different breed of cat from
father" (SF, p. 262), that he is a strong man to be feared
and obeyed. "After She was gone," he says, "I felt better"
(SF, p. 256). Better, Faulkner shows us, than he has since
Damuddy died. In fact, he feels terrific, soaring on the
wings of glory available only to those who have made the
Faustian pact to leave their real selves and the real world
behind. Actually Jason's defeat of Caddy is a silly, sordid
little affair, but it vindicates Jason in his own eyes, and
effectively transfers his feelings of inadequacy onto the
trembling Caddy. The momentary release from self hate and
simultaneous sensation that he is his idealized self is
heady stuff. Now he is the masterful Jason, head of the
family, who can keep the flour barrel full, command his
meals on time, and refuse to take any lip from his women-
folk. In the first flush of his triumph he even thinks he
can control Dilsey. "I put the fear of God into Dilsey.
As much as you can into a nigger that is" (SF, p. 257).
Ultimately Jason's creator will see to it that he is crushed,

"mocked by his own triumphing" (SF, p. 585), but for much of

50

his own section of the novel, what we see is an arrogant-
vindictive type in full bloom: Hitler before Normandy,
Heathcliff after Cathy's death, Nixon before Watergate.

Such gratifying opportunities as that which Caddy
offers Jason do not come along every day, but the arrogant-
vindictive type gets some of this feeling of mastery through
his characteristic behavior towards others which, as Horney
says, is "Openly arrogant, often rude and offensive" (NHG,
p. 199). The motivation for this day to day pattern of be—
havior is much the same as that which leads a man like Jason
to pursue vindictive triumph. He is unconsciously seeking
revenge for wrongs done him, a way to externalize his desire
to punish himself for the gap between his ideal and actual
selves, and a method of scaring others ". . . for the pur-
pose of asserting his claims" (NHG, p. 208). Jason's hate
for his actual self--a middle aged man with a grotesque ex-
cuse for a family and a menial job--is, we imagine from his
behavior, intense. But he can get relief from these negative
feelings by externalizing them onto the very peOple who remind
him of his lowly status. At the same time his rudeness allows
him to express his disgust with himself indirectly, without
feeling it as such, and to scare others into treating him
with Special consideration.

And Jason is appallingly rude. When his newly widowed
mother requests his company on a trip to the cemetery, in-
dicating that his presence would make her feel safe, "Safe

from what," he wants to know, "Father and Quentin can't

51

hurt you" (SF, p. 12). When she expresses concern for his
health, "I thought maybe you were sick" (SF, p. 294), he is
sardonic, "Better luck next time," he says. When she wishes
he would take an aspirin, he suggests that she "keep on
wishing it" (SF, p. 296). As narrator Jason records all
instances of his rudeness with pride, much as a little boy
might repeat his backtalk to the teacher. These quips are
little triumphs for him. Not only is his mother paying for
the wrongs she has done him and learning to fear him, but
he is able briefly to forget his headache, or the sight of
her sitting for all the town to see in a broken down old
buggy along with a very conspicuous idiot, or whatever
reminder of his actual self is threatening at the time.

Dilsey is a different matter. With her compliant
attitude she stirs Jason's self hate by reminding him of
his own strongly repressed desires to "move towards" others.
In addition, she stands in the way of his "search for glory"
because of her clear-eyed view of his actual self and her
ability to foil him in small matters such as the serving of
his dinner. Jason's rudeness to Dilsey is indicative of his
desire to revenge himself on her for hating him, and it is
an outlet for the negative feelings her very existence in-
spires in him (even when he quits paying her she will not
leave), but he cannot help but reveal that it is not effec-
tive as a means of exercising his claims. Dilsey just
absorbs Jason's rudeness as she would the spite of a small

child. "You just tryin youself tonight" (SF, p. 520), just

52
as she says to Luster. And try himself he does whenever he
comes in contact with her: slamming the door in her face,
demanding his meals sarcastically, sending her upstairs and
expressing annoyance at her arthritic slowness, referring
to her in her presence as "an old half dead nigger" (SF,
p. 250).

Jason's niece, Quentin, has no "identity or individual-
ity" (SF, p. 582) for him, but as the symbol of his lost
bank job she is the logical target of his desires for re-
venge. Not only that, but her sluttish behavior is a con—
tinual reminder of the gap between his ideal and actual
selves. He is not Jason, master of all he surveys, but
Jason, helpless observer of the final ugly stages of his
family's deterioration.‘ Thus his rude treatment of Quentin
is inspired not only by his desires for revenge against
Caddy, but by his need to find a release for his self hate.
He would also like to achieve mastery over Quentin, to teach
her that when he tells her to do something she has got to
do it. In fact, Jason's treatment of Quentin is so nasty
that even the sheriff accuses him of driving her out of the
house. He torments her, insults her, and makes his contempt
for her clear at every opportunity. The only fathershe has,
he denies her even the appearance of the sympathy and affec-
tion that is her due. When, with a despair horrible in one
so young, she wonders why she was ever born, he answers with
a taunt about her illegitimacy: "And I know of at least one

other person that dont understand all he knows about

55
that" (g3, p. 234).

Jason's boss, Earl, is another target for his rudeness.
Like Dilsey, Earl moves towards others; he is tolerant,
considerate, kind. And, like her, he makes Jason uncom-
fortable because in order for his "solution" to work he
must convince himself that these virtues simply do not exist.
Earl's kindness must therefore be interpreted as attempts to
control Jason, so that the appropriate response will be,
not recognition and gratitude, but anger and rudeness. Thus
Earl's offer to buy Jason lunch is met with "I can still
manage to feed myself, I reckon" (SF, p. 268). And when
Earl tells him that his long, unexplained absence is "all
right," Jason replies, "And if it's not all right you known
what you can do about it" (SF, p. 506).

If Jason's rudeness is enough to identify him as the
villain of the piece without an omniscient narrator, it is
his all pervasive sense of injury that adds flesh and bone
to his characterization, that makes him a recognizable human
being with a life outside his illustrative function. For
the arrogant—vindictive type his sense of injury, of people
and things plotting against him, is an extremely valuable
commodity because it makes up "the bill he presents to the
world" (Egg, p. 201). It is the force that justifies his
claims and fuels his search for glory. Jason has a need to
imagine that everything and everybody is conspiring to
injure him in some way. It's Easter? Then the servants

will go to church and he will have to eat a cold dinner.

54

The "damn Jews" in New York take his money; the pigeons
mess up the town Clock so that somebody who works for a
living has to see his tax dollar spent getting it cleaned;
the market closes too early; nobody fixes his tire; he gets
headaches when it would only be an "even break" not to have
them; and when he gets out of his car to walk it must be
through the only plowed field (lazy farmers) he has seen
since town. The roads are as bumpy as "corrugated iron
roofing: (SF, p. 297); the sun positions itself so as to
shine in his eyes, and naturally it will rain (it does not)
on his trip to Mottstown since the roads are clay. After
working all day he will no doubt have to run errands for
his mother, and when he goes to forge a check for her bene-
fit it is just his luck to be out of blanks. Every ob-
stacle put in his way is a violation of his claims, a re-
fusal to treat him in accordance with his grandiose notions
about himself. When reality stubbornly refuses to cooperate
with his demand that all be arranged according to his de-
sires, he feels angry, injured. This anger and injury
justifies any unhappiness or bad behavior on his part. We
have already observed Jason's search for vindictive triumph
and his superficially unpleasant behavior. Horney's de-
scription of this pattern of injury and revenge will allow
us to discuss in more depth his way of conducting himself
in relation to his family and the world.

The major injury done Jason in his eyes has been in-

flicted on him by his family. Both Caddy and Quentin have

55
"benifited" from the sale of Benjy's pasture, but Jason's
bank job has gone the way of Caddy's virtue. From the
moment that baby Quentin comes to live with the Compsons--
"Well, they brought my job home tonight" (SF, p. 246)--
Jason is condemned to do menial, poorly rewarded labor for
the rest of his days. His sense that he has been treated
unjustly is something that he must constantly keep alive,
and throughout the last two sections we see him striving
to do so. Faulkner makes much, in the appendix, of Jason's
perseverance in supporting his family under these condi-

11 and, as Wagner points out, Jason has indeed been

tions,
injured. But Jason's §gp§g of injury is something quite
apart from the injury itself. It is an obsession, a source
of perverse pleasure because it;hstifies his "choice" of
solution; life is out to get him, so it is appropriate for
him to strike back. Seventeen years after the fact, the
injury is constantly on his mind. "I never had time to go
to Harvard like Quentin or drink myself into the ground like
Father. I had to work" (SF, p. 224). And of his father,
"At least I never heard of him offering to sell anything to
send me to Harvard" (SF, p. 245). "Well, Jason likes work,"
he tells us, "I says no I never had any university advan-
tages . . ." (§E, P. 245)-

Jason's major act of revenge for the injuries done
him by his family is to extort money from Caddy, black

mailing her for the illegitimacy of her daughter, devising

an elaborate plan to deprive what is left of the Compsons

56

of their chance to live decently. Every month he is able
to re-live the sweetness of his first vindictive triumph
over Caddy, taking the money not from mere greediness (like
Quentin the money has no "entity or individuality" for
Jason, and he seems to have no plans for it), but in exchange
for his carefully nurtured injuries. The disproportionate
emphasis. that he places on the contents of that black
box (the loss of it becomes the central tragedy of his life)
indicates that it represents not only his lost patrimony,
but certainly also the affection and concern due him as a
child but never given. When, in section four, the sheriff
refuses to help Jason recover the money, Jason says, ". . .
thinks he can sit with his hands folded and see me lose my
job. I'll show him_about jobs" (SF, p. 582). The job has
been gone for seventeen years and was never assured. What
Faulkner is showing us here is a man who has the past confused
with the present, injuries inflicted by him confused with
injuries done him, a man whose relationship to reality is
disturbed. Quentin has not taken his job, but he has taken
her chances for happiness. It is not the job that he
probably should have gotten that is lost, but the money
that he should not have gotten. But Jason's sense of real—p
ity is obscured by his sense of injury, and once we under-
stand the dynamics of his personality we do not expect him
to see clearly.

In the appendix Faulkner seems to praise Jason's suc-

cessful assumption of "the entire burden of the rotting

57

family in the rotting house" (SF, p. 421). And in Wagner's
view Jason's behavior is largely governed by the "demands
of honor." She believes that he behaves as he does in
order to preserve the Compson name. But Jason's behavior
as head of the Compson household is governed by the pattern
of injury and revenge that governs the rest of his behavior.
What Faulkner shows us is not a man who is rigorous in order
to preserve order and honor and promote survival, but a man
who compulsively moves against those around him in an effort
to revenge himself for injuries done. The result of his bee
havior is the destruction, not the preservation, of the
Compsons. As David Aiken, using the language of Rev. Shegog's
sermon, says, "His 'sojer face' will continue to be turned
against others as he exploits and destroys the weaker
members of his household. Like Satan he will lead his
legions anywhere to justify his sense of injury."12

Jason chases Quentin not because he hopes to catch her
and reform her, but because the sight of her with the man
in the red tie reminds him of his lack of mastery over
events, and propels him into a vindictive rage so powerful
that he forgets about everything else, even his pounding
head. Quentin refuses to recognize that she has injured
him by depriving him of his job, and that he is therefore,
in Horney's words, entitled to "hurt (her) with impunity"
(Egg, p. 205). She violates his claims by rebelling against
his bad treatment and thus provokes powerful desires for

revenge. In the scene in the hardware store his behavior

58
is that of the neighborhood bully. Beating her knuckles on
.the desk, holding her money order just out of reach, taunt-
ing her with childish expressions, he is not the stern
patriarch, but the spiteful little boy. Quentin should
recognize his claim to any money her mother sends. He is
entitled to feel injured that She does not, and to seek
revenge.

With Luster and the tickets he follows a similar pat-
tern. Again the desired object is held out of reach, again
the triumph is savored as the tickets are thrown one by one
into the stove. Jason is extraordinarily hateful in these
scenes--as Horney says, the arrogant-vindictive type is
"past master in frustrating others" (NHG, p. 199). a most
unsympathetic skill. But his cosmic sense of injury should
have prepared us. When even the sun and the road crews
conspire against you, any aggressive action on your part is
justified.

Benjy's castration was carried out under Jason's orders.
A reSponsible, rational act? Necessary? Perhaps. But
Jason's memories of it, his way of thinking about it, indi—
cate that it also was an aggressive act, a triumph of a sort
that he would like to repeat. He thinks about Ben and then
Miss Quentin: "But like I say they never did enough of that.
I says I know what you need, you need what they did to Ben
then you'd behave" (SF, p. 515). "Well, like I say they
never started soon enough with their cutting and they quit

too soon" (SF, p. 529). The mind boggles at what Jason's

59
notion of the female counterpart of castration might be,
but his fantasies about "cutting" are certainly part of his
compulsive search for revenge and the "glory" of having total
control over those around him.

Jason's solution seems to be working pretty well for
him in his own section. Though he cannot catch Quentin and
the man with the red tie, he is able to reduce her to impo-
tent, biscuit crumbling rage at supper; and his every con-
tact with others leaves him, at least in his own mind, the
victor. But in the fourth section, to the delight of the
reader, Jason is crushed, his solution reduced to tatters
by Quentin's escape. The omniscient narrator of this sec-
tion lingers over Jason's frustration, showing us how his
sense of injury, deprived of any outlet, blossoms and becomes
itself his only comfort. Jason is described in conversation
with the sheriff: "Jason told him, his sense of injury and
impotence feeding upon its own sound so that after a time
he forgot his hate in the violent cumulation of his self-
justification and his outrage" (SE, p. 278). And later,

"He repeated his story, harshly recapitulant, seeming to
get an actual pleasure out of his outrage and impotence"
(§F, p. 578). His trip to Mottstown is undertaken with a
perversely pleasurable certainty that everything will go
wrong: "He looked at the sky, thinking about rain, about
the slick clay roads, himself stalled somewhere miles from
town. He thought about it with a sort of triumph, of the

fact that he was going to miss dinner, that by starting now

60

and so serving his compulsion of haste, he would be at the
greatest possible distance from both towns when noon came.
It seemed to him that, in this circumstance was giving him
a break . . ." (§E, p. 581). Our discussion of the dynamics
of Jason's personality so far allows us to recognize this
delight in a sense of injury--the more intensely Jason feels
wronged, the more his solution is justified. Now this sense
is so strong that, failing any targets for vindictiveness
he lapses into exaggerated aggressive fantasies:

And he drove on out of the bells and out of town,

thinking of himself slogging through the mud

hunting a team. 'And every damn one of them will

be at church.' He thought of how he'd find a

church at last and take a team and of the owner

coming out, shouting at him and of himself striking

the man down. 'I'm Jason Compson. See if you can

stop me. See if you can elect a man to office

that can stop me, he said, thinking of himself

entering the courthouse with a file of soldiers

and dragging the sheriff out (SF, p. 581).
AS his fantasies blossom he sees himself triumphing, not
only over "the rear guards of circumstance," but also "the
embattled legions of both heaven and hell through which he
(tears) his way and put(s) his hands at last on his fleeing
niece" (SF, p. 582). But it is not to be so. Instead we
see him humiliated by an old man with a hatchet and felled
by his own pounding head. He is, in the narrators words,
"mocked by his own triumphing" (SF, p. 585); his solution
has doubled back on him, his neglect of Quentin driving her
to seek her own vindictive triumph. He is described as

sitting in his car, his "invisible life ravelled about him

like a wornout sock" (SF, p. 591). In Horneyan terms this

61
"invisible life" is his ideal self, the fantasy life that
made him lord and master over all. The man we see waiting
in his car in Mottstown for somebody to drive him home--
grey-faced, ineffectual, zombie-like—-is Jason's actual
self. Though he appears once more and is able to establish
his ascendancy over an idiot, a broken down old mare, and a
fourteen year old boy, his creator has placed a great deal
of emphasis on the breaking down of his solution. In spite
of what the Faulkner of the appendix has to say about Jason
holding his own with the SnOpeses, it would seem that in
the universe of The Sound and the Fury the Jasons are not
destined to inherit the earth.

Thus analyzed, the portrait of Jason seems to be one
of a man for whom we can have pity, if we are inclined that
way, but no admiration. Much of the novel's rhetoric en-
courages us to hate him. As we sympathize with his victims
(and sympathy for victims is usually automatic, especially
if they are young like Miss Quentin, or old and arthritic
and big hearted like Dilsey), we must see him as a monster.
And since, as we have seen, much of the novel's thematic
content encourages us to see things Quentin's way, to fault
the world of The Sound and the Fury for its rejection of
his attempts to move towards his fellow man, and to see
Dilsey's perseverance in the offices of love as heroic, a
man who despises and denies love must be a thematic as well

as a mimetic villain.

And yet the vividness, the completeness, the complexity,

62

the felt life of Jason's portrait draws us to him, seems
to tell us that his creator is attracted to his way of
being, and is inviting us to see the world of the novel
with his cynical eye. As Bleikasten asks, "Could it (Jason's
character) be so compelling, so hallucinatingly 'real' if
Jason were not somehow related to the deeper Springs of
Faulkner's creation?"l3 What Bleikasten seems to hint at,
and what our further analysis will lead us to see as a dis-
tinct possibility, is that the creating consciousness of
The Sound and the Fury found in his portrait of Jason an
outlet for his own aggressive tendencies, and was led to
invite the reader's complicity in these tendencies to the
detriment of the unity of the novel.

The intense air of reality that surrounds Jason's
portrait is one reason for his rather perverse appeal, to
us, and probably to his creator as well. The trompe l'oeil
effect of very successful mimesis tends to produce reader
identification with literary characters. AS Booth says,
". . . even characters whose behavior would be intolerable
to us in real life can be made sympathetic with this para-
logical proof that they are human beings like ourselves."14
In Jason's case this "paralogical proof" is based on the
complexity and completeness of his portrayal, which we have
already observed, and on his "voice." It is his language,
his presentation of himself that makes him live and breathe
for us, and endows him with the rather peculiar charm that

captures our imagination and that of his creator as well,

65
and thus allows us to identify with a way of looking at
things that we might find dangerous and unsavory in real
life.

Jason's voice is fun to listen to because it sounds
real; there is something delightful about its authenticity,
its profoundly rural American rhythms and expressions.15
More than one critic has used the word "relief" to describe
our encounter with its intensely real sound, following as
it does the experimental, surreal "voices" of the Quentin
and Benjy sections. This "relief" becomes a rhetorical
device, parlaying Jason's accessibility and clarity into
a recommendation. Even a reader with a high tolerance for
innovative technique will be glad to hear something that
sounds like a real human voice directing itself to other
humans after hours of claustrophobic enclosure in the minds
of Benjy and Quentin. Jason's creator does a good job of
warming up the crowd for his entrance.

Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say. I

says you're lucky if her playing out of school

is all that worries you. I says she ought to

be down there in that kitchen right now, instead

of up there in her room, gobbing paint on her

face and waiting for six niggers that cant even

stand up out of a chair unless they've got a

pan full of bread and meat to balance them to

fix breakfast for her (SF, p. 225).
What we have here (in addition to some self-serving, rude,
and arrogant judgments of others) is what we have been
missing for some two hundred pages: humor, clarity, pithi-

ness, and masculine directness.

It is not only the realism of Jason's voice that makes

64
it appealing: we are drawn as well to the content of his
Speech. As Joseph Reed describes it: "We want to see
things Jason's way because he tells it the way it is. He
is amusing, tough-minded, funny, ironic. There is a part
of us . . . which likes his cynicism, is relieved by his
pragmatism."l6 We "become" Jason, he says, before we know
it.17 And it is not a benign becoming; as we read his
section we are monsters too. Jason's humor, his cynicism,
his pragmatism, are directed against others, and as we
enjoy them we set ourselves against the image of suffering
humanity given us in the rest of The Sound and the Fury.
In fact, Jason appeals to a rather unsavory quality har—
bored by many of us: we often feel aggressive towards our
fellow man, especially towards those who most need and de-
mand our sympathy and concern. By making Jason so appealing,
the implied author of The Sound and the Fupy invites us to
indulge that feeling.

To begin with, what critics have referred to as Jason's
common sense, practical approach has the effect of debunk-
ing various Compson family legends. The implication is that
this has a rather salubrious effect, butactually it takes
the form of aggressive attack rather than of sensible cor-
rective. It is part of Jason's revenge on his family, and
as we are persuaded into at least partial acceptance of it,
we begin to participate in his wars. In Jason's view his
father was a useless drunk; Quentin was a weak fool; Benjy

is a potential sideshow freak; Miss Quentin is a nymphomaniac

65
and a whore like her mother; Dilsey is a useless old lady
whose sole accomplishment has been the raising of four
conspicuously unsuccessful Compsons. All of these assess-
ments contain truth, but they also contain brutality. They
are hardly balanced or rational because they are the product
of a mind saturated with fantasies of revenge.

But Jason's most devastating contribution to our view
of the Compson tragedy is to make us laugh at it. It is
this which is perhaps most responsible for provoking the
responses of relaxation and relief spoken of by readers of
the novel, and it is this which makes it most clear that
the implied author of The Sound and the Fury identifies in
part with his lively if rather horrific creation.
Bleikasten is not the only one to notice that Jason is

18 that his

blessed with Faulkner's own satiric genius,
humorous assaults are so effective that the Compson family
members become for us the burlesques he thinks they are as
we join in his laughter.

Freud's theories about the tendentious joke are not
,precisely applicable here: that is to Say that Jason does
not really tell "jokes" about his family in the sense that
Freud uses the term. But we can use Freud's theory to
understand the function and result of the laughter that
Jason's references to his family provoke. Hostile or
obscene jokes, Freud explains, ". . . make possible the

satisfaction of an instinct . . . in the face of an obstacle

that stands in its way."19 The obstacle is inhibition, and

66

inhibition is overcome by the "joke work," which transforms
the hostile or sexual impulse, through word play, or what-
ever, into an "acceptable" form. The laughter which follows
is fueled by the energy which ordinarily would serve to
repress the impulse. At the same time the laughter itself
serves to satisfy the impulse, rendering it benign. Our
response is to feel pleasure, and, as Freud says, ". . . it
is . . . plausible to suppose that this yield of pleasure
corresponds to the psychical expenditure that is saved."20
Although the hostile impulses that we talk about in connec-
tion with Jason are the learned hostility of Horneyan theory
rather than the instinctive hostility of traditional
psychoanalysis, Freud's theory can be applied to advantage
to explain what happens with Jason, his creator, and the
reader when Jason's aggressively funny references to his
family provoke our laughter.

It takes considerable psychic energy to sympathize
with Benjy, who cannot communicate properly, and Quentin,
whose problems are complex and obscure, and Dilsey, whose
age, race, and lot in life make her case a hopeless one.
Jason's humor, made palatable to us by the effective irony
which makes it clear that we are not really associating
ourselves with him (this irony is equivalent to the "joke
work" of Freud's explanation) obviates the need for this
expenditure of energy. If Benjy is funny we need not-
agonize over his condition. The energy that would have

been devoted to this is dissipated in laughter: the more

67
we have pitied, the harder we will laugh. And the harder
we laugh, the less we will be able to pity. When he makes
Jason a very lifelike character and endows him with his own
considerable talent for satire, the implied author of 3p;

Sound and the Fury seems to invite us to join the two of

 

them in a snicker at his own serious characters and themes,
thus rendering the latter less effective. In Horneyan terms,
this laughter constitutes an indulgence of his (and our)
aggressive drives.

Benjy's loss, Benjy's very existence, inspire us with
intense pity and fear. His is human agony in the face of
the failure of love and communication at its most basic.
But under Jason's spell we laugh at Benjy, and having once
laughed at him we have divested ourselves at least tempor-
arily of the need and the ability to care about him. The
energy with which we would have sympathized with his case
is expelled in the pleasurable explosions that follow Jason's
pronouncements. Benjy's agonized bellows, according to
Jason sound like the lowing of a cow (we suSpected there
was something bovine about his grief). Benjy might be em-
ployed on the night Shift of the Quentin detail, or as a
lucrative sideshow attraction. Perhaps he could even be
a playmate for Jason (a most grotesquely amusing proposition)
if only Luster could be taught to drive the car, allowing
Jason to stay home all day. By keeping Benjy at home, the
Compsons are "robbing the state asylum of its star fresh—

man" (SF, p. 286), and in a reference to Benjy's size and

68

condition that is as funny as it is brutal, Jason calls
him the "Great American Gelding" (SF, p. 528). Surely we
hear echoes of the implied author's own intelligence in
these horribly funny remarks. For the moment at least he
has released himself and us from the burden of Benjy.

Quentin has also been a burden. We are placed in the
difficult position of trying to understand and empathize
with his complex obsession with his Sister, and of needing
to justify his rather obscurely motivated suicide. It is
not easy to care for Quentin in the way the novel asks us
to. Jason, of course, does not bother to try. Quentin to
him is the favored older brother who wasted the patrimony
of the pasture, and thus would be a target for revenge if
he were not, inconveniently, dead. Jason himself, he says,
might easily reach the "heights" of Quentin's achievement
and drama. Were he sent to the state university he might
learn to "stop (his) clock with a nose spray," a feat at
least comparable to what Quentin learned at Harvard, which
was "how to go for a swim at night without knowing how to
swim" (SE, p. 245). With this comment we are for the
moment relieved of the necessity of caring why Quentin did
himself in; that energy is released in laughter. And, in-
credibly enough, Jason is even able to get a laugh out of
Quentin's incestuous passion (until now the reader has been
convinced that he must make a strong effort to take this
seriously). Speaking of Miss Quentin, Mrs. Compson says,

"Sometimes I think she is the judgment of Caddy and Quentin

69
upon me." "Good Lord," Jason says, "You've got a fine mind.
No wonder you keep yourself sick all the time" (SF, p. 525).
By pretending to think his mother believes that Quentin and
Caddy actually had intercourse and produced a daughter,
Jason lightens our view of their entire relationship, and
relieves us of the necessity of identifying with Quentin's
obscure passion. From Jason's satirical viewpoint, lent
weight by the implied author's apparent complicity, Quentin
is clearly a fool, and we may for the moment gratify our
desire to "move against" him by laughing at him and his
condition.

Even Dilsey is a target for Jason's humor, and in her
case too the implied author loans Jason some powerful
satirical ammunition. Laughing at Dilsey is rather akin
to laughing at the crucified Christ, but we may well find
ourselves doing it. Jason attacks her for her age, and
her consequent awkwardness and ineffectuality. "She was
so old she couldn't do any more than move hardly. But
that's all right: we need somebody in the kitchen to eat
up the grub the young ones cant tote off" (SF, p. 229).

He imagines her bizarrely playing golf (Dilsey, who can
barely walk from her cabin to the house) with "china door
knobs and a walking stick" (SF, p. 252). When she makes
reference to her own loyalty and endurance, he humorously
points to her grotesque failure. 0f baby Quentin she says,
"Who else gwine raise her 'cep me? Aint I raised eve'y

one of y'all?" "And a damh fine job you made of it" (SE,

70
p. 246), Jason says. We had not really thought of it until
then, but one idiot, one suicide, one high priced prostitute,
and one paranoid hardware salesman is not really a very
admirable maternal record, and for the moment we are in-
vited to laugh at it and her. Later he describes one of
her endless journeys up the stairs: "I heard her climbing
the stairs, dragging her feet and grunting and groaning like
they were straight up and three feet apart" (SF, p. 520).
Even this irreverent view of Dilsey's physical limitations
is exaggerated for cruelly comic effect. If we laugh along
with Jason we lose for a dangerous moment our desire and
ability to identify with Dilsey's suffering humanity.

In an article on the comic structure of The Sound and
the Fury Fred Chappell makes a relevant point. He says,
"Faulkner likes to employ-~I suspect that he enjoys--the
cruel peasant joke that we find so plentiful in Cervantes,
Rabelais, LeSage, and Smollett. The cruel peasant joke
is what Faulkner sees as the world's rough and ready rebuff

to false idealism."21

I take Chappell's insight a step
farther, and suspect the implied author of The Sound and
the Fury of employing Jason's astute good old boy humor as
a "rough and ready rebuff" to his own serious themes and
sensitive characters. By making us laugh at them, he de-
prives us momentarily of the means and the desire to care
for them. The Jason section, it seems to me, contains not

only a brilliant mimetic portrait of a compulsively aggres-

sive man, but an assault on the rest of the novel that is

71

in itself aggressive.

But Jason's section is followed by section four-—
omnisciently narrated, clear, and thematically coherent--
a reward for the patience and tolerance for ambiguity that
has brought us to this point. In section four, as we have
seen, Jason's creator does a thorough job of crushing him.
His ineptness, his stupidity, his compulsive cruelty, his
symbolic headaches, even his absurd appearance, are pre-
sented for our disapproval. As he goes down in defeat,
the values implicit in Dilsey's conduct and in Rev. Shegog's
sermon emerge as dominant, and Benjy again becomes an ef-
fective symbol for the frustration of post-lapserian man-
kind. We are left with the powerful images of his bellow-
ing objection to the destruction of his tenuous and limited
order, and the peace that follows its restoration, and with
Dilsey's poignant song of endurance, "I seed de beginnin,
en now I sees de endin" (SF, p. 571). The final section of

The Sound and the Fury does not invite us to take a cold

 

heartedly practical view of the Compson tragedy; nor does
it invite us to laugh at it. The implied author destroys
Jason before our eyes, allowing us to see through his solu-
tion, and forbidding himself and us further identification
with the monster he created. But Jason's voice is a hard
one to still, and as long as we hear it we may be unable,
as Walter J. Slatoff says, to resolve ". . . the question
of the meaningfulness of the human efforts and suffering

we have witnessed"22 as observers of the Compson decline.

72

Slatoff speaks of a quality of Faulkner's "tempermant"
that compelled him, ". . . to leave things unresolved and
indeterminate."23 Our Horneyan analysis allows us to
further this insight. We question the "meaningfulness" of
the suffering in The Sound and the Fupy because for part
of the novel the implied author invites our complicity in
his aggressive desire to mock and reject, to move against,
the sufferers. The novel does not allow for certainty,
because its creator does not settle on a perspective from
which to view its contents. He does not consistently
"decide" whether he wishes his novel to say that one should
move towards his fellow man, like Quentin or Dilsey, or
against them like Jason, or even whether one should detach
oneself altogether, like that aspect of the creating con-
sciousness that elects to absent himself from the novel by
the use of a highly objective narrative technique. Are we
to love Benjy, or laugh at him, or are we simply to observe
him on his own terms and draw intellectual conclusions
about his significance? From our observation of the novel
as a whole, we have to conclude that Faulkner, our "official
scribe," our companion, the consciousness that we meet on

the battleground of his characterizations, isn't saying.

75
NOTES

lJoseph Reed, Faulkner's Narrative (New Haven and
London, 1973). p. 78.

2Warren Beck, "William Faulkner's Style," in Faulkner:
Four Decades of Criticism, Linda Welshimer Wagner, ed.
‘(East Lénsing, 1975), p. 148.

 

 

 

3Robert Penn Warren, "William Faulkner," in Four
Decades, pp. 94-109, sees The Sound and the Fury as dealing
with the Faulknerian concern of conflict between the "old
order" and people like Jason, and presenting the option of
"redemption through love," which fails for Quentin, but is
depicted as the only proper reSponse to the human condition
through the portrayal of Dilsey. 01 a Vickery, The Novels
of William Faulker (Louisianna, 1964 , describes the way in
which Dilsey represents the "ethical norm" of "the realizing
and acting out of one's humanity" in contrast to Jason, who
is excessively calculating and logical, and Quentin who
lives by "moral abstraction." Irving Howe, William Faulkner
(New York, 1962) points out that Quentin's scenes with his
father ask us to see him as a "center of intelligence, an
ethical agent," while the "clipped style" of the last two
sections asks our distance from and revulsion at the new
order. For a more recent essay placing Quentin and his
concerns at the center of the novel, see Mark Spilka,
"Quentin's Universal Grief," Contemporary Literature, XI
(Autumn, 1970), 451-469. -

 

 

4See for eXample Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction
(Chicago and London, 1961), pp. 506-508, where Booth uses
Jason as an example of the unreliable narrator whose sec-
tion is permeated with very successful irony.

 

5Howe, p. 167.

6See, for example, Reed, p. 80, who maintains that
"part of us likes Jason," or Walter J. Slatoff, Quest for
Failure: A Study of William Faulkner (Westport, 1972) in
which Slatoff describes the thematic confusion brought
about by Jason's humor, or Linda Welshimer Wagner, "Jason
Compson: The Demands of Honor," Sewanee Review, 79, 554-75,
in which Wagner makes the case that Jason is one of
Faulkner's "sympathetic villains" or "limited heroes" who
actually provides a positive standard for behavior in the
novel," or Martin Green, Re-appraisals (London, 1965), who
considers Jason as part 0I_7that narrow range of human types
whom Faulkner understands and can sympathize with," and
thus sees him as dominating the novel.

 

 

74

7Warren in Four Decades refers to the "vile Jason,"
whose portrait i§_fione of the most terrifying in all of
literature." For John L. Lon ley, Jr., The Tragic Mask:
A Study_of Faulkner's Heroes North Carolina, 1965), Jason
embodies "the instinctive, irrational love of self, the
monstrous incestuous self concern that leaves no room for
others, and for Myra Jehlen, Class and Character in
Faulkner's South (New York, 1976) Jason is Faulkner's "most
despicable character anywhere in the Yoknapatawpha saga."

8Andre Bleikasten, The Most Splendid Failure, Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury (Bloomington and Ibndon, 1976) also
talks about parallels between Jason's concerns and Quentin's,
maintaining that both are responding to "loss" and that
there are similarities in their responses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

9Longley, p. 145.

10William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury(New York,
1946), p. 526. Hereafter referred to in the text as SE.

11The Compson Appendix is printed in the Random House
editions of the novel, but it is important to remember that
it is not actually part of the novel, Since it was written
some sixteen years later, and since its judgments do not
seem to be in line with what happens in the novel itself.
Faulkner's description of Jason, for example (pp. 420-24)
seems to take Jason at his face value, rather participating
in his sense of injury, and referring to him as the only
"sane" Compson. Bleikasten's theory that this should be
taken as irony seems to me inadequate--it does not sound
ironic. Perhaps it is best to say merely that Faulkner
takes the role of critic in this appendix, and that he is
not a particularly astute critic of his own work.

12David Aiken, "The 'Sojer Face' Defiance of Jason
Compson," Thought, 52 (June 1977), p. 201.

13Bleikasten, p. 149.
14Booth, p. 278.

15See, for example, Stephen M. Ross, "Jason Compson and
Sut Lovingood: Southwestern Humor as Stream of Conscious-
ness," Studies in the Novel, 8 (1976)
in which Ross describes the sources of Jason's voice in
the tradition of southwestern humor typified by Harris's
Sut Lovingood, and describes the delight we feel in listen-
ing to him, or John W. Hunt, William Faulkner: Art in
Theological Tension (Syracuse, 1965) who speaks of the
"curious delight the reader finds in his narration," p. 70.

16

 

 

Reed, p. 81.

75

l7Reed, p. 82.

18Bleikasten, p. 148.

19Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the
Unconscious (New York, 1960).

20

 

 

Freud, p. 118.
21Fred Chappell, "The Comic Structure of The Sound and

 

the Fury," Mississippi Quarterly, XXXI (Summer 1979)} P.
384.

 

2281atoff, p. 176.

23Slatoff, p. 260.

CHAPTER III

IT NEVER BOTHERED ANSE MUCH:
A HORNEYAN ANALYSIS OF AS I LAY DYING

 

In my study.of The Sound and the Fury, I examined the
influence of Faulkner's creation and treatment of Jason
Compson on the novel as a whole. By exploring the rela-
tionship of implied author, reader, and character in that
novel, I was able to develop the theory that the implied
author of The Sound and the Fury has a special relationship
with Jason, and that he subtly encourages the reader to
partially accept Jason's way of looking at the world, a way
that corresponds to Horney's description of the compul-
sively aggressive person. My analysis of As I Lay Dying
will reveal that these findings are not unique to The Sound
and the Fury. Here I focus on the relationship of the
implied author to Anse Bundren and to the reader, and my
conclusions imply a pattern similar to that found in the
earlier novel.

In As I Lay Dying we find, as we found in The Sound

and the Fury, a division between those characters who seem

 

to be designed to express or reveal theme, to Speak for the

1

author in his own "full style" or to embody some abstract

notion important to theme, and those characters who are

76

77
presented more in the mode of "colloquial realism," which
is to say that they speak in their own voices, and exist
at least partly in order to "cast a Shadow,"2 as Faulkner
would say, to provoke the kind of pleasure that we get from
successful mimesis. AS I noted in my brief summary of the
standard critical interpretation of The Sound and the Fury,
critics who deal with the novel as a whole tend to focus
on those characters involved in revelation of theme, having
picked up on the implied author's subtle signals that in
these characters the essence of the novel is to be found.
We find a similar situation in connection with As I Lgy
Dylpg, where it is Addie and Darl, who speak in their
creator's voice and are not fully realized mimetically,
who provide most of the fuel for the critical fires, their
concerns being most often seen as the concerns of the
novel as a whole. In addition, there is implicit in the
journey-completed plot of the novel a thematic question
about the ability of mankind to surmount whatever obstacles
face him and emerge triumphant that attracts some critics.
A summary of the analyses of As I Lay Dying by three of the
most prominent of Faulkner's critics will provide a back-
ground for my own study.

Olga Vickery's interpretation centers around the con-
flict between word and deed which is given voice in Addie's
section.3 In Vickery's view, Addie attempts to find her
humanity in the "intensely felt act" of her sin with
Whitfield, while despising the emptiness and futility of

78

words. Her children, dominated by her presence in their
blood, act out their own conflicts between saying and doing
in their participation in her death and funeral journey.
The children are on a kind of continuum, with Darl repre-
senting pure consciousness, and Cash representing "action
in search of a word," a man who must achieve a "more flexible,
imaginative vision" (as he does in the end), before he can
be fully human. Darl, on the other hand, never manages a
connection with the external world which he is able to de-
scribe with such "startling vividness," and thus is exiled
to another world and life. But it is Anse who provides the
novel's negative standard, who stands in opposition to
Addie's insights, who "lives by words alone," whose promise
is carried out for him by others, and who is "the only one
of the Bundrens completely unchanged by Addie's death or
the funeral journey."4 Thus, for Vickery, the novel's
thematic content is revealed through the contrast in the
natures of the characters with regard to this question of
saying and doing. The novel as a whole she sees as suc-
cessfully juxtaposing the internal view of the Bundren
journey, which involves "horror and pain," and the external
view, provided by the inhabitants of Mottstown and other
bystanders, for whom the dominant response is a kind of
hilarity.

In her view of the central importance of Addie's talk
about words and deeds, and in her statement that the novel

successfully combines the comic and tragic modes, Vickery

79
finds a good deal of support among other critics of the
novel. Cleanth Brooke's interpretation of the novel as an
odyssey which, though it admittedly contains elements of the
grotesque, is fundamentally heroic, has also received a
rather wide acceptance.5 In Brooke's view, the novel's
purpose is to explore "the nature of the heroic deed." It
is a commentary on man's "incorrigible idealism." In this
context it is important to realize that although the surface
of the Bundrens' life is unimpressive, beneath the surface
there are "depths of passion and poetry that are terrifying
in their power."6 By showing us the importance of the
"claims of honor" under surprising conditions, Faulkner
makes a case for the honorableness of mankind in general.
Anse is the villain, the Flem Snopes who gets his own way
by ruthless use of others, but he is not contemptible,
since he "represents a force probably necessary to the
survival of the human animal,"7 probably a kind of ability
to endure which is a necessary, though certainly not a suf-
ficient, quality of the heroic.

Opposed to these widely accepted interpretations of the
novel that see it as consistent in theme with Faulkner's
work in general, which, these critics would say, does not
shy away from the agonies of existence, but does hint of
man's ability to overcome them, we find the work of a critic
like Elizabeth Kerr, for whom the odyssey of the Bundrens
is profoundly ironic rather than heroic.8 Kerr's theory is

that although the novel has all the elements of the mythos

80

of summer, its romance is inverted, its goals and dreams
are ridiculous or trivial, its characters are perversions
of the heroic mode. It depicts not the triumph of fertil-
ity, but the victory of death, sterility, and infidelity.
Thus, in her view, AS I Lay Daying, is not the story of
man's ability to survive and prevail, nor is it a successful
melding of comedy and tragedy. Rather, it is a mocking re-
counting of the triviality of our hopes and dreams and the
futility of our existence.

Though a part of this kind of direct disagreement
about the novel (and we do not need to look far for it)9
has its source in the fact that the novel combines various
literary modes--heroic and ironic-, comic and tragic--there
is also present in the novel an ambiguity about what the
implied author means to ask of his readers that makes us
unsure who his "ideal reader" is in this case. On the one
hand we have the pessimism and existential anguish expressed
in Addie's section and in the creation of Darl, which seem
to ask for our identification and sympathy (an analysis like
Vickery's is responsive to this aspect of the novel). The
ideal reader in this case would have much in common with the
introspective Addie and the sensitive and perceptive Darl,
would be concerned about the gap between words and deeds,
about the conditions of existence, and about man's survival
in a universe fundamentally ill-suited to his needs and
desires (cf. Brooke's reading). But the implied author of
As I Lay Dying asks for another ideal reader. At least

81
some of the novel's subtle rhetoric asks for identification
with the figure of Anse Bundren. Like Jason, Anse is sym-
pathetic because he is so fully realized that he fairly
demands that we see him as a human being like ourselves,
and because he allows us the relief of laughter. In his
flashing out of Anse, and in his humorous treatment of his
foibles, the implied author is using some of the rhetorical
devices left even to the most determinedly "objective"
creating consciousness to ask his readers to immerse them-
selves in Anse and to see the world through his eyes. The
ideal reader who answers this siren's call will find himself
rather indifferent to the suffering of his fellow man as it
is embodied in the lives of the remaining Bundrens, and en-
dowed with a my-survival-at-any-cost kind of attitude that
precludes any notions about the admirable transcendence of
humanity in general over the necessities of existence. It
is this sepect of the novel which has generally gone unrecog-
nized among critics, though some have found themselves oddly
defending such things as Anse's treatment of Cash's leg,
or his apparent willingness to sacrifice the well-being of
his entire family for a set of over the counter false
teeth; and Kerr's analysis is actually a sophisticated
version of this willingness to belittle and deny the needs
and desires of Anse's hapless clan. A Horneyan analysis
will allow us to understand the source of these divergent
readings, and will help us to see and appreciate this
tendency of the novel for what it is.

82

Though Anse is not drawn as fully as Jason--indeed,
in some ways he is a comic type, reminiscent of the Dick-
ensian creations whose impact and significance resides wholly
in their repetition of key phrases--he is not merely a
formal creation. In Jason's case his childhood and his
adult behavior towards others is presented in such detail
that we were able to observe his pronounced similarity to
that complex personality type that Horney labels arrogant-
vindictive. Anse appears in broader outline, and it is
not possible to identify his personality type exactly.
Nevertheless, we know enough about him to be able to identify
clearly some of the general symptoms of self-alienation in
his make-up.

Though it is indeed ludicrous to imagine that a man
who has not even been to town in twelve years is secretly
involved in a "search for glory," Faulkner shows us in
Anse a man who talks and behaves as if he were caught in
the pattern of self-alienation described by Horney. As we
have seen, the self-alienated person rejects his actual
self and his potential real self in favor of his ideal
self, a godlike product of his imagination, whose capabil—
ities and rights are far beyond those of ordinary mortals.
One adjunct of this ideal self is the well-spring of
Faulkner's characterization of Anse Bundren: the "neurotic"
claim. In keeping with his unconscious (or partly con-
scious) notion that he is a godlike being, the self-

alienated person makes unconscious (or partly conscious)

85
claims that psychic, social, and even physical laws should
not apply to him, that, in the words of one of Horney's
patients, "The world should be at his service and he should

not be bothered."10

Such claims are irrational and sure to
be frustrated. Their frustration causes resentment and
righteous anger in the self-alienated person. The world
owes him a better deal. A person harboring unconscious
claims is likely to be discontent and angry a good deal of
the time. He is also likely to suffer from a great "paral-
ysis of psychic energies" resulting from his unconscious
feeling that others should do for him and he should not
have to bestir himself. His inertia may be powerful indeed.
The function of claims is to move the reSponsibility for
dealing with one's life from oneself to others. One places
the responsibility for himself "on other peOple, on circum-

stances, or on fate";11

but since these receptacles of one's
expectations rarely take their responsibility seriously,

the possessor of claims usually suffers from the strong
sense that he is being injured.

Righteous anger, inertia, a sense of injury-~these are
all part of Faulkner's characterization of Anse Bundren.
Thinking in terms of Horney's patterns, we will see that
there is more to appreciate in the characterization of Anse
than has met the eye of many critics. He is a joke, but he
is not just a joke. He is a psychologically coherent imi—

tation of a human being.

Though Anse's attitudes, his behavior, and even his

84
facial exPressions indicate the existence of his hidden claims,
we need not rely on indirect evidence alone. Anse's neigh-
bors have felt the force of Anse's claims for years. When
a man assumes and expects that he does not have to pick his
own corn, and when he assumes it in such a way that you do
it for him and keep on doing it, then he is, as Tull and the
rest know very well, making the excessive and irrational
claim that his neighbors must keep him afloat because he is
somehow special. But, as Tull says, in one of the frequent
refrains of the novel, "Like most folks around here, I done

"12 And there is

holp him so much already I cant quit now.
comfort to be taken in the fact that the Almighty himself
seems to feel the force of Anse's irrational expectations.
'Well, it'll take the Lord to get her over that
river now,' Peabody says. 'Anse cant do it.’
'And I reckon He will," Quick says, "He took
care of Anse a long time now.‘
'It's a fact,' Littlejohn says.
'Too long to quit now,' Armstid says.
'I reckon He's like everybody else around
here,' Uncle Billy says. 'He's done it so
long now He can't quit' (AILD, p. 84).
This business about everybody including Uncle Billy and God
(in Yoknapatawpha the two are about on a par) finding him-
self conceding to Anse's irrational claims provides a good
deal of the humor of As I Lay_Dying at the same time that
it is a keen insight into human nature. AS Horney points
out, others are likely to feel the force of the self-
alienated person's claims, no matter how inconvenient or
irrational they are. Thus we have the marvelous if

grotesque humor of people trying to tolerate the horrible

85

odor of the corpse of Anse's wife in order to put him up
for the night, of his sons risking life and limb because he
cannot quite believe that the bridge has had the effrontery
to collapse, of Tull feeling guilty because he has not sent
his mule out to drown too, and of a woman, however duck-
shaped, willing to loan him two spades to dig his wife's
grave and then marry him herself the next day.

Though it may seem to Anse's neighbors and to us that
he gets his way an unreasonable percentage of the time, it
most certainly does not seem that way to Anse. In his mind
the failure of reality to fulfill his every claim indicates
that he is "luckless." "Was there are such a misfortunate
man," he is often given to ask (of. AIDE, p. 150). He
appears "misfortunate" to himself because he harbors the
secret belief that others should donate their stock, their
barns, their limbs, and the sweat of their brows to keep
misfortune from his door, indeed that objective necessity
itself will note that he is Special and not bother him with
things like death, or rain, or mental illness in the family.
It is his belief that "Old Marster will care for me as for

are a sparrow that falls" (AILD, p. 57), and if Old Marster

 

should take his eye off the ball for a moment, why then,
"A man'll always help a fellow in a tight, if he's got are
a drop of Christian blood in him" (AILD, p. 176). In his
darker moments, when God and man have failed him, he may
be woeful-~"you ought to let them taken your mule" (AILD,
p. 150), he says sadly to Tull as he watches his own team

86
set out on the ill-fated river crossing-~but he is more
likely to feel angry or injured. In the face of most vio-
lations of his claims, his expression is one of "Slack-
faced and brooding outrage" (AILD, p. 72), the outward and
visible Sign of an inward resentment so profound that it
dominates his entire being.

As Addie lies dying, Anse muses on how the circumstances
of her illness and death violate his claims that everything
go his way. "Durn that road . . . durn them boys" (AILD,
p. 54). He recalls having to send for the doctor, "And now
I got to pay for it, me without a tooth in my head hoping
to get ahead so I could get my mouth fixed to where I could
eat God's own victuals . . ." (AIDE, p. 56). Even his way
of describing Addie's death (a wonderful example of Faulk-
ner's ability to combine the vernacular with psychological
realism) is expressive of his sense that it is he who is
being injured. "She taken and left us" (AILD, p. 49). he
says. In these scenes Faulkner is showing us a man whose
unconscious view it is that his wife should not get sick
and cause him to have to get a doctor, and most certainly
should not take and leave him while the boys are gone with
the wagon and rain is approaching. The objective necessity
of death cuts no ice with him, and he is far from under-
standing in what sense Addie's death actually ig a chosen
set. In the face of death, as in the face of everything
that violates his grandiose claims, he is outraged and

personally offended.

87

The troubles of the other members of his family are
met with the same insistence that when anything goes wrong
it is he who is injured, the implication being that he ought
not to be bothered with anyone else's problems or needs.
When Darl has one of his crazy fits of laughing, Anse won-
ders what peOple will say about hi_s_ flesh and blood. When
Cash breaks his leg, "It's a trial" to pig just as "God knows
it's a trial" on pip when he decides to exile Darl to
Jackson. And so earlier did Cash's first broken leg and
Darl's peculiar ways threaten him with a shortage of hands.
The ordeal undergone by Jewel to procure one of Quick's
Spotted horses, translated into Anse's idiom, becomes,
"you went behind my back and bought a horse . . . Taken the
work from your flesh and blood and bought a horse with it"
(iiLD, p. 129). When Dewey Dell tries to hang on to the
abortion money that he wants for his new teeth, it is ob-
vious to him that she, too, is conspiring in his misfortune.
"It's just a loan. God knows, I hate for my blooden chil-
dren to reproach me. But I give them what was mine without
stint. Cheerful I give them, without stint. And now they
deny me. Addie. It was lucky for you you died Addie . . ."
(Alia, p. 246). Students of human nature everywhere will
recognize that unlovely combination of anger, self pity,
and the desire to inflict guilt as a means of revenge.

Anse also encounters failures of cooperation outside
his family circle. Like Jason he harbors resentment towards

such things as the weather and the social institutions that

 

88
fail to protect and provide for him. The rain, for example,
has perverse designs on him. "And now I can see same as
second sight the rain shutting down betwixt us, a-coming up
that road like a durn man, like it want are a other house
to rain on in all the living land" (iipp, p. 36). How
outrageous of nature not to exempt him from an inconven-
ience like rain. And how inexcusable of the economy not
to reward him suitably for the cotton he has neither planted
nor harvested, his talk of sweat an ironic reminder that he
is not about to do so himself: "Nowhere in this sinful world
can a honest, hardworking man profit. It takes them that
runs the stores in the towns, doing no sweating, living off
of them that sweats. It aint the hardworking man, the
farmer" (iiiD, p. 104).

It is Samson who points out what we might already have
known, that Anse takes an actual pleasure in seeing his
claims violated so that he can feel injured. His sense
that he is constantly being wronged is a weapon that he can
use to get his own way. AS the world's most "misfortunate"
man he deserves recompense. Samson describes him on the
first, abortive leg of the funeral journey,

And like he would be kind of proud of whatever
come up to make the moving or the setting still
look hard. He sat there on the wagon, hunched
up, blinking, listening to us tell about how
quick the bridge went and how high the water
was and I be durn if he didn't act like he was
proud of it, like he had made the river rise
himself" (iiiD, p. 108).

When Tull describes Anse's expresson as he looks at the

bridge that has collapsed as if intentionally to prevent

89

him from getting to town, he has a similar insight:

He was looking at it like he had believed all

the time that folks had been lying to him about it

being gone, but like he was hoping all the time it

really was. Kind of pleased astonishment he

looked, setting on the wagon in his Sunday pants

mumbling his mouth. Looking like a uncurried

horse dressed up: I dont know (iiiD, p. 117).
Anse is pleased that the river is up and the bridges are
down because it proves that he is "luckless," and there—
fore deserves special consideration. AS a sufferer he de-
serves the particular attention of God and man. In fact,
it seems to him that his suffering indicates that he has
already been singled out for approval. He tells us directly
that his misfortune labels him as one of God's favorites:
"I am the chosen of the Lord, for who He loveth, so doeth
He chastiseth" (iiDD, p. 105). That combination of gran-
diose fantasy and self-pity is typical of Anse, and indeed
of all people who make claims on the world around them.
Olga Vickery says that Anse's neighbors are afraid not to
help him because not to help him would be to justify his
implication that he is "chosen,"13 for persecution. Perhaps
God, as Will Varner suggests, feels the same way. In any
case, his sense of injury seems to be an effective tool in
the exercising of his claims.

Anse needs all the help he can get. As we have seen,
one of the characteristics of the claim ridden person is a
powerful inertia, and Anse is about as inert as they come.

In this portrayal of a Mississippi farmer who is convinced

that he will die if he ever sweats again, Faulkner has hit

90

upon a wonderful means of caricaturing the reluctance to
move or think or feel that characterizes one who uncon-
sciously believes that the world should be at his service.
Though this aspect of Anse's character works like the
"humor" of traditional comedy, that is to say that the
repetition of references to his laziness leads us to laugh
at a common human foible, it is at the same time psycholog-
ically consistent with other qualities of his personality.

Anse approaches all tasks, mental or physical, with a
profound lack of energy. Tull describes him putting on his
shoes: "He puts his shoes on, stomping into them, like he
does everything, like he is hoping all the time he really
cant do it and can quit trying to" (iiiD, p. 51). His prob-
lem is that whether it is his boots to put on or his crops
to lay by, he "can't seem to get no heart into anything"
(Alia, p. 57). He Spends much of his life in a stupor re-
sembling that of the steer after the maul hits it, ". . .
and it no longer alive and don't yet know that it is dead"
(Alia, p. 58), a stupor that prevents him equally from
going to town, or working in his fields, or helping to carry
his wife's casket. And though Anse claims to "mislike .
indecision as much as ere a man" (iiiD, p. 16), mental
activity is pretty much out of the question too. For the
most part he rubs his knee or his thigh and holds out ("If
the bridge was just up") until someone else, in desperation,
decides what to do. Though some critics praise his energy

and perseverance in getting Addie's remains to Jefferson,

91

Samson's evaluation of the case is more consistent with
Faulkner's portrait of Anse:

I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that

hates moving, to get set on moving once he does

get started off, the same as he was set on

staying still, like it aint the moving he hates

so much as the starting and the stopping (AILD,

p. 108). -——_'
Once Anse has started on his journey (and I shall deal
later with what gets him going), his powerful inertia helps
to carry him along. Though we see him in motion throughout
much of As I Lay Dying, it is the dogged, unselfpropelled
motion of the poorly thrown bowling ball, not the pur-
poseful movement of a man who has set himself to a diffi-
cult task.

This is the first time that Anse has been to town in
twelve years, and he has long since thought of a way to
rationalize his immobility. Horses and wagons, he says,
are horizontal and meant to move; trees and men are verti-
cal and meant to stay still. Like his"T'll—die-if—I-sweat
story, this serves to convince Anse and others that he
ought not to have to make an effort, and it provides us with
a symbol for Anse's immobility-~the rooted tree. AS Pea-
body says, "Too bad the Lord made the mistake of giving
trees roots and giving the Anse Bundrens He makes feet and
legs. If He'd just swapped them, there wouldn't ever be a
worry about this country being deforested someday" (iiiD,
p. 41).

His "slack-faced outrage" at his misfortune and his

92
legendary laziness account for a good deal of the flavor
of Anse's character, but it is his gross insensitivity to
others that is most important in relation to his role in
the novel as a whole. Anse does not take the active pleasure
Jason does in frustrating and harming others, but he is
utterly obtuse with regard to their rights and feelings.
He sees them only as aids or impediments to his search for
glory; he is completely without the ability to care for
them or to see through their eyes. In our evaluation of the
novel as a whole we shall see that some of this quality
seems to have rubbed off on the implied author who, appar-
ently captivated by Anse, promotes a certain indifference
towards his other creations.

Since Anse is what must pass for the patriarch of the
Bundren clan, he has a certain amount of power over others,
and his lack of sensitivity has disastrous results on their
lives. Though we cannot really call him "aggressive," we
can note that his negative effect on the well-being of others
is pronounced. When Cash insists to Peabody that his broken
leg "never bothered" him much, Peabody retorts, "You mean it
never bothered Anse much" (iiiD, p. 250), and that seems to
be an accurate assessment of Anse's response to all the
trouble and suffering of his family (unless, as we have
seen, their problems cause him trouble). When his over—
worked wife falls ill, and indeed deteriorates to the point
that her body is "no more than a bundle of rotten sticks"

(AILD, p. 45), Anse fails to send for the doctor: "Hit was

95

jest one thing and then another . . . that ere corn me and
the boys was aimin to git up with, and Dewey Dell a-takin
good keer of her, and folks comin in, a-offering to help
and sich, till I jest thought . . ." (giip, p. 43). He is
far too preoccupied with his own claims and sense of injury
to spare a thought for Addie, and for all we know this
causes her death. Peabody seems to think that he might have
been able to do something if he had gotten there sooner.
In fact, Addie's final illness surprises Anse rather than
causing him emotional upset. Why does she remain in bed
instead of getting up and about her regular duties?

He comes toward the door where she is, blinking

his eyes, kind of looking ahead of hisself be-

fore he sees, like he is hoping to find her set-

ting up, in a chair maybe or maybe sweeping, and

looks in and finds her still in bed every time

and Dewey Dell still a-fanning her with the fan"

(L132. P. 31).
Moments after Addie's death Anse urges the grief stricken
Dewey Dell (well, she seems grief stricken at the time) to
put supper on the table, and muses to himself, "God's will
be done. Now I can get them teeth" (iiiD, p. 49). Though,
like Joseph Gold, I am inclined to like the second Mrs.
Bundren more than the first, I must admit that this farewell
does not do Addie justice. What it does do is to caricature
the inability of the self-alienated, claim-ridden man to
feel a real connection with his fellow human beings. In
addition to being one of the funniest lines in American lit-

erature; this response is part of the coherent psychological

portrait of Anse.

94

AS Cash works on Addie's casket in a downpour, Anse
appropriates the only spare raincoat. "I dont know what
you'll do," he says to Cash, "Darl taken his coat with him"
(Aggy, p. 75). This is in line with the grotesque humor of
his response to Cash's broken leg, which is first to say,
"A fellow might call it lucky it was the Same leg he broke
when he fell offen that church" (A_I_L_D, p. 156), and then to
pour raw cement over it, insuring that Cash will never walk
right again. Like Addie, Cash undergoes physical suffering
as a result of Anse's insensitivity. Though Anse does not
torment his victims intentionally, as Jason torments Miss
Quentin or Luster, the results are, if anything, rather more
disastrous.

The grief of Jewel and Vardaman, and the anguish of
Darl go unrecognized and unacknowledged by their obsessed
father, as does the agitation of Dewey Dell. He manages to
deprive Jewel of his beloved horse, and would deprive Dewey
Dell of her Sunday clothes and Cash of his tools if he could.
As usual he has words to cover himself. "It ain't respect-
ful" (iiiD, p. 95). he says, for Addie's children to have
other things than burying her in mind as they set out on
her funeral journey. Presumably "them teeth" are unique in
this respect. And when Darl threatens his comfortable
survival by burning down Gillespie's barn, Anse is perfectly
willing to have him jumped on and handcuffed in a public
street and led off to a living death in Jackson.

In the end Anse's indifference to the feelings of others

95
allows him to achieve a complete triumph. Trying to attach
thematic value to this victory, Viscomi and Seltzer main-
tain that Anse's actions have served to stabilize and unify
his family.14 One shudders to contemplate their notion of
desirable family life. Admittedly no one is going anywhere.
Cash is crippled; Jewel is unhorsed (and thus, pretty
clearly, unmanned), Darl is locked up; Vardaman shows signs
of following him, and Dewey Dell's pregnancy, now sure to
be uninterrupted, will restrict her movements considerably.
Anse's triumph may be complete, but it is hardly one that
we can admire. '

As those (like Vickery) who find the "words and deeds"
theme of paramount importance to the novel, have pointed
out, Anse relies continually on platitudes, on the word
that will easily prescribe or substitute for the deed.
Action motivated by the needs of others or the demands of
reality is out of the question for him, since his claims
prevent him from really comprehending either one. In other
words, he is unable to feel for others (and thus know how
to behave towards them) or to cope with reality in any
flexible way, so he clings to the well-tried reSponse as a
cover, as a means of getting by. As Addie lies dying he is
preoccupied not with her agony, or with his own grief, but
with the requirements of her "death bed wish" to be buried
in Jefferson, the death bed wish being the kind of "plati—
tude" upon which he depends. "She'll want to get started
-right off" (iiiD, p. 28), he says over and over. Such

96
words are a substitute for real feelings about Addie's
death, as well as a statement of his intentions. Virtually
devoid of any attachment to Addie, he must concentrate on
doing what is "eXpected" and he will persist long after a
man who really cared for his wife and was able to assess
his position properly probably would.

Once Anse becomes a full fledged widower he is not
without resources when it comes to knowing what to say and
how to behave. Indeed, as critics have noticed,15 he takes
to the role with apparent alacrity. Not surprisingly so,
for in this situation he is the center of attention, he has
obviously sustained an injury that demands compensation,
and there are plenty of platitudes to guide his behavior.
He contorts his face into what he assumes is an expres-
sion of grief, but which Darl sees as a "monstrous burlesque
of all bereavement" (iiiD, p. 74), and, dressed in a clean
white shirt, repeats the platitude of sad acceptance, "The
Lord giveth" (iiiD, p. 81).

We know from the Tulle and from Peabody that Anse has
not treated Addie well. His adherence to her wish to be
buried in Jefferson, and his acting out of the role of the
grieving widower to the best of his very limited ability
are not only the last refuge of a man who cannot behave
Spontaneously, they are a means of excusing himself and
accusing her. If he goes to all this trouble to do what
Addie wants, then he must be a good hushand. That she has
required this of him, on the other hand, indicates that she

97
is a terrible burden. "I don't begrudge her it" (AILD,

 

p. 156), he says, so often that we know he does and expects
others to see his point. By persisting with his unlikely
journey, he provides himself with occasions to feel injured,
and thus "chosen," instead of recognizing his fault.

The journey itself puts more of a strain on virtually
everybody else than it does on Anse. His endless plati-
tudinous refrain about not wishing to be "beholden" is de-
signed to disguise his effective exercising of his claim
on all and sundry. As Armstid puts it, he seems able to
"conjure" people to do as he wishes, even as he fatuously
maintains that he would not think of accepting their help.
In this way he is able to maintain his sense of injury
("Was there are such a misfortunate man" as he who cannot
rely on his neighbors for aid) while allowing for the ful-
fillment of his grandiose claims that the world should be
at his service. And at his service it most certainly is.
As we have seen, the journey is continued at substantial
sacrifice to his children, and others give without stint
as well. Tull crosses a flood swollen river on a washed
out bridge, much to his own amazement. The Samsons put the
Bundrens up and feed them, though Addie's corpse already
‘smells. The Armstids care for Cash, feed the family, and
provide whiskey for Anse. The Gillespies donate their
barn (rather more drastically than they had planned, cer-
tainly), and Peabody treats Cash for nothing, and then gives

them the money to pay for their hotel room in Jefferson.

98
It seems that Anse's sole contribution to the journey is to
trade Jewel's horse and Cash's "graphaphone" money (his teeth
money too, to be sure) for the new team, and then to sit in
the wagon holding the reins for the rest of the trip while
the others get out to walk the hills. The Bundrens' arrival
in Jefferson may be a victory of sorts, but it has not been
won through Anse's efforts, except as those efforts have to
do with "conjuring."

Nevertheless, there is part of us that enjoys Anse's
success--particularly his new teeth and his new wife-~that
feels inclined to participate in his view that no one in his
world matters the way he does. In other words, the "ideal
reader" that the implied author "creates" in this context
takes on some of the symptoms of Anse's self-alienation.
Although Faulkner's portrayal makes it clear that Anse is a
‘ fool and a hypocrite, a man paralyzed by his own shortcom-
ings, and unable to make the simplest assessments of ex-
ternal reality, he comes to play a role in the novel as a
whole that does not allow us to dismiss him as villain or
buffoon. Because the implied author is never able to resist
bringing him on screen for long, because he is so vividly
drawn, and because he allows us the relief of laughter at
the agonies and ambiguities of the rest of the novel, we
are attracted to him, and this attraction seems to occur at
the behest of the implied author. Other critics have noticed
that Anse has this sort of appeal. In his de—bunking study
of Faulkner, Martin Green claims that Anse is part of "that

99
narrow range of types whom Faulkner understands and can
sympathize with," and he goes so far as to say that "Anse's
point of view is a comic version of what Faulkner himself

inclines to."16

Viscomi and Seltzer seem totally taken in
by Anse, and Joseph Gold finds that Anse becomes the dom-
inant character because Faulkner ultimately gives way to
laughter in the novel.17 These readers have all felt the
force of the author's rhetoric pulling them towards Amos,
and thus away from the other characters of As I Lanyying.
For perhaps the majority of critics, Addie's section
provides some kind of center, a focus for the concerns of
the novel, a statement of her suffering, and thus a de-
scription of the source of the suffering of her children.
The section is one of great intensity, of piercing emotions
in which we are asked to participate. We learn that as a
young school teacher she needed a time every day when she
could "be quiet and hate" her pupils, that her contact
with the children made evident to her the truth of her
father's statement that the reason to live is to get ready
to stay dead. Only while whipping them, she remembers, was
she able to invade their "secret and selfish" separate iden-
tities. Her anguish seems to be existential, based on the
inevitable separation of humans from other humans. So she
"takes" Anse, and, she says, in motherhood finds a solution
to her problem. Apparently in her connection with Cash she
finds a positive "violation" of her "aloneness." Oddly

enough, however, motherhood is anathema to her when it comes

100

a second time, and again she returns to thoughts of death
as a refuge from a life intensely hated, exacting from Anse
the burial journey promise. She decides that Anse is al-
ready dead, a theory related to her insight into the dif-
ference between words and deeds and the insufficiency of
the former. Presumably as a way of insuring herself against
the kind of living death that results from a reliance on
words (though why she should want to do so when life is so
hateful to her is not clear), she commits the sin of adultery
with Whitfield. In doing so she fulfills her duty to life,
which she rather negatively refers to as "the terrible
blood, the red bitter blood boiling through the land" (iiiD,
p. 166). Then the affair is over and she has Jewel, who
seems far some reason to bring her peace, and then she pre-
sents Anse with two more children who are somehow owed to
him who never loved a child in his life, by way of "clean-
ing house" before she allows herself a long sought death.

As this reading, which attempts to duplicate the ex-
perience of the reader who is receptive but has developed
no careful interpretation of the section, reveals, Addie's
description of her life presents problems and difficulties
even for he who would be implied author's "ideal reader."
It is, to be blunt, a confusing passage. Though we know
that Addie, whom the implied author has invested with his
own eloquence, has significant things to say, we are not
always able to follow her train of thought. And, in the

context of a novel full of powerful mimetic creations like

101
Anse, and Cora, and Tull, and Peabody, the characteriza-
tion of Addie is abstract rather than realistic, fraught
with philosophical concepts rather than human reality. We
have no "objective correlative" for Addie's suffering, no
motion of how she behaves or speaks in everyday situations,
and thus no particular reason for feeling warm towards her,
or sympathizing with her pain. And yet suffering is the
key note of her section. We must believe that she suffers
and care about it if we are to invest the themes she brings
to light with the importance they are obviously meant to
have. In other words, by presenting Addie's section as he
does, the implied author threatens reader identification
even as he asks for it.

Thus, it seems to me, Addie and her concerns are at
once very important and very vulnerable. And a look at how
Anse relates to them will reveal that his characterization
does interfere with our reSponse to her, partially negating
the impact of her section. For example, Addie's expression
of the existential truth that one must gg_in order to live,
that words are merely the "gaps in people's lacks" (iiig,
p. 166), is given ambiguous and abstract expression in her
section, and is hardly embodied by her characterization in
the rest of the novel. But in the characterization of Anse,
the theme is brought vividly to life. As we have seen, his
successful exercising of his claims makes it unnecessary
for him to "do" for himself, and he continually substitutes
the word for the deed in his mouthing of platitudes.

102
Analyzing our response to this aspect of Anse, a reSponse
urged by the stance of the implied author, we find a delight
in the lifelikeness of these qualities, in the evidence they
provide that Anse is a man like ourselves (coupled, of course,
with a certain resentment at his victimization of others),18
and laughter at his obtuseness and hypocrisy. Captured by
the power of his mimetic portrayal and the effectiveness
of the humor associated with him, we allow ourselves delight
and laughter, dissipating the energy that we partly know
ought to be applied to Addie and her intense grappling with
the nature of life and death. AS Anse tells us again and
-again that he would not be beholden, as he is depicted re-
peatedly in the stupor of he who will not or cannot do for
himself, as he refuses responsibility for the deeds he does
perform ("I just aimed to help him. It was Darl put it on"
(Aiiy, p. 214), as he covers his tracks with preposterous
stories about the dangers of sweating and the functions of
'vertical and horizontal objects, we are drawn away from
Addie's world, where the gap between words and deeds is a
cause for anguish, to a world where the very human tendency
to let the word serve for the deed is amusing, where one
gets by any way he can, and laughter precludes intensity.

In addition to its treatment of the words and deeds
theme, Addie's section, as we have seen, presents some pro-
foundly negative views about the quality of human life in
general. For various reasons, it tells us, living is ter-

rible, and we do it only in order to get ready to stay

105

dead. Obviously Addie feels that she has been injured by
life, that it has primarily brought her pain, and that she
is right to resent it, to wish for escape. Well, living is
terrible for Anse, too. His stance in relation to the
world is that everything ought to go his way. When, inev-
itably, it does not, he whines about it, and assumes his
expression of "slack-mouthed outrage." "Flouted" by every-
thing: by the road that someone had the nerve to build in
front of his house, by the weather, by the son who goes
crazy, by the wife who dies on him, he feels justified in
entertaining a prodigious sense of injury. Of course we
laugh at this, and, in doing so, how can we helplosing
some of our serious involvement with Addie's notion that
life has been terrible for her? In her feeling that she
has been "injured" by those around her--by the "secret and
selfish" school children, by Anse, who cannot comprehend
her complexity, by Darl, who invades her aloneness when she
does not want it invaded--is she really so different from
the Anse that we laugh at? And, in any case, having laughed,
can we summon or retrieve that expended energy for the pur-
pose of caring whether she is or not?

The problem with Darl is a similar one. Even more than

19 and is endowed

Addie, he speaks in his creator's style,
with the kind of acute consciousness with which the twen-

tieth century novel reader is accustomed to being asked to
identify. His intensely modern concerns are those of being

and not-being and the relativity of time. In his

 

 

 

104
clairvoyance and his self-consciousness he offers a view of
reality as seen by the tortured modern sensibility. In the
gap between "is" and "was," in the demands of necessity, in
the failure of love, he finds the agonies of a life lived as
an ongoing process. But while Darl sees out with a clarity
and an eye for detail that are almost painful, we do not
see in. Certainly no craziness would surprise us once we
learn his mother's response to his arrival in this world,
but we have no clear idea of just how Darl is crazy, if he
is, just as we have little idea of how he actually talks,
or of what sort of a social demeanor he is wont to assume.
His concerns, like Addie's, are disembodied and abstract;
and thus, like here, they are vulnerable to our fascination
with Anse, a fascination planted and encouraged by the im-
plied author. Take, for example, Darl's philosophizing about
being and not-being as he "empties" himself for Sleep in a
strange room. Sleep is "is-not," he says. In other words,
one must be awake and exercising one's humanness in order
to pg; one must participate in life as a process. But
throughout the novel we find Anse's refusal to do so a source
of comedy. In fact, Anse sleep walks his way through life
with considerable success, and, in doing so, he provides
a kind of spoof of Darl's existential agony. Anse's entry
into the process of life is unwilled, unanimated, and un-
surpassingly trivial; but it seems real to us; and it seems
to please Anse well enough to please us a little too. In

other words, it makes claims on our identification and uses

105
up our energy in a laughter that is much easier and more
accessible than a profound understanding of Darl's concerns
would be; and thus it allows us to place less importance on
seeing through Darl's eyes and caring about what we see.
When Anse makes sure, in the end, that this world will not
be Darl's world, this life not his life, when he emerges
himself with new teeth and new duck-shaped bride, proving
that the unexamined life is the most resistant to the whims
of fortune, we are not altogether without feelings of
pleasure. It has been Anse all along who has most iiygi
(in both Jamesian senses) for us, after all, Anse with whom
the implied author has most clearly asked us to associate
as with a fellow human being. And it is Anse who has al-
lowed us to find in laughter a release from Darl's pain, a
pleasurable outlet for the energy that would have otherwise
been devoted to participating in his suffering.

In the essays of Joseph Gold, and Viscomi and Seltzer,
and in Brooke's classic study, we find a celebration of the
achievement of the Bundrens in completing their trip to
town and preserving themselves from total destruction by
fire and water. For those who do not focus on the irony
and tragedy of the stories of Addie and Darl, As I Lay Dyipg
often becomes the story of the triumph of man's spirit over
circumstance. In fulfilling Anse's promise to Addie, the
Bundrens symbolize the ability of mankind to endure hardship
and surmount difficulties in order to achieve a survival

that may be minimal, but is, nonetheless, significant. But

106
our analysis has allowed us to see that Anse's way of over-
coming obstacles is a combination of the inertia that makes
an object that has once begun to roll continue to do so, an
undue respect for platitude and cliche, and a willingness
to rely on and victimize others. Surely the completion of
the trip to Jefferson cannot, under these circumstances, be
representative in any serious Nobel—Prize speech sense of
the ability of the human spirit to "prevail." If this is
how we prevail, it can hardly be cause for celebration.

So the same consciousness that has created Addie's
anguish and Darl's confusion, and Jewel's fury, and Dewey
Dell's reluctant fertility, and Vardaman's fish, has created
a character who, by his strategic and vivid appearances
throughout the novel, and his ability to make us laugh,
lessens our concern for their suffering. In doing so, this
creator plays on them a "cruel peasant joke," attacks them,
as if he were at times unable or unwilling to sympathize
with their concerns. The implied author's position in rela-
tion to the suffering Bundrens is at times not much differ-
ent from Anse's own; and as his "ideal readers" we are likely,
on occasion, to find ourselves adopting a similar stance.

In Jason Compson we found a character whose arrogant-
vindictive personality type seemed to capture the imagin-
ation of his creator,who allows him an impact on the novel
disproportionate to his apparent thematic and formal func-
tion. In Anse we have found a character whose self-

alienated manner of confronting his world allows his creator

107
to use him as a kind of weapon against other characters
and themes towards which he apparently feels ambivalence.
But we have also noted that these tendencies have not been
(allowed total domination over the fiction concerned. For
many readers Quentin and Dilsey, Addie and Darl still pro-
vide the emotional and thematic focus for the novels they
inhabit. In our study of Light in August, however, we shall
find that this aggressive impulse takes almost total con-
trol, dominating the story to such an extent that it be-
comes profoundly disturbing, and must ultimately be paid

for with the martyrdom of Joe Christmas.

108
NOTES

1For an analysis of Faulkner's style as it relates to
his intent which uses these terms, see Warren Beck,
"William Faulkner's Style," in Faulkner: Four Decades of
Criticism, Linda Wagner, ed. (East Lansing, 1975).

2Faulkner often said that his aim was to create "flesh
and blood people that will stand up and cast a shadow,"
noted in Andre Bleikasten, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
Bloomington and London, 1975), p. 65. "

 

3This analysis is to be found in The Novels of William
Faulkner (Louisiana, 1964), pp. 50-65.

4Vickery, p. 57.

5This interpretation appears in William Faulkner: The
Yoknapatawpha Country_(New Haven, 1965), pp. 151-66}

6Brooks, p. 165.

7Brooks, p. 155.

88cc "As I Lay Dying As Ironic Quest," Four Decades.

9In fact, a survey of the vast amounts of criticism
on this little novel will reveal a wealth of diametrically
opposed interpretations. One can divide the critics of
the novel into two rough categories: those who think that
it is primarily comic or "straight" epic, and those who
think that it is primarily tragic or ironic. Those who see
it as comic or epic believe that Faulkner's comment on the
human condition is meant to be positive, that he means to
demonstrate the ability of mankind to triumph over exterior
obstacles and his own follies. Charles Allen ("William
Faulkner: Comedy and the Purpose of Humor," Arizona
Quarterly, XVI) for example, considers the novel a classic
example of comedy, the story of a group of people surviving
and "dominating" the world, and "just barely" their own
follies. Ora G. Williams ("The Theme of Endurance in As I
Lay Dying," Louisiana Studies, Ix, 100-104) also takes"'”‘
a positive view, but She thinks that it is an epic, with
Anse Bundren an "awesome" figure once set in motion by the
"animating power of Addie-woman-nature-fecundity. Leon F.
Seltzer and Jan Viscomi ("Natural Rhythms and Rebellion:
Anse's Role in As I LaygDying," Modern Fiction Studies,
XXIV. 556-64). also see Anse as a kind of conquering comic
hero, but they insist that it is he who influences Addie,
his "natural" influence being that which brings her and the
rest of the family to a state of stability. His triumph
culminates, they say, in the renewal of his own fertility

 

109

through "them teeth" and the duck-shaped woman. Thus they
are in direct disagreement with Robert Penn Warren ("William
Faulkner," in Four Decades, pp. 94—109), who also sees the
Bundren journey as an optimistic comment on the human condi-
tion, and who calls Anse heroic, but feels that his acquisi-
tion of teeth and wife at the end is a fall from grace.
Betty Alldredge ("Spatial Form in Faulkner's AS I Lanyying,"
The Southern Literary Journal, XI, 5-19), on the other hand,
feels that the novel makes a positive comment on life not
because the joruney is successful, but because Addie Bundren
has lived a life of admirable quality, and has made it to
her grave in her wedding dress, still unsullied by Anse.
Joseph Gold("Sin, Salvation and Bananas: As I Lay D ing,"
Mosaic, VII, 55-75), calls the book a "celebration, but
insists that it is not idealism, but the reverse, the
"heroics of the hearth," the pleasures of a new set of teeth
and a sack of bananas that are being celebrated. Idealism,
for him, takes the form of Addie's "maniacal schemes" and

is surely not to be admired.

Critics who see the novel as making a negative comment
on the human condition also disagree as to the nature of the
comment. Robert C. Nadeau ("The Morality of Act: A Study
of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying," Mosaic, VI, 25-55). who
thinks that the novel Has its philosophical base in existen-
tialism, sees Addie as the unsuccessful heroine who concerns
herself with doing but is thwarted by life. Edward
Wasiolek ("As I Lay Dying: Distortion in the Slow Eddy of
Current Opinion, Critique, III, 15-25), and James L. Roberts
("The Individual and thewFamily: Faulkner's As I Lay Dying,"
Arizona Quarterly, XVI, 26-58), emphasize the tragic aspects
of the lives of Addie and Darl. Roberts says that As I Lay
Dying expresses the tragedy of Darl's "futile attempt to
achieve sympathy and understanding." Wasiolek sees the
novel as "insistent on the bitter conditions of man's life."
Linda Wa ner's view (Hemingway and Faulkner: Inventors/
Masters Metuchen, l975/)is that the novel depicts a power
struggIe within a family and ends in a "tragic definition"
of the word "family." And Walter J. Siatoff (Quest for
Failure: A Study70f William Faulkner ZWestport, 1972]), who
Believes that As I Lay Dying is, like all Faulkner novels,
highly ambiguous, says that one way to look at the story
of the Bundrens is to note that nothing in it suggests that
the world not be better off without people. But, he adds
rather desperately, this "might well be regarded with amuse-
ment.

loKaren Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth (New York,
1950), p. 45.

ll

 

 

 

 

Horney, p. 65.

12William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (New York, 1950),
p. 52. Future references to this work will appear in the

text.

110

13Vickery, p. 56.

l4Seltzer and Viscomi, p. 562.

15See, for example, Vickery, p. 52, or Robert W. Kirk,
"Faulkner's Anse Bundren," Georgia Review, 19 (1965),

p. 448.
16See Re-appraisals (London, 1965). p. 191.

17Cold, p. 72.

18This resentment is obviously the dominant response
of some readers of the novel, as my summaries of the
criticism reveal. It is important to note here that my
analysis is, of necessity, based on my own response, though
it is supported by rhetorical and thematic analysis, and
by the readings of some other critics.

19Bleikasten thoroughly catalogs the similarities be-
tween Darl's idiom and Faulkner's own. See pp. 26-29.

CHAPTER IV

'KEEP YOUR MUCK': A HORNEYAN ANALYSIS OF
JOE CHRISTMAS AND LIGHT IN AUGUST

 

My analyses of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay
Dyigg have demonstrated that the aggressive tendencies of
the implied author of these works lead him to allow his
self-alienated characters, Jason Compson and AnsesBundren,
to undercut his and the reader's concern for those charac-
ters with whom the novels seem to tell us to sympathize:
Quentin, Benjy, Caddie, Addie, Darl: This collusion of im-
plied author and aggressive character leads to some thematic
ambiguity in these novels, but it has what sometimes seems
the salubrious effect of lightening the misery depicted
there, relieving the author and reader, at least briefly,
of the burden of accepting and making sense of the suffer-
ing of others. It is as if reader and implied author put
their heads together from time to time to have a comfortable
snicker at those characters who seem to require so much ex-
penditure of energy in pity and intellectual effort. And
we have seen that we are also rewarded for our toleration
of thematic ambiguity by the brilliance and vividness of
the mimetic portraits of Anse and Jason.

The association of implied author, reader, and

111

112
self-alienated character in Light in August is not quite so
benign or so salubrious as it is in these earlier novels.
A Horneyan analysis of some aspects of this novel reveals
that its "pinched rotted look," noted by Alfred Kazin,l is
the result of its subtle invitation to the reader to par-
ticipate in the world view of its aggressive protagonist;
a world view which compulsively rejects or disbelieves in
all positive connections between human beings, and harbors
in their place feelings of bitterness, resentment, and dis-
gust. At the same time it will reveal that the identifi-
cation of the creator with his creation has in this case
resulted in some failures of coherence in the portrayal.
In his desire to enlist our sympathy for and identification
with Joe Christmas, the implied author of Light in August
sacrifices the psychological consistency of his portrait.
We will find that the appeal of the novel rests with what
Albert J. Guerard refers to as Faulkner's "highly liber-
ated" use of fantasy2 rather than with thematic or mimetic

consistency. As he does in Sanctuary, Faulkner here ex-

 

plores the darker regions of the human mind without in-
hibition.

A Horneyan analysis of Joe Christmas's development and
his behavior as an adult, followed by an analysis of those
_ aspects of the novel that seem to me to reflect his dis-
torted world view rather than objective reality, and a
consideration of those elements of the novel thought to

provide a balance to his story, will support my theory that

115
the aggressive tendencies of the implied author of Light in
August are responsible for its overwhelmingly dark view of
the human condition.
Though John Lewis Longley, Jr., who sees himself as an
heroic holdout against the determinism of modern social
science, thinks that the essence of Joe Christmas is that

he defies his early conditioning to become a hero for modern
5

times, most critics see Faulkner's portrayal of Joe as a

study in the debilitating effects of a bad childhood.4 A
Horneyan analysis will demonstrate that Joe Christmas's child-
hood and adult development are clearly those of an arrogant-
vindictive type. Like Jason Compson's, Joe Christmas's
adulthood is made up of attempts to achieve revenge over

and mastery of those peOple and forces responsible for

his mistreatment and frustration as a child. As Horney
describes it,

Like every other neurotic development, this one
started in childhood-~with particularly bad human
experiences and few, if any, redeeming factors.
Sheer brutality, humiliations, derision, neglect,
and flagrant hypocrisy, all these assailed a
child of especially great sensitivity. People
who have endured years in concentration camps
tell us that they could survive only by stifling
their softer feelings, including particularly
that of compassion for self and others. It seems
to me that a child under the conditions I have
described also goes through such a hardening
process in order to survive. He may make some
pathetic and unsuccessful attempts to win sym-
pathy, interest, or affection but finally chokes
off all tender needs. He gradually "decides"
that genuine affection is not only unattainable
for him but that it does not exist at all.5

"Memory believes before knowing remembers,"6 begins

the chapter on Joe's childhood, indicating that Faulkner

114
means to trace the unconscious legacy of the child to the
man. And what a legacy it is. NO child-victim of Victorian
literature ever had a worse time of it than Joe. Imprisoned
behind the bleak, sootblackened walls of the orphanage,
"small, still, round-headed, round-eyed" (117), Joe grows
to the age of reason without love, his only treat an occa-
sional "pink worm" of the dietitian's toothpaste. One older
girl he likes "well enough to let her mother him a little"
(127), but she suddenly disappears (not t.b. or small pox,
adoption). Like many another little victim he has someone
assigned SSpecially to hate him, Doc Hines the racist luna-
tic who devotes his life to the destruction of the "abomina-
tion" that is Joe. In addition, he suffers the derision of
his fellow inmates who, out of some natural but obscure
evil impulse, since he does not then and never will look
black at all, call him "nigger."

As the toothpaste episode unfolds we see that Joe has
very early (he is now five) come to see punishment and per-
secution as the central facts of his life. When the dieti-
tian tries to bribe him instead of beating him he becomes
profoundly confused, and his mistrust of his fellow men
increases. By the time he has been adopted by the McEacherns
he has taught himself not to expect anything good from life,
in fact to defend himself from disappointment by hating, as
Hyatt Waggoner says, "not gygn those who love him but
especially those who love him,"7 He has learned to deny

the very existence of the love that has been denied him, and

115
seems not to hope for any positive results from the adop-
tion. Cautiously he reaches out not at all to McEachern
during their long ride to his new home. He sits, a silent
little bundle in the wagon, even more taciturn and unre-O
Sponsive than McEachern himself. But it is Mrs. McEachern's
welcome--the attempt to carry him to the house, the washing
of his feet, the watching by his bedside--that is most
wasted on he who can only wait for "the part that would not
be pleasant" (156) to begin. Already he has taught himself
not to believe in the genuineness of human affection, so
her actions, the "trivial, clumsy, vain efforts" (157). can
only mystify and eventually disgust him.

His initial response to his foster mother is the first
indication we have that Joe will make the transition from
victim to victimizer typical of the arrogant-vindictive
type. The real turning point occurs on a Sunday when the
eight year old Joe is beaten and starved by his Calvinist
foster father in an attempt to get him to learn his cate—
Chism. Unable to prevent the beatings, he accepts them
without emotion, "with a rapt expression like a monk in a
picture" (140). He is calm because McEachern's'treatment
of him corresponds to his view that life consists of a
series of punishments, and because by remaining "rapt"_he
can refuse McEachern mastery over him. After his inevitable
collapse he awakens feeling "quite well," at peace, as if
he has just made an important decision. Looking back on

this day he thinks, "On this day I became a man" (157).

116

and it becomes apparent that at this moment, starved and
aching from repeated beatings, he embarks on the search for
vindictive triumph that will lead him to murder at least
twice. Unable to revenge himself as yet on McEachern he
lashes out at his foster mother, violently rejecting her
offer of love and comfort in the form of food by dumping
the tray of secretly prepared dishes in the corner, only
later when it is just fOOd and no longer a tangible symbol
of the love in which he does not believe, kneeling over it
and eating, "like a savage, like a dog" (146). The events
of this day establish the pattern of Joe's life. He will
for the rest of his days accept, and even seek out, punish-
ment, taking his revenge where he can, and behaving with
particular violence in reSponse to offers of love or aid.

Once, however, taken off guard by the exigencies of
adolescence, Joe displays the vulnerability to human feel-
ings that his "solution" denies him. In his relationship
with Bobbie Allen we find the lessons of his childhood con-
firmed, and the hardening process completed. Falling in
love with a peculiarly stunted blonde waitress with over-
sized hands, Joe risks a partial abandonment of his drive
for mastery and his need to deny positive feelings, only to
be taught again that there is not really any such thing as
love. At first he is caught up in the mystery of Bobbie
and the mystery of sexual love in general,

I do not know yet that in the instant of sleep the
eyelid closing prisons within the eye's self her

face demure, pensive; tragic, sad, and young; wait-
ing, colored with all the vague and formless magic

117

of young desire. That already there is something

for love to feed upon: that sleeping I know now

why I struck refraining that negro girl three

years ago and that she must know it too and be

proud too, with waiting and pride (165-66).
His belated discovery that Bobbie is a prostitute imported
from Memphis to entertain the locals (though, as the older
blonde woman complains, in Joe's case she has brought "it"
all the way down to Jefferson just to give it away) leads
him to compensate for this vulnerability by aggressive be—
havior. Now he smokes and drinks and "in his loud drunken
despairing young voice" (187) calls Bobbie his whore.

It is in the midst of this sexual initiation into
adulthood that Joe finds an opportunity for vindictive
triumph. His murder, or attempted murder, of McEachern, and
his brutal robbery of Mrs. McEachern free him from the role
of victim, and release him forever from the standards of
behavior that govern mere mortals. He is described on his
way back to Bobbie, "The youth . . . rode lightly, balanced
lightly, leaning well forward, exulting perhaps at that
moment as Faustus had, of having put behind now at once and
for all the Shalt Not, of being free at last. of honor and
law" (194). For the moment he is his idealized self, but,
as his haste to return to Bobbie indicates, he is not yet
completely hardened.

Bobbie takes care of that. In the scene that follows
Joe's heroic journey to her house with Mrs. McEachern's egg

money, Bobbie provides Joe with the experience that finally

"choke(s) off all tender needs," and leads him to behave for

118
the rest of his life as if "genuine affection is not only
unattainable for him but . . . does not exist at all." Her
feelings presumably wounded by McEachern's rather polite
reference to her as a "harlot," Bobbie has exchanged her
usual cow like demeanor for that of a cornered rat. Her
rejection of Joe's offer of matrimony is ugly and vicious,

It was very much like it had been in the school
house: someone holding her as she struggled and
shrieked, her hair wild with the jerking and
tossing of her head; her face, even her mouth,
in contrast to the hair as still as a dead mouth
in a dead face . . . 'He told me himself he was
a nigger! The son of a bitch! Me f--ing for
nothing a nigger son of a bitch that would get
me in a jam with clodhopper police. At a clod-
hOpper dance!' (204)

No, Bobbie does not want to get married, and Joe's last at-
tempt to win affection is rewarded by several cruel blows

to the face. Now, with the taste of bitter rejection
mingling on his tongue with the flavor of vindictive tri-
umph, Joe embarks on his adult journey, "the street which
was to run for fifteen years" (210), and then for three
more before Percy Grimm's knife and gun bring it to a close.
Horney writes,

The need for triumph and the need to deny positive
feelings, both stemming from an unfortunate child—
hood situation, are thus, from the beginning, in-
timately interrelated. And they remain so because
they reinforce each other. The hardening of feel-
ings, originally a necessity for survival, allows
for an unhampered growth of the drive for a tri—
umphant mastery of life. But eventually this
drive, with the insatiable pride that accompanies
it, becomes a monster, more and more swallowing
all feelings. Love, compassion, considerateness-—
all human ties--are felt as restraints on the path
to a sinister glory. This type should remain aloof
and detached.8

119

During his fifteen years on the road, in fact "on the path
to a sinister glory," Joe systematically denies his connec-
tion to men of any race, and searches out opportunities for
the punishment and revenge pattern established in his child-
hood.

The question of Joe's ambiguous racial identity must
be introduced into this discussion of the formation of his
adult personality. Though some critics considerit to be
central to his development and to his significance for the

9 it seems to me that Joe's possibly "mixed

novel as a whole,
blood" has only a peripheral effect on the formation of

his personality. Though the hatred of old Doc Hines, an
important part of the atmosphere of his childhood, might

be attributed to his racial ambiguity, the crucial turning
points in the development of his neurotic "solution"--the
toothpaste incident, the catechism beatings and the rejec—
tion of Mrs. McEachern's food, the discovery that Bobbie

is a prostitute, the murder of McEachern and the robbery of
Mrs. McEachern, the final rejection by Bobbiee-cannot be
(it is hardly to be supposed that Bobbie would marry him
even if he had not told her that he had "nigger blood").
The central fact of Joe's life is not that he may be "part
nigger," but that he has been injured and thus seeks to in—
jure others and to deny his connection with them. His
"mixed blood" provides him with a means of denying others

Closeness and thus of denying the existence of values like

love and kindness, and it provides him with opportunities

120
for perpetuating the compulsive pattern of punishment and
revenge, but it is not the gaugg of his alienation.

We get our Closest look at the adult Christmas during
the three years that he spends in Jefferson before the murder
of Joanna Burden. During this time he exhibits virtually
every personal quality ascribed by Horney to the arrogant-
vindictive type: arrogance, envy, the need to frustrate
others, the inability to feel sympathy, the inability to
ask for or receive aid graciously, the tendency towards un-
controllable rage. His need to keep others at bay, or,
when he has the chance, to make them the recipients of his
contempt, to triumph over them with his tongue or his fist,
governs his every action.

Appearing on the Jefferson scene, Joe is "sullen and
quiet and fatal as a snake" (41). The second time he opens
his mouth it is to say in response to Byron Bunch's profor-
red lunch pail, "I aint hungry. Keep your muck" (51). The
men at the mill know him by his "darkly contemptuous" expres-
sion, and the "silent and unflagging savageness" with which
he shovels sawdust. These are apparently enough to keep
them at bay, but with the arrival of Brown, made of denser
stuff, Joe resorts to blows, curses, and murder threats.

But it is in his portrait of Joe's most "intimate"
relationship that Faulkner shows most vividly the emotional
paralysis and the compulsive need to deny others warmth that
is the inevitable adjunct to the search for vindictive

triumph.

121

Joe first encounters Joanna Burden when she finds him
standing in her kitchen surreptitiously eating the food that
he could have had for the asking. Briefly their relation-
ship is based on her supplying him with the food and shelter
that he needs but will not ask for. It is not much of a
connection, but it is enough to make Joe uncomfortable,
especially when he realizes one day, "liplifted," that she
has put herself above him by not inviting him into the
"house proper." He revenges himself by raping her, un-
feminine and unattractive as She is, but his triumph is
rendered incomplete by her failure to disintegrate at his
touch. Her surrender is "hard, untearful and unpitying and
almost manlike" (221), and thus he is compelled to try
again. This time he approaches her "in a quiet rage," de-‘
termined to "Show the bitch," but he meets neither enthusiasm
nor resistance, and thus is, again, denied the triumph that
would allow him to leave her alone. "It was as though some
enemy upon whom he has wreaked his utmost violence and
contumely stood, unscathed and unscarred and contemplated
him with a musing and insufferable contempt" (224).
Eventually he rids himself of this sense of her contempt in
a scene reminiscent of Catechism Sunday. As he sniffs and
audibly identifies each dish of food that has been left for
him before he sends it crashing into the kitchen wall ("I
dont like beets anyhow.") he feels an exhilarating sense of
vindictive triumph. It is no accident that this is one of

the few times in the novel that Joe really seems to come

122
alive, to do more than cast a baleful shadow on the page.
These are the moments for which the arrogant-vindictive
type lives: the moments that deny his dependency on others
and establish his ascendacy over them, the glittering prizes
that inspire his search for glory.

Now that he has caught on to the way to establish his
ascendancy over Joanna, Joe can stay on at her place and
wait for-her complete surrender, a surrender which comes in
the form of a grotesque middle aged sexual awakening: "In
this way the second phase began. It was as though he had
fallen into a sewer" (242). The words "fallen" and "sewer"
are important here. What happens to Joe in his relation—
ship with Joanna, what leads to her murder, is the fact that
her "surrender" ends up confining him. In the "sewer," the
"bottomless morass" of her sexuality he is trapped, and,
as we have seen, "all human ties . . . are felt as restraints
on the path to a Sinister glory" by the arrogant—vindictive
type. Joe is only able to resume his progress down this
path.when, following Faulkner's rather bizarre theory of
female sexuality,10 Joanna abruptly becomes an asexual
being at the onset of menopause, and insists on praying
over Joe and trying to reform him. Now she is vulnerable
because she is asking for something that he can deny her,
expressing a need that he is, indeed, compelled to frustrate,
just as he was compelled to frustrate Mrs. McEachern's need
for affection. Again the "need for triumph and the need to

deny positive feelings" come into play at the same time.

125
Now Joe can taste his triumph over Joanna, thinking,
"There is something that I am going to do." Now he can deny
her any feelings of love or respect, "his lip lifted into
the shape of a soundless and rigid snarl," saying, "You just
got old and it happened to you and now you are not any good
anymore" (262). He hates her now "with a fierce revulsion
of dread and impotent rage" (257), for having confined him.
His rage, maybe not really so impotent, leads him to tote
his razor up her stairs and slit her throat so thoroughly
that the country man who finds her body will be afraid to
pick it up for fear the head will stay behind. The in-
tensity of his rage is a response to her absolute determina—
tion to deny him mastery, but it is also his reply to her
attempts to be the loving mother he never had.

All of the elements of Joe's personality, the ways of
behaving that come out of his compulsive need to move
against others, are revealed in his relationship with Joanna.
First, there is his arrogant, rude, affection-denying treat-
ment of her. This is the result, as Horney would point out,
of his need to externalize the self-hate that is the in-
evitable concommitant of the gap between his actual self
(a two bit drifter cared about by no one) and his idealized
self (the young Faustus above honor and law), his need to
deny the existence of positive feelings, and his need to
intimidate others into allowing him the vindictive triumph
that is his only source of satisfaction. All who come in

contact with him: the McEacherns, the mill workers, "Joe

124
Brown," are treated with the same distancing coldness and
contempt. He establishes around himself an impenetrable
aura of sullenness.

Then, there is his tendency to respond violently to
the friendly gesture, his inability to ask for or receive
help graciously, because to do so would be to admit a failure
of mastery. This is especially evident in his response to
proferred food--Mrs. McEachern's or Joanna's carefully pre-
pared meals, or Byron's lunch. It also extends to money.
"What do I want with money?" (185) is his arrogant response
to Mrs. McEachern's fumbling attempt to give him some. And
he is careful to remind her as he steals her little hoard
that he has not accepted it as a gift,'"I didn't ask be-
cause I was afraid you'd give it to me. I just took it.
Don't forget that" (196). It is important to note that
this inability to take from others is compulsive, and not
a healthy desire "to live on the terms of his own self-

11 Joe does not

definition," as Longley describes it.
merely refuse aid, he responds with fury, with physical or
verbal violence, when it is offered. He does so because of
a need to reassert the false feeling of superiority that is
threatened when people behave as if they think he needs
help.

Joe's relationship with Joanna also brings into clear
perspective another pattern of dealing with others typical

of the arrogantdvindictive personality. As we have seen,

his most common stance is that of a highly controlled

125
sullenness. As Horney says, Joe's type is "rather over

12 in his relations with

controlled, guarded and vigilant"
others. But in opposition to this guardedness we find a
tendency toward violent and uncontrollable rage. The vin-
dictive type, though he may be very unpleasant indeed, or-
dinarily does not express much of the hostility that he
feels (this would be too dangerous). But on occasion his
compulsions overwhelm him, and he feels rage as something
impinging on him from outside, something over which he has
no control, something which frightens even him. These oc-
casions arise when there is a clear and present threat to
his idealized image, when his mastery, or his freedom from
positive feelings is threatened. When Brown laughs at him
and calls him a "nigger" Joe comes close to killing him,
seeing his actions as out of control, as coming from another
source, "Something is going to happen to me. I am going to
do something" (97). When he goes for a walk in Freedman
Town and encounters some blacks talking and laughing, he
almost cuts a man with his razor, "What in hell is the mat-
ter with me?" he wonders. And then, "Something is going to
happen. Something is going to happen to me" (110). As they
are throughout the book, blacks here are a reminder to Joe
of his despised actual self, the self that he is afraid
might be black and thus inferior. Contact with blacks often
brings on this kind of rage, most notably when he comes
close to killing a white prostitute who has just turned out

(not turned away) a "shine." As we have seen, Joe's murder

126

of Joanna is also the result of vindictive rage, a rage so
far out of Joe's control that he begins to think of the
murder as past before it has even happened, "Maybe I have
already done it," he thinks. "Maybe it is now no longer
waiting to be done" (104). Again, we must note a flaw in
Longley's argument that Joe is an existential hero. His
acts of violence are not evidence of rebellion against a
controlling society. They are evidence of a profound loss
of choice emanating from an irrational rage at those who
threaten his identification with his idealized self.

Faulkner's portrayal of Joe Christmas builds to a
climax in his description of the relationship between Joe
and Joanna, and, as we have seen, many of the essential
elements of his character are revealed there. But the
events following the murder are also of importance to our
understanding of his character and its significance. Onde
"something" has indeed happened, and Joanna's throat is slit,
Joe's revenge for the damage done him in childhood is almost,
but not quite, complete. He has destroyed the punishing man,
and the confining.women--McEachern will not threaten his
mastery again, Joanna and Mrs. McEachern will not try to
connect themselves to him again--but one more threat re-
mains. Joe still has to triumph over the Spectre of his
weakness and inferiority, the "actual self" that he has, in
his adulthood, come to associate with blacks. To this end
he bursts in upon a black church, cursing God, slapping the

minister, knocking a seventy year old man "clean down into

127

the mourner's pew," fracturing the skull of that man's six
foot grandson with a bench leg. "I'll cut a notch in it
tomorrow" (508), he thinks, and, for the second time in the
novel close to laughter, says, "Have a butt boys," as he
flicks his cigarette into the bushes where the mystified and
frightened black men wait. The next time we see Joe it is
at dawn, and he is feeling a sense of peace and exhilaration,
the rewards of complete vindictive triumph. His dragons
slain, Joe need fight no longer.

Joe's passive surrender to the law, and then to the
gun and knife of Percy Grimm may seem to be grossly incone
sistent with his character as I have described it, but in
fact his martyrdom is readily explicable in Horneyan terms.
Every arrogant-vindictive type, Horney explains, harbors
powerful self-effacing trends.13 They are part of the
actual self that he is compelled to despise. They threaten
him with helplessness, and they cast doubt on the "truth"
of his solution, but they remain to tempt him with a means
of obtaining the affection and acceptance that he was first
denied and has since denied himself. Drawing on her psycho-
analytic experience, Horney describes the frequent reaction
of a patient whose vindictive trends are brought to light by
analysis: "A period ensues when he feels altogether con-
temptible and helpless and tends to prostrate himself for
the sake of being loved."14 This extreme response is, in
a sense, paralleled by Joe's response to the fulfillment of

his vindictive desires. The Joe that we see shaving and

128
combing his hair, preparing himself, the town says, like a
bridegroom, for death, is a Joe who has satisfied his com-
pulsion to make others suffer, and has been overcome by
that part of his personality that wishes suffering on it-
self, and cannot allow itself to fight back. As we shall
see, this sudden emergence of Joe's self-effacing trends is
part of his creator's plan to elicit our sympathy for and
identification with Joe, but first let us understand the
psychological implications of his surrender.

The suffering that Joe undergoes during his "passion"
and death is, it is clear, very real suffering indeed, and
it is shown to be unjustly incurred. Nevertheless, in the
context of Faulkner's characterization it is "neurotic" or
"functional" suffering in that Joe seeks it out deliberately,
and uses it with the apparent object of "dying on the door-
step" of the world that has abused him for so long. Func-
tional suffering, a prominent aspect of self-effacing
neurosis, has as its purpose the accusing of others, and
the excusing of oneself,15 and Joe's sudden switch from
murderer to passive victim can be understood as a product
of his need to do just that. He is reacting to the fulfill-
ment of his drive for vindication in the same way that Horney's
patients react to the vision of their own vindictiveness: by
switching the emphasis on to himself as needy victim and
sufferer. Captured in Mottstown Joe allows Halliday to hit
him in the face, "acting like a nigger," (i.e., prostrating
himself) for the first time, according to the town (551).

129

He escapes, apparently only in order to increase his suf-
fering, hurry his martyrdom, and does not defend himself
against Grimm even though he is carrying a loaded pistol.
Faulkner describes his castration and death in a remarkable
passage,

For a long moment he looked up at them with

peaceful and unfathomable and unbearable eyes.

Then his face, body, all, seemed to collapse, to

fall in upon itself, and from out the slashed

garments about his hips and loins the pent black

blood seemed to rush like a released breath. It

seemed to rush out of his pale body like the rush

of sparks from a rising rocket; upon that black

blast the man seemed to rise soaring into their

memories forever and ever. They are not to lose

it, in whatever peaceful valleys, beside whatever

placid and reassuring streams of old age, in the

mirroring faces of whatever children they will

contemplate old disasters and newer hopes. It

will be there, musing, quiet, steadfast, not fad-

ing and not particularly threatful, but of itself

alone serene, of itself alone triumphant (440).
Once again, we are witness to the successful completion of
the search for glory, but this time the reward is the crown-
ing glory of martyrdom rather than vindictive triumph. This
glory is brought with suffering rather than mastery, and it
is shown to be a thing greatly to be desired. Those who
have neglected and persecuted Joe, who have denied him love
and understanding, are new never to lose the memory of his
suffering, the image of his martyred face.

Thus far my analysis has been restricted to making
psychological sense of Faulkner's portrait of Joe Christmas.
It would appear that his character is psychologically ex-
plicable as that of a man whose horrendous childhood has

caused him to behave in rigidly prescribed patterns--first

150
as avenging angel, then as suffering martyr-~patterns de-
lineated not by objective reality, but by his unrealistic
vision of his idealized self. But it is my view that Joe's
creator does not always see his creation in this light,
that he tends instead to identify with Joe, to accept, and
to wish the reader to accept, what would be Joe's own
idealized version of himself. This is made evident by cer-
tain violations of the integrity of Joe's portrait, by the
treatment of his martyrdom, and by the presence of a strain
of aggression in the novel as a whole.

Though it is quite rare, in Faulkner's major works, to
encounter lines or descriptions which do not ring true to
the characterizations of which they are a part, this does
happen, it seems to me, in the case of Joe Christmas. Oc-
casionally he is given a line to speak that strikes a dis-
sonant note in relation to the rest of his characterization.
These lines seem designed to ask our participation in his
irrational sense of injury, to encourage us to identify
with him, and to prepare us to accept his "apotheosis" at
the end.

For example, there is Joe's plaintive reaction to
Bobbie's rejection of his proposal of marriage, "Why, I
committed murder for her. I even stole for her" (204). As
Waggoner points out, the effect of this passage is senti-
mental because Faulkner seems to ask us to accept this as—
sessment of the situation, to pity Joe for being betrayed,

16

when, in fact, what he says is a lie. Joe killed

131
McEachern, gleefully, for revenge, and he stole from Mrs.
McEachern, not to get the money for Bobbie, because he could
have had it for the asking, but to demonstrate his complete
rejection of his foster mother and her way of being. By
putting this unlikely line in Joe's mouth (his motives seem
clear enough to him moments before), Joe's creator is asking
us to play down Joe's victimization of others.17

A similar situation occurs when Faulkner has Joe ask
Joanna, after hearing the story of her ancestors, "Just when
will men that have different blood in them stop hating one
another?” (236). Hitherto Joe's sole contribution to brother-
ly love between the races has been to hate whites for being
white and blacks for being black. And the Joe Christmas that
Faulkner shows us would never have said those words-~self-
pity and humanism are most definitely not his style. Here,
as in the jarring passage that describes Joe as being "sick
for two years" after sleeping with an unsegregated prostitute,
his creator is asking us to give more weight to Joe's dis-
tress over his racial ambiguity than it will bear. He does
so, I think, in order to increase our sympathy for and in—
volvement in Joe's plight.

A similar attempt at manipulation is associated with
Joe's statements about what he wants out of life. When Joe
says, on two occasions, that all he wants, all he has ever
wanted, is peace (104, 313) the context of his statements,
and the surrounding imagery of dawn, of softness and cool-

ness, of Joe "becoming one with loneliness and quiet that

132
has never known fury or despair" (313), encourage the
reader to believe that he is speaking the truth. Joe is
seen here as the victim of a world that has even refused
him peace, though that seems "so little to ask.” But, as
Faulkner's portrait has shown us, Joe has not found, indeed
does not even desire, peace, because he has a compulsive
need to move against and triumph over others. In a related
passage he is alleged to think as he looks in a window at
some white people playing cards, "That's all I wanted. That
dont seem like a whole lot to ask" (108), and our sympa-
thetic identification with the subject of racial prejudice
is evoked. But we know that once he is away from Hines
only Joe's own need to set himself against others prevents
him from being thought of as white. A peaceful game of
cards with white folks is most certainly not all that Joe
Christmas ever wanted.

This sentimentalization of Joe's role as victim cul-
minates in his final martyrdom. As we have seen, Joe's
"conversion” itself is psychologically explicable. He is
driven from one solution to another by the fulfillment of
his vindictive drives, and by the need to accuse others and
excuse himself through "functional suffering.” But in at-
tempting to discover what the author of Light in August
wants us to think of all this we find that he seems to
share in Joe's desires to accuse others and excuse himself
through suffering, that he too sees Joe's life as justified
by his end, that, in fact he sees Joe as his idealized self,

133
as a god.

There is much discussion among critics as to whether
the parallels between Joe and Jesus Christ are meant to be
ironic or not. It seems clear to me that they are not. The
language used to describe Joe's death, the idiotic cruelty
of Percy Grimm, the ugliness of the lynch mob, the sympathy
due Mrs. Hines, the dignity of Joe: these are just a few of
the things that encourage our positive identification of Joe
with Jesus. The religious imagery surrounding Joe's death
has been heavily documented. There are angels and halos;
there are "slashed garments," and a wound to the body. But
it is in the use of language and imagery in the passage de-
scribing Joe's death that his identification with the Jesus
who ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of his
Father is made most obvious. When, on the geyser of "pent
black blood" from his leins, Joe seems "to rise soaring
into (the) memories forever and ever" of the men who are
watching him, when his face is immortalized, "of itself
alone serene, of itself alone triumphant," it becomes clear
that his death is meant to justify all that has gone before,
to, in fact, accuse others and excuse Joe. Like that of
Jesus, Joe's martyrdom is seen as willed and redemptive.

The compulsions shown to have been set in motion by his
childhood are now forgotten as he soars into our memories,
purified and glorified by his suffering. Critics have found
this apotheosis difficult to account for, and no wonder. As

our psychological analysis of Joe's character allows us to

134

see, it is possible for a man like Joe to feel driven to
martyrdom, but highly unlikely that he should achieve such
glorious results (based on fantasy, such attempts at martyr-
dom are unlikely to buy one the kind of eternal life granted
to Joe). Joe's soaring departure is made possible not by
the realities of his characterization, but by the tendency
of Joe's creator to mistake Joe's idealized self for real-
ity.18

The implied author's apparent identification with Joe
Christmas is related to the pattern of aggression that per-
vades Light in August, but it is not our only evidence that
the novel indulges a great deal in aggressive fantasy. An
analysis of some of the patterns of imagery in the novel,
and of the treatment by the implied author of characters
other than Joe will reveal that the novel consistently demon-
strates the same need to deny “weakness,” and seek out
”triumph" that governs Joe's life until the bench leg comes
in contact with Roz Thompson's head.

It has often been pointed out19 that for Faulkner
women represent that aspect of humanity which is most basi-
cally human: physical as opposed to intellectual, realistic
as opposed to idealistic, enduring as Opposed to vengeful,
accepting as opposed to aggressive. Ordinarily these
dichotomies serve to place the women of his works above the
men. They are closer to nature, less inclined to try to
force life to conform to their ideals, more able to endure

suffering because of their habit of accepting it and going

135
on. Faulkner's public answer to a question on Light in
August indicates that he wished to have this novel considered
in the same light. He claimed that the book was written out
of his admiration for women, their "courage and endurance,"

20 But if we

that it was primarily the story of Lena Grove.
look closely at the novel we find that instead of represent-
ing the "weaker" (that is to say more human, more accepting,
and less aggressive) aspects of humanity in a positive
sense, the novel presents women as by and large the objects

21 Their physical selves,

of squeamishness and contempt.
accepting and giving rather than moving against, are either
malfunctioning or nauseating; their attempts to love, or

to be kind are generally awkward, ridiculous, and/or unsuc-
cessful. In other words, the novel as a whole tends to

share Joe Christmas's perspective on women, rather than the
perspective of the public Faulkner.

Joe Christmas learns to hate women because of his ex-
perience with the dietitian. In his mind they are associated
with "muck" of various kinds, this four letter word refer-
ring not only to their association with food, but to their
sexuality, and to their tendency to try to make a positive
human connection with Joe. As we have seen, Joe's "solu-
tion" requires that he remain above these things, particu-
larly the latter. A close look at the novel reveals that

22 and use of imagery

through his manipulation of situation
the implied author of Light in August asks us to share this

perspective.

136

Here is what happens to you if you are a female charac-
ter in Light in August. If you are past menopause you are
asexual, you are ugly, you dress funny, you wear your hair
in an unattractive "tight screw" at the back of your head,
and your gestures of kindness or affection are "savage,"
"clumsy," even ridiculous. If you are young and do not have
sex then you look "frozen and skinny," are driven to run off
to Memphis where you can get what you need, have a nervous
breakdown in church, and finally feel so guilty that you
jump out of a hotel window. If you are young and do have
sex then maybe you are the "prone and abject” participant
in a fourteen year old's gang bang, or maybe you are un-
naturally short and have great big hands “dead and pale as
a piece of cooking meat" (202), the outer signs of your
"inner corruption of the spirit” (161). Or maybe you are a
"pinksmelling" wild eyed young woman willing to destroy a
child's life to keep your activities secret. Or just maybe
you can give off the air of an unravished bride of quiet-
ness even while eight months pregnant and demonstrate your
”courage and endurance" by pursuing across three states a
man who does not want you and would not be worth catching
even if your "slow time” did not make that event seem highly
improbable. But if you are a middle aged woman who has
sex, then you are in real trouble, because while a man's
"sin" can be "healthy and normal," making love with you is
like falling into a sewer. You will try to draw a man into

the ”black thick pool” of your sexuality. You will be

137

afflicted with that ghastliest of infirmities, nymphomania,
and will cast yourself about in wild poses and shout obscen-
ities. You too look funny in your clothes, but underneath
is a ”rotten richness ready to flow into putrefaction at a
touch" (247). Eventually you will reach menopause and make
a fool of yourself by suddenly thinking you are pregnant.
Then you will lose all interest in sex and absurdly transfer
your energies to a scheme to send your ignorant mill hand
lover to law school, that is before you go completely nuts
and try to shoot him with an ancient pistol that does not
work. Then you will get your throat slit and look funny
lying on the ground for all the world to see with your head
turned around completely backwards (if you'd been able to
do that before, they say, maybe you wouldn't be doing it
now). As Guerard points out, ”The misogynous imagination
selects for its female victims appalling situations and
punishments."23 It would seem that the guiding conscious-
ness of Light in August, far from setting himself to admire
the "courage and endurance” of women wishes to reject and
deny the messy humanity that they represent. Their sexual-
ity in particular is shown to be the source of corruption,
ugliness, stupidity, mean-spirited behavior, and bad smells.

To a lesser extent the blacks of the novel are also
the objects of this compulsive rejection of all that is
"weak" or "inferior" (ige., not aggressive) in humanity.
It has not gone unnoticed that there are some blatantly

racist descriptions in the novel, such as that which refers

138
to the "vacuous idiocy" of "idle and illiterate" (53) Negro
nursemaids, or the "fumbling and timeless Negro fashion”
(68) of a black expectant father. But there is also a con-
sistent pattern of imagery that places blacks in the messily
human, and thus despicable, category of women: their alleged
inferiority and tendency to connect with one another (they
seem to crowd together, and they are over and over described
as "fecund“) qualifying them to be the recipients of the
implied author's contempt. Like women, blacks are associated
with smells and unpleasant enclosure. Freedman Town is like
"the bottom of a thick black pit" (107). This echo of the
description of Joanna's sexuality is no accident; a walk in
Freedman Town is like a return to ”the lightless hot wet
primogenitive Female" (107), and, as we have seen, that is
like a stroll through the sewer. Joe can hardly breathe
lying next to his ebony carving of a common-law wife, and
blacks are smelled before they are seen. The air around
whites is ”cold and hard,” and, if they are male, presumably
odor free.

Just as Faulkner's answer to the university student's
question asks us to see Light in August as a celebration of
womanhood, however, some elements of the novel ask us to
see it as a sympathetic tract on the race question. In
other words, the novel seems at times to ask the question
so improbably attributed to Joe, "Just when do men that have
different blood in them stop hating one another?“ As we

have seen, Faulkner's portrayal of Joe asks for our sympathy

139
for the outsider, the "nigger," the victim of the lynch mob,
the man unjustly hated because of the "curse” of his a1-
1eged black blood. But at the same time we are subtly asked
to despise all those who do not pursue mastery and deny
positive feelings, and thus the black race, condemned to an
inferior position, and prone to close associations is seen
as fumbling, stupid, and smelly.

A look at the positive imagery associated with aggres-
sion in the novel confirms our theory that it tends to en-
courage aggressive fantasy and discourage its antithesis.
When Samuel A. Yorks points out that in the world of Light

in August it seems "better to be castrated than seduced"24

 

he is referring to the way the novel continually contrasts
the admirably "clean" tendency to move against people or
things, or to separate oneself from them, as opposed to the
"messy" tendency to move toward them, to make physical or
emotional connections.

When Joe violently removes his undergarment in the
bizarre "streaking" episode, his right hand slides "fast
andfismooth," striking the remaining button a "light, swift
blow" (100). Then the dark air breathes "smoothly" around
his male nakedness, it is "soft" and "cool." This is his
answer to the "thick still black pool of more than water"
(99) that is the image for Joanna's frantic attempts to
move toward him with all of her almost worn out sexual
being. This same contrast of phallic with womb-sewer imagery

is encountered in the description of Joe's trip through the

140
black section of town. Here Joe is the "lone telephone
pole," connoting something "clean, hard, and dry,"25 as
Yorks points out, while, as we have seen, the black area
where people are gathered closely together, presumably in
the process of being "fecund," is like the womb, "light-
less, hot, wet," like "the bottom of a thick black pit."
And it also appears in the description of Joe's reaponse to
Bobbie's explanation of menstruation. Nauseated, he runs to
the woods where he takes brief solace in the "hard trunks”
of the trees, "branch shadowed, quiet, hardfeeling, hard-
smelling, invisible" (197), and then seems to see a row of
misshapen urns (the shape of the womb the functions of which
are to give and receive rather than move against): "Each
one was cracked and from each crack there issued something
liquid, deathcolored, and foul" (178). Naturally Joe vomits.
But then he buys a nice new rope with which to escape from
the house at night, and the next time he sees Bobbie hauls
her off to the woods with no preliminaries.

In the descriptions of Joe's childhood the imagery used
in connection with McEachern and his cruelty towards Joe
tends to be more positive than that connected with Mrs.
McEachern's ineffective attempts to move toward him.
McEachern is frequently described by terms like "hard," and
"vigorous." He is "rocklike," indomitable. He smells of
the "clean hard virile living leather" with which he beats
Joe coolly, without heat or anger (139). Mrs. McEachern,

on the other hand, is a "stiff caricature" when she reaches

141
out her hand to Joe. She is "shapeless, a little hunched"
(145). She hovers, she fumbles, and she huddles, like some
unattractive little bird. This imagery is not wasted on
Longley, who refers to her "sickening attempts to make

26 It is Joe, of course,

(Joe) as cringing as herself."
who accepts and models himself after his foster father and
despises his foster mother because he cannot understand or
believe in love, but the novel seems to lend some support
to his choice.

Even in Percy Grimm's final pursuit of Joe, we see
that the imagery gives a positive connotation to aggression
and a negative connotation to its opposite. Grimm's face
is "rocklike," "bright." It has "that serene, unearthly
luminousness of angels in church windows" (437). The rest
of the community, on the other hand, huddled together look
at "his tense hard young face," their own faces "blanched
and gaped with round, toothed orifices" (434). Likewise,
Christmas, in his final aggressive action, the last violent
explosion before the drive for martyrdom takes over completely,
is a figure of some beauty compared to the minister who,
frantically and ineffectively, tries to give him aid, with
"his bald head and his big pale face" (438). Joe runs up
Hightower's hall, ”his raised and armed and manacled hands
full of glare and glitter like lightening bolts" (438).

Light in August presents a world where the warm

 

gesture, the act of giving or physical union, and the very

source of life itself are seen as unbeautiful, awkward,

142

even "foul," while the tendency to move against others,
or at least to maintain a "clean" and "hard" separateness
is invested over and over again with a certain beauty.
Like Joe Christmas, the consciousness that created this
world seems to have a compulsive need to deny the reality
and efficacy of human bonds, and to indulge in intense and
vivid fantasies of triumph. That the novel also presents
a world where human physical and emotional realities are
warmly, if a bit condescendingly, accepted, does not belie the
significance of this to our understanding of it.

For many critics the story of Lena Grove and her pro-
tector Byron Bunch is far more central than I have made it
out to be. We can surmise from the interpretations of some
critics that they see the implied author as solidly aligned
with this amiable pair, inviting the reader to view the other
characters and happenings of the novel from this perspective.
Carl Holman, in his classic study of the novel, says that
Byron and Lena "establish a norm for the other actions, a
definition of the natural order against which the perver-
sions and distortions of the other stories are to be set."27
Wagner thinks that Byron is "the real standard" by which the

28 while both Cleanth

other characters are to be judged,
Brooks and Olga Vickery speak of Lena's power as a repre—
sentative of Nature to rescue Byron and Hightower, to drag
them into life,29 and Yorks too sees her as a "redemptive
figure."30 For these ctitics the story of Joe with all of

its violence and hatred and vision of tortured and

143
victimized humanity redeemed through suffering, is balanced
by an opposing view of a humanity able to accept life as it
is and even move in a positive direction-—to fall in with
the rhythms of nature, and even to try to establish "a

f."31 But although the structure of

morality in life itsel
the novel (Lena used as a frame, Byron tying the various
stories together) and some of the rhetoric (Lena is made
so appealing in the first chapter that one almost feels re-
deemed by her oneself) support this interpretation, I do not
believe that the novel as a whole justifies it.

I am not the first to notice that the thematic impact
of Byron and Lena is reduced by their creator's tendency to
undercut them by making them appear stupid or silly. Lena

32

is the "mental pigmy“ that Heimer describes her as being,

and she is never really allowed out of the comic mold of
appealing, fertile, but amusingly limited female. Though
we are led to believe that she might become an important
thematic force when she draws Hightower into life through the
birth of her baby, we cannot retain that impression when we
see her reduced to a comic figure33 (in the Bergsonian as
well as the conventional sense) when she mechanically re-
sumes her pursuit of Lucas after he jumps out the window;
"Now I got to get up again" (410), she says out loud to
herself. And in the scenes that portray a Lens who could
not resist the callow Burch rejecting the advances of

Byron, her devoted protector, it is obvious that the implied

author is more concerned with humor than with theme. The

144
humor is very good, and Lord knows it is welcome, but it
has a profoundly negative effect on Lena's status as a
redeemer. The qualities that she represents: loyalty, en-
durance, an accepting spirit, are ultimately made ridicu-
lous. Her loyalty is misplaced, her endurance seems to be
the result of a one track mind, and her accepting spirit
begins to seem almost moronic as she continues to ignore
the negative aspects of her situation and extoll the virtues
of travelling, "My my. A body does get around" (480).
There is, in the latter part of her characterization at
least, a partial denial of the "positive feelings" that she
represents, which coincides with the strain of aggression
in the novel.

This strain of aggression is even more clearly at work
in the novel's treatment of Byron Bunch. The original de-
scription of Byron is flavored with sentimentality. He
works six days a week, not for money or pleasure, but be-
cause working is somehow the thing to do, and because it
keeps him out of trouble. 0n the seventh day, not content
to go to the local church of his choice, or even to ride two
hours to a different one like McEachern, he rides all night
Saturday and all night Sunday in order to lead the choir at
an all day country church service, only to be on hand with
"clean overalls and shirt" when the mill whistle blows
Monday morning. He eschews "meanness" to the extent that he
does not even know Who the local moonshiner is, and his

only friend is an ex-minister who is neglected and

145
persecuted by the rest of the town. He stumbles on this
man's doorstep every time he goes to visit him until, trans-
formed by love and a newly found decision making ability, he
is able on one occasion to stride right on in. This portrait
is sentimental because it is based on exaggeration and
cliche. Unlike the Faulkner of Snopes who was able, as we
shall see, to create in V. K. Ratliff a "good" man of many
dimensions, a character who gets right up and walks off the

page, the implied author of Light in August seems only able

 

to define a healthy lack of aggression in a character by
relying on stereotype.

As Slatoff points out,34 Faulkner allows Byron a brief
gain in stature (as he arranges for Lena's lying-in and
defies the Mrs. Grundies of Jefferson he stands up straight
and has a "new air born somewhere between assurance and
defiance" 295). But in the final chapter he is greatly re-
duced. The furniture dealer, rather a wonderful narrator
who brings Ratliff to mind, describes Byron as "the kind of
fellow you wouldn't see at first glance if he was alone by
himself in the bottom of a empty concrete swimming pool"
(469), and says it is impossible to imagine "any woman
knowing that they had ever slept with him, let alone having
anything to show folks to prove it" (470). He "trots" into
the store and, overeager, comes out with so many bags that,
little as he is, he can hardly see over them. He is "a
durn little cuss" about to "burst out crying" because of

sexual frustration. He is not only rejected by Lena, but

146
hoisted out of the truck by her as if he were a six year
old. I submit that in these scenes Byron's creator has
castrated him just about as effectively as Percy Grimm cas-
trates Joe Christmas. His thematic role as a man who ac-
cepts and involves himself in humanity is seriously under-
cut. He becomes first andforemost a "little" man, cute and
amusing, but ennuch-like and ineffective.

We have seen that the drive for triumph and the need
to deny positive feelings play important roles in the guid-
ing consciousness of Light in August. But we have also
seen that the canonization of the aggressive protagonist
(with whom the implied author seems to identify) is bought
with his suffering, with his ultimate assumption of the
role of passive victim. And we have seen that various at-
tempts (mostly half-hearted or unsuccessful) are made
throughout the novel to portray the importance of positive
feelings. What can we hypothesize about the implied author
in relation to these conflicting aspects of the novel?

It seems to me that the occasional attempts to espouse
non-aggressive values in Light in August is meant to serve
the same purpose for the novel as a whole as Joe's "passion"
and death serve in relation to his character. By showing
Joe's assumption of a self-effacing value system at the end,
and by closing the book with Hightower's conversion and the
coziness of the furniture dealer's narration, the implied
author is attempting to compensate for the intense aggres-

siveness of the novel as a whole.

147

As we have seen, Guerard attributes much of the appeal
of Faulkner's work to "highly liberated fantasy." It is my
view that the central fact about Light in August, its source
of appeal, the quality that makes it fairly hum with forbid-
den energy, is its "highly liberated" use of aggressive
fantasy, and its equally liberated use of the fantasies of
martyrdom that surround Joe's demise, that glorious ultimate
revenge of the victim. Joe may be made to wonder why the
blacks in the cabin are "of their brother afraid" (317),
Hightower may see at the last moment that he was wrong to
neglect his wife, Mrs. Armstid may demonstrate the fundamental
generosity of her kind by giving away her egg money, but
these moments do not define the essence of Light in August.
This is found in the disturbing and vicious chapters on
Joe's affair with Joanna Burden, in the portrayal of his
stand-off with McEachern, in the descriptions of his violent
progress down the "lonely street," in Doc Hine's excruciating
narration of his attempts to destroy "God's abomination,"
in the image of Joe's ascension into heaven on the geyser of
"pent black blood" from his wound. These passages are pic-
tures of behavior that have little basis in objective real-
ity, either because the characters involved are driven by
their inner dictates rather than by clear perceptions of
reality, or because they are the result of the "highly
liberated fantasies" of the implied author. Their appeal
is not to our reason, or to our admiration for Nobel-Prize-

speech sentiment, but to the darker regions of our minds.

148
This darker region responds also to the portraits of Jason
Compson and Anse Bundren, but it is in Light in August
and, perhaps, in Sanctuary, that the appeal is most over-
whelming. As we shall see in our exploration of The Hamlet

the appeal of Faulkner's later work has a different source.

149
NOTES

lAlfred Kazin, "The Stillness of Light in August,"
in Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, ed. (Englewood Cliffs,
1966), p. 161.

2Albert J. Fuerard, The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens;
Dostoevsky, Faulkner (New York, 1976), p. 4.

 

 

 

3John Lewis Longley, Jr., The Tragic Mask: A Study
of Faulkner's Heroes (Chapel Hill, 1963),

 

4For most recent studies see, for example, T. H.
Adamowski, "Joe Christmas: The Tyranny of Childhood," Novel,
IV (197 ). 240-51; Doreen F. Fowler, "Faith As A Unifying——
Principle in Faulkner's Light in August," Tennessee Studies
in Literature, XXI (1977), 49-57, and for a very successful
study of the Oedipal conflict as a possible source for
Joe's behavior, see Louise A. Poresky, "Joe Christmas: His
Tragedy As Victim," Hartford Studies in Literature, VIII
(1976), 209-22.

 

 

5Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth (New York,
1950), p. 202.

6William Faulkner, Light in August (New York, 1972),
p. 111. Future references in7text.

7Hyatt Waggoner, William Faulkner (Kentucky, 1959).
p. 103.

8Horney, p. 203.

9For critics who think Joe's "mixed blood" to be a
central question, see for example, Peter Swiggart, The Art
of Faulkner's Novels (Austin, 1962), who attributes Joe's
pattern of self-destruction to the "moral and social prob-
lem of the racially divided South," or Olga Vickery, The
Novels of William Faulkner (Louisiana, 1964) who emphasizes
Joe's Obsession with the white/black dichotomy, or Adamowski,
who thinks that Joe's "Negritude" plays an essential role
in his development, or Longley who emphasizes Joe's freedom
from racial identity as part of his freedom to define him-
self.

10A possible source for Faulkner's notions about middle-
aged female sexuality is suggested in Ilse Dusoir Lind,
"Faulkner's Women," in The Maker and the Myth: Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha, Evans Harrington, Ann J. Abadie, eds.—(Jack-
son, 1978). Lind says that the theories of Louis Berman
and Havelock Ellis are responSible for this aspect of the
portrayal of Joanna.

150

llLongley, p. 195.

12Horney, p. 205.

l3Horney, p. 207.
14Horney, p. 207.

15Horney, p. 235.

l6Waggoner, p. 116.

17It is important to note that while Jason and Anse
are often given to self-pitying statements with little
basis in fact, it is always obvious that we are meant to
distance ourselves, to laugh at them for it. Such is not
the case here.

18For a more mimetically plausible view of the end of
a man like Joe, see the description of Jason Compson's trip
to Mottstown in the final section of The Sound and the Fury.

19See, for example, the writings of Cleanth Brooks,
in this case most notably, "The Community and the Parish,"
Twentieth Centuryglnterpretations of Light in August
(Englewood Cliffs, 1969), pp. 55-70, or, more recently,
Sally R. Page, Faulkner's Women (Deland, 1972), or Linda
Welshimer Wagner, "Faulkner and Southern) Women," Th3
South and Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, Evans Harrington, Ann
J. Abadie, eds. (Jackson, 1977), pp. 128-46.

20Quoted in Page, p. 143.

21The misogyny of Light in August has been much dis-
cussed. See, for example, Samuel A. Yorks, "Faulkner's
Women: The Peril of Mankind," Arizona Quarterly, XVII (1961),
or Jackson W. Heimer, "Faulkner's Misogynous Novel: Li ht
in August," Ball State University Forum, XIV (1973). ifiis,
or Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel
(New York, 1962), pp. 309-10. Some critics defendeFaulkner
against charges of misogyny. See for example, Lind, Wagner,
Page, cited above.

22By the phrase "manipulation of situation" I mean to
refer not only to plot, but to other things under the
control of the author rather than attributable to objec-
tive reality. For example, if an author wishes to depict
a prostitute, objective reality requires that he have her
sell her sexual favors. Her appearance and behavior can be
manipulated to suit his desires or aesthetic purpose.

 

23Guerard, p. 110.

151

24Yorks, p. 120.

25Yorks, p. 125.

26Longley, p. 197.

27Hu8h C. Holman, "The Unity of Faulkner's Light in
AEHE§39”.2MEA. 73 (1958), p. 163.

28Wagner, p. 191.

29Vickery, pp. 82-83. Brooks, pp. 64-65.
3OYorks, p. 119.
31

32

Vickery, p. 33.
Heimer, p. 13.

33Walter J. Slatoff makes this point in Quest for
Failure: A Study of William Faulkner (Westport, 1972), p.
177.

3481atofr, p. 178.

 

 

CHAPTER V

'HE'S DONE MORE THINGS THAN ANY MAN I KNOW'
A MASLOVIAN STUDY OF V. K. RATLIFF AND THE HAMLET

 

In my studies of As I Lanyying, The Sound and the
Fury, and Light in August, I treated the creation of the
novel as a defensive strategy, analyzing characteriza-
tion and presentation of theme as part of the implied
author's "search for glory," a system of defenses designed
to protect him from his basic anxiety. In this way I was
able to uncover some sources of conflict in these complex
and troubling works, all three of which are highly suc—
cessful realistic novels in terms of their ability to in—
volve us in their characters and situations, but all three
of which lack unity and consistency of judgment on the
worlds they present. These novels are, ultimately, ambigu-
ous in their meaning and impact because of the "se1f~
alienation" of their implied authors, who attempt to per-
suade their readers to share their outlooks on the world;
outlooks which, given the nature of self-alienation, must
embody conflict. In my study of Jason Compson and Egg
Sound and the Fury, I found that Jason, though unquestion-
ably presented as a villain and a very disturbed human
being, is allowed to have an impact on the way the reader

views the rest of the Compson family. As a representative

152

153
of the implied author's repressed aggressive trends, he
interferes with the basically self effacing message of
the novel. And in my study of Anse Bundren and As I Lay
Eyggg, I found that Anse, too interferes with our response
to other characters and themes as he becomes the instru-
ment of his creator's repressed aggressive trends, assault-
ing our identification and concern with the suffering of
the other Bundrens and the things they represent. But it
is in Light in Aggust that the most profound conflict ap-
pears. In this novel the defensive strategies of the
implied author can actually be observed to break down
under the pressure of what becomes an open conflict between
his dominant self effacing "solution" and his barely re-
pressed aggressive trends. Having allowed these aggressive
trends such free play that they virtually take over the
novel, the implied author is compelled to quell the anxiety
this causes by martyring Joe Christmas, his aggressive
alter ego, and allowing him a kind of self-effacing apoth-
eosis. The reader asked to accept this shift in emphasis
is confused--the world view embodied in Light in August
to this point has been distinctly in the aggressive mode,
a far different outlook than the one he is finally asked
to accept. In all of these novels, then, the conflict be-
tween the author's basically self effacing way of approach-
ing the world, and his strong but repressed aggressive
trends has worked against integration and coherence. In

the troubled atmosphere of Light in August, we find a

154
surfacing of the tension that seems to have been brewing
in the earlier novels.

Coming to The Hamlet after Light in August, most
readers would notice a pronounced change in atmosphere.
What was dark and murky is now lighter and more clear,
what was tense and conflict ridden is now more relaxed and
unified. The contention of this study is that this shift
is not only due to a change in subject matter (from the
tragic life of a half-breed outcast to the ongoing ex-
istence of a varied community), but to a change in the
impetus and nature of the creative process itself. While
the earlier novels are the products of creating conscious-
ness awho make them expressions of their defensive strat-
egies, The Hamlet is the product of 8 creating conscious-
ness in the process of authentic self realization. It
is "fueled" not by the need to erect defensive strategies
in order to avoid conflict, but by the desire to express
a particular, unique "human nature" through the creation
of a fictional world. Freed from the rigid demands of the
"search for glory" the self—realizing man is able to use
his imagination in order to create works of art that ex-
press his true inner nature, and since these works are
expressive rather than defensive, they will exhibit a
unity and integration not found in works created by a self-
alienated consciousness. Such is the case with The Hamlet.
By using the theories of Maslow regarding the process

self-realization (or "self—actualization")l we shall be

155

able to uncover the "real self" that seeks expression in
its creation, and to understand and appreciate its unique-
ness in the Faulkner canon as a coherent and positive
work.2

I In my analyses of the earlier novels, I found that in
each case the conflict leading to the ambiguity of the
novel as a whole centered around the relationship of the
implied author to one particular mimetically successful
character, and his attempts to draw the reader into that
relationship. It is as if the implied author of each work
had been carried away by the success of his mimetic por—
trait, and running along behind him with pencil in hand,
as Faulkner would say, found himself indulging trends that
he might otherwise have repressed more successfully. In
The Hamlet too we find that one character seems to have
captured his creator's imagination by his ability to
"stand up on his hind legs and cast a shadow," and that
this character's nature has been allowed to dominate his
world. The characterization of V. K. Ratliff, however,
becomes not a vehicle for the expression of repressed
trends, but a way to reflect the drive towards self—
realization that is responsible for the creation and
flavor of the novel as a whole. His relationship to the
novel's controlling consciousness is very close--as we
shall see, they can almost be said to function in tandem--
so that the essence of Ratliff is parallel to the essence
of the novel itself. In inviting the reader to participate

156
in his admiration of and identification with Ratliff, the
implied author invites him to join in the uniquely unified
and consistent world view embodied by the novel.

Ratliff was probably Faulkner's favorite of his own
human creations. He was often heard to remark on the
abilities and attractions of this particular emanation of
his imagination. "Ratliff is wonderful," he liked to say,
"He's done more things than any man I know."3 In the con-
text of The Hamlet, Ratliff is the object of a good deal
of positive rhetoric on the part of the implied author, who
seeks to "bounce" the reader into sharing his obvious ad-
miration for the sewing machine salesman. As the novel
opens, this rhetoric is very direct (an unusual circum-
stance indeed in Faulkner's work); the omniscient narra—
tor, whose reliability we never doubt, introduces Ratliff
affectionately. He is said to speak in a "pleasant, lazy,
equable voice which you did not discern at once to be even
more shrewd than humorous."4 His animals are well treated
and "sturdy" (always an important sign of a desirable
character in Faulkner); and he himself is neatly dressed,
if "tieless." He has a "bland affable ready face," and is
an excellent 1istener--a friendly man, who takes us easily
to others as they take to his "pleasant, affable, courteous,
anecdotal" personality. He knows everything a man in rural
Mississippi should know-dwhat is happening with all of his
neighbors, and the name of every "man, mule, and dog

within fifty miles" (H, p. 13). not to mention, as we find

157

out later, the origin and destination of every back road.
Later the evaluation of Ratliff becomes less direct. We
are not told so overtly to admire his abilities as a shrewd
dealer, or his warmth toward and concern for his fellow
man, or his easy, self deprecating humor, or his talent
for storytelling. Rather, we are allowed to see how im-
portant these things are in the world of Frenchman's Bend,
and how superior Ratliff is to most of those with whom he
comes in contact.

A survey of critical assessments of Ratliff indicates
that this rhetoric is successful. Most critics see him
as highly admirable. For Joseph Trimmer he is a modern
hero in pursuit of "knowing" in the Conradian sense, a
uniquely creative man who "welcomes the relativity of
knowledge because it allows for the continuously exciting
game of reassessment and recreation."5 He is Warren

6 and Benjamin McClelland's "re-

Beck's "man in motion,"
deemer for modern man."7 Edwin Moses admires his "pas-
sionate humanity,"8 and just about everybody appreciates
his humor and resourcefulness. By using Maslow's theories
and descriptions of self-actualization to analyze Ratliff's
character in detail, we can offer yet another appreciation
of this vividly realized paragon of humanity, and because
of the close association between Ratliff's nature and that
of the novel itself, we can extend our insights to include

an understanding of the "health" and integration of The

Hamlet as a whole.

158

It is Joseph Reed who provides us with the most use-
ful way of viewing Ratliff's relation to the fictional
world he inhabits. In his opening description of Ratliff,
Reed says, the omniscient narrator of The Hamlet, whom we
can identify with the implied author, since we have no
reason to doubt his reliability, is essentially describing
his own genial, relaxed self, and the introduction of
Ratliff signals his "abdication" of control of the novel
and, "the orderly transfer of his functions to Ratliff,"
who then "remains in control for the rest of the novel."9
Of course this is not literally true; Ratliff is a fic-
tional character and can hardly assume control of anything.
But it does provide us with a good analogy for understand-
ing the close connection between Ratliff and The Hamlet.
It is §§_i£’Ratliff were himself the implied author of

The Hamlet, as if the "core of norms and choices" that

 

went into its creating were his, g§_i£ the microcosm of
Frenchman's Bend were the world seen through his eyes.
By alternating our discussion of Ratliff's self—actualiz—
ing qualities with discussion of the way those qualities
are reflected in The Hamlet as a whole, we can achieve
insight into the uniquely life affirming quality of this
powerful novel.

The self-realizing person, as my original discussion
of Horneyan and Maslovian theory reveals, is more open to
the world as it is than are those who are self—alienated.

Because he is not plagued with basic anxiety, he is able

159

to greet the world on its own terms, without the barriers
thrown up by the imaginations of those whose insecurity
will not allow them to contact life directly. Thus he can
see clearly where they might be forced to distort reality,
he can feel spontaneously where they might need to repress
their true feelings, he can enjoy the workings of his
senses when they might need to avoid recognizing sensual
signals, and he can appreciate the everyday when they might
need to deny or reject the doings of the world associated
with the actual self. As we examine Ratliff in detail, we
shall find that he is characterized primarily by his easi-
ness and competence in dealing with a reality that forces
others to create elaborate and rigid systems of defense.
And, as we examine his reflection in The Hamlet, we shall
find that although it does not, certainly,ignore the nega-
tive sepects of the human condition--it is, after all the
story of the triumph of "evil" over "good"--it is full of
the sense of human potential. What we find in The Hamlet
is not an easy "optimism" to combat the "pessimism" of
Faulkner's earlier works, but a new willingness to cele-
brate the capacities of humankind, whether or not these
capacities allow humankind to "prevail," as the speech-
making Faulkner would have it.

One of Maslow's primary insights, gleaned from his
research on mentally healthy adults, is that self—realizing
people have clearer and more efficient perceptions than

self—alienated or average people, because "the effects of

’l‘J

160
wish, desire, prejudice upon perception . . . should be

10 Since

very much less in healthy people than in sick."
the outer world does not threaten them, they are able to
see it for what it is instead of using their imaginations
to transform it into something more in line with their
needs. In Ratliff we find a character who usually sees
things as they are, rather than as he wants or needs to
see them, and whose eye for detail gives him a better
grasp of what goes on around him than that of the most
clairvoyant of Faulkner's madmen. A look at Ratliff's
superior perception, coupled with a look at The Hamlet's
detailed and unambiguous manner of dealing with its charac-
ters and the "realities" of Frenchman's Bend, provides a
good starting place for our study of the close connection
between Ratliff's nature and the nature of the novel it-
self.

The most common way to view the plot of The Hamlet
is to see Ratliff as humanity's defense against the
Snopeses: Faulkner's "Roland," who, he was wont to say in
interviews, always shows up when the battle against evil

11 He does serve this function, and he is able

is joined.
to do so because he sees clearly. Like the self actualiz-
ing subjects of Maslow's study, he has an uncommon ability

12 and to

to detect the "spurious, fake, and dishonest,"
evaluate correctly the natures and motives of his fellow
men. From the very beginning of The Hamlet, he provides

a counter to the fundamental spuriousness and dishonesty

161
of Flem Snopes, who, if he does not ever short change his
customers, does, with his every action, deny the concept
of honorable and open intercourse among human beings.
Since Ratliff's perceptions are undistorted, he is much
better equipped than any of the other characters to grasp
what Flem is up to, but this is not the only advantage
that his clear sight gives him in human relationships.
He is also able to confront and evaluate the other inhabi-
tants of Frenchman's Bend with an unusual insight and lack
of defensiveness. This ability is reflected in The Hamlet
itself, where we find a greater willingness to seek out an
undefensive understanding of all personality types than we
have hitherto encountered in Faulkner's works.

We are introduced to Ratliff's undistorted, unde-
fensive style of seeing and evaluating others in the early
scenes in which he talks about and meets with Ab Snopes.
Ab, he tells us, is not naturally mean; he is just "soured"
by a lifetime of failures, which Ratliff hilariously, if
not truthfully, represents by the story of Pat Stamper
and the pumped up horse. Ab was, apparently, a close
companion of Ratliff's boyhood, and Ratliff has retained
an interest in him. But when he takes Ab a bottle of
moonshine and meets with surliness and silence, Ratliff
responds with gentleness rather than resentment, because
he sees clearly enough to understand the source of the
rudeness. When he says that he hopes that Ab will do well

on his new place, Ab retorts, "What's it to you if I do

162
or don't?" "Nothing," Ratliff answers, "pleasantly,
quietly" (H, p. 49). The situation does not call for re-
sentment--quiet acceptance and the unsentimental kind of
concern demonstrated in the stories that Ratliff tells
are appropriate ways of greeting the bitterness of a man
like Ab. The tone of Ratliff's response is maintained by
The Hamlet itself in the face of "soured" characters like
Mink, Houston, and Armstid, and this has a lot to do with
the novel's ability to sustain a relaxed and easy atmos-
phere in spite of the presence on its pages of intense
suffering and evil doings.

Will Varner says that Ratliff is sometimes a little
too smart to suit him (H, p. 22), too smart, one imagines,
because the suspect dealings of the Varners are as trans-
parent to him as those of the Snopeses. But, like every-
one else in Frenchman's Bend, and like the reader, Varner
relies on Ratliff for his understanding of the SnOpeses.
It is "very likely Ratliff alone" who is not surprised
when Flem tops Varner by making him pay for a chaw of
tobacco from his own store (H, p. 53). It is also Ratliff
who understands why Jody is running the store while Plan
has taken on the more important job of weighing the
cotton. The other men are puzzled from the beginning
about how to view Flem, but through close observation and
superior perceptions, Ratliff comes to understand him, and
to show us and the others how we should respond to him.

The "Spotted Horses" episode is a case in point. While

163

the other characters allow themselves to be duped by Flem
and the redoubtable Buck Hipps into buying useless, even
dangerous, animals, Ratliff tells us and them that the
best way to avoid this Snopesian scheme is to be humble
about one's capacity to resist and absent oneself from the
area. "A fellow can dodge a Snopes," he points out, "if
he starts lively enough" (H, p. 276). Ratliff knows that
Flem's plan is to use the weak perceptions of the other
men, whose ability to judge horseflesh is destroyed in
this case by their need to prove their masculine abili—
ties to trade shrewdly and handle horses competently,.
to his own advantage. Ratliff's ability to detect the
fake and dishonest in this case saves him some money and
aggravation, and provides the reader with a clear view of
what is happening. He also provides an evaluation of the
episode after it is over, demonstrating that he is able
to see that although it is funny, it is not only funny.
"That's one way to look at it," he says when Varner de-
scribes it as an entertaining interlude,

In fact, it might be a considerable comfort to

Bookwright and Quick and Freeman and Eck Snopes

and them other new horse-owners if that side of

it could be brought to their attention, because

the chances are aint none of them thought to

look at it in that light yet (31, p. 308).

It is Ratliff also who sees Mrs. Armstid's plight

most clearly, tells Flem about it too, for all the good it

does. His description of what her life has come to is un-

sentimental, but evocative. We know from what he says

164
that Mrs. Armstid is not to be patronized or pitied. She
must instead be respected for her dignity and endurance.
Such a clear implication concerning how we are to "take"
a character is not common in earlier Faulkner.
This comparative lack of ambiguity with regard to the

evaluation of characters in The Hamlet extends beyond the

 

presence of Ratliff. Like the healthy perceiver he has
created, this implied author seems altogether more willing

to commit himself to judgments of characters than the im-
plied author of the earlier novels. Ratliff himself, as

we have seen, is admired much more openly than any pre-
vious character. The passage that introduces him enumer-
ates his attractive qualities, and, as Reed points out,

makes it clear that he will be our "focus and representa—
tive,"13 that, unlike previous characters, he can be re-

lied on for the "right" perspective. And, as Irving Howe
says, "The Snopes hoard is etched with a bitter precision."l4
In this case the "precision" stems not only from mimetic
skill, but from a clarity regarding the meanings to be
attached to Snopesian doings. Flem, for example, remains
a "flat" character so that his villainy may be unequivocal.
And in the portrayal of Mink the debilitating effects of
compulsive aggressiveness are evaluated more clearly than
they are in the cases of Jason Compson or Joe Christmas.
Mink's headlong pursuit of disaster is presented and
evaluated without distortion. In his bizarre marriage,

in his encounter with Ratliff, in his ill-fated contretemps

165
with Houston, in his ultimate fate, we see a consistency
in what he does, how it is greeted by the world he inhabits,
and how we, as readers, are asked to view it. His life is
certainly unfortunate, but, given his nature, its downward
Spiral is inevitable. We must feel concern for him, but
we cannot admire his fatally rigid way of dealing with the
world.

The ability of the implied author of The Hamlet to
assess his creations openly and undefensively, an ability
that is reflected by his portrayal of Ratliff's way of
understanding and evaluating his fellow man, is an important
part of the "health" of the novel as a whole. But it is
no more important than the intense air of reality achieved
in the novel through the attention and stature given to
the mundane details of human existence, and here, too,
Ratliff serves as a reflector of the implied author.

As the narrator of the tales known in other contexts
as "Barn Burning" and "Fool About a Horse," that appear

at the beginning of The Hamlet, Ratliff sets a high standard

 

for the perception of the details of everyday life in
Frenchman's Bend. He sees the things that surround him
with the clarity and precision of an Oriental water color-
ist. Telling Jody Varner about the arrival of the peri-
patetic Snopes family at the house assigned them by the
unfortunate De Spain, Ratliff describes the removal of

the Sn0pes household:

166
'Soon as the wagon stopped Miz Snopes and the
widow got out and commenced to unload. Them
two gals aint moved yet, just setting there in
them two chairs, in their Sunday clothes chew-
ing sweet gum, till Ab turned around and cussed
them outen the wagon to where Miz Snapes and
the widow was wrestling with the stove. He
druv them out like a pair of heifers just a
little too valuable to hit hard with a stick,
and then him and Flem set there and watched
them two strapping gals take a wore-out broom
and a lantern outen the wagon and stand there
again till Ab leant out and snicked the nigh one
across the stern with the end of the reins'
(H. p. 14).

The sweet gum, the wore-out broom, the failure of the men
to help, the snick across the stern: this richness of de-
tail is the product of the mind of a gifted perceiver.15
The scene is a perfectly realized little vignette, as
important in its own way as the most dramatic moment in
the novel.

Later, in his recounting of the Ab Snopes-Pat Stamper
episode, Ratliff's ability as a teller of tall tales is
at least matched by his ability to recall and reproduce
the details that characterize this day and all such days
made up of rural concerns: the sidemeat "plopping and
spitting in the kitchen" (H, p. 31), the young boy and the
man wasting the afternoon that should have been spent
plowing sitting on the fence "just moving enough. to keep
outen the sun" while admiring Ab's latest trade (a good
deal, "a straight stock and a old wore out sorghum mill"
that had not even belonged to Ab in exchange for a horse

that could at least walk home from Beasley's even if

Vynie does call it a yard ornament); the long trip to

167
town with Ab and Ratliff "walking up every hill that tilted
enough to run water offen it" (H, p. 33). to save the
horse, or maybe just to save the mule since the horse is
"kind of half walking and half riding on the double tree"
(g. p. 33) anyway.

The tone of The Hamlet is set by these stories of
Ratliff's and, imbued with his spirit and his perceptual
gifts, the novel dwells lovingly and with great clarity
on the texture of the daily lives of its characters. We
see this in the attention paid to food for example: to
Eula's cold baked sweet potatoes, to Tull and Book-
wright's mammoth breakfast, to Mrs. Varner's "packed
shelves and potato cellars and festooned smoke-house
rafters" (H, p. 97), to the sardines that I. 0.'smystery
wife and her six month old baby share, to the "hot vivid
smell of ham" drifting from Mrs. Littlejohn's kitchen, to
the meal scraping and hot sweetened water that comprise
Mink's diet after he has finished the cold peas and stale
coffee, to the ham and hot bread and coffee that he gets
in jail, better food than he can afford to eat at home.
We know what these characters eat because the implied
author has Ratliff's clear sightedness, and his healthy
man's concern for and delight in the homely detail. And
as readers we enjoy the in-the-know status of one who
realizes that cold sweet potatoes may be eaten out of
hand for a snack, and that a working man might well eat a

half dozen fried eggs along with the rest of his breakfast,

168
and thus are we "bounced" into sharing the novel's respect
for the everyday.

We are also privy to the housekeeping and farming
practices that provide the routine occupations of our
characters. Mrs. Littlejohn does her wash in a pot set
over a fire in her yard; May is a little late to plant;
Mink's crop is pitifully stunted because he cannot afford
fertilizer; cotton is ginned and weighed in a shack across
from Varner's store; Houston's house is almost totally
without furniture, and Mrs. Armstid weaves at night in
order to buy shoes for her children. We have a great sense
of how these people live and spend their days, and, again,
our desire to identify ourselves with the knowledgable
Ratliff prompts us to care about these homely details.

And in this novel as in no other we are made aware
of the animals that are such an important part of the tax-
ture of rural life: Ratliff's undersized but sleek and
well-kept team; Varner's old white horse with the "sonorous
organ tone" and the habit of standing on three legs; Mink's
malnourished yearling; the cow Vynie heaves into the wagon;
the "gaunt rabbit like mules" owned by the Armstids; the
young mules whose reins Tull never should have wrapped
around his wrists. There are even animals with starring
roles, like Beasley's horse, Ike's cow, the spotted horses,
Houston's "magnificent grave blue ticked Walker hound,"
and the stallion who kills his wife. Just as Ratliff

thinks it important to remember the name of every mule and

169
dog in the area, we are encouraged by the novel's obvious
interest in these animals to see them as significant, to
appreciate their contribution to the texture of life in
Frenchman's Bend.

Like Ratliff himself, The Hamlet reveals an intense
respect for the minutiae of human existence, a reSpect
that would not be possible for the selfealienated person,
who has to deny the world of the actual. Ratliff, as a
healthy man, finds much to appreciate in the undramatic
ongoingness of the lives around him, and in this he re-
flects a concern of the novel itself, which seeks to cele-
brate human possibilities, even in their homeliest mani-
festations.

In his work with self actualizing subjects Maslow
found that the healthy man's eye is not only keen but
"innocent." In talking to people who seemed to be in con-
tact with their real selves, Maslow found that they had an
unusual ability to observe things without feeling the de-
sire to apply to them some preconceived cultural notion,
and without feeling threatened by the unprecedented or un-
familiar. In The Mansion, characterized like The Town by
more direct thematic statement than we find in The Hamlet,
Ratliff is given a little Speech which indicates that his
career sees him as blessed with this kind of "innocence,"
this pleasure in and acceptance of the unrubricized.

Faced with a piece of avant garde (and apparently bawdy)
sculpture by Barton Kohl and asked if he is shocked,

170

Ratliff replies, "Do I have to be shocked and mad at some-
thing jest because I never seen it before?" He looks at
the sculpture for a while and thinks maybe he "recog-
nizes" what some of it is, but then he realizes that
recognition is not the important thing:

Because anybody can see and hear and smell and

feel and taste what he expected to hear and

see and feel and smell and taste, and wont nothing

much notice your presence nor miss your lack. So

maybe when you can see and feel and smell and hear

and taste what you never expected to, and hadn't

never even imagined until that moment, maybe that's

why 01 Moster picked you out to be one of the ones

to be alive (H, p. 173). .
Though he makes no such speeches in The Hamlet (and just
as well, too) Ratliff does display the quality he de-
scribes here, enjoying the "ambiguous and unstructured"
without having to label it, and refusing to be shocked
and mad at the unfamiliar. "Innocence" is one of the
words used to introduce him in the early pages of The
Hamlet. In this context the word seems to refer to a
certain wide-eyedness, a certain refusal to take things
for granted. Part of the good old boy mentality of many
of Faulkner's "peasants" is a tendency to label, and thus
to dismiss, groups of people. Jason labels and dismisses
women, blacks, stockbrokers, and farmers, in a kind of
parody of the conventional wisdom. But Ratliff stands
outside the society of Frenchman's Bend, and never shares
automatically in its judgments. Something that he "never

seen" before, like Eula or the spectacle of Ike and his

cow, is the subject of his careful and idiosyncratic

171
consideration, and is never dismissed with a standard
cultural judgment. Women he considers not in a mass, but
as individuals. Eula, Mrs. Mink Snopes, Mrs. Armstid,
Mrs. Littlejohn, Mrs. Varner: he notices and appreciates
the uniqueness of each one, reflecting the novel's re-
markably varied and flexible view of mature womanhood,
such as is lacking, according to many critics, in earlier
Faulkner.

Similarly, the episode involving Ike and his cow
strikes the "innocent" Ratliff differently than it does
the other men, for whom "stock diddling" is an automatic
source of titillation and humor. Ratliff is shocked and
mad about Lump's sideshow, not because he has never seen
it before, but because he can stand outside his rural cul-
ture and see it in a universal context, as a debasement
of human love and dignity.

Another aspect of Ratliff's "innocence" is his failure
to assume the standard masculine role, or, indeed, any
fixed role whatsoever, within the society that surrounds
him. His work as a sewing machine salesman leaves him
free from obligations to crop or store and puts him in
touch with the daily lives of all and sundry. He moves
among women and men, rich and poor with equal ease, wear—
ing neither the overalls, which are the standard dress of
his companions on the gallery of Varner's store, nor the
white shirt and tie favored by those who, like Jody and

Flem, want to dress the part of prosperity and

172
respectability. Rather he wears the "perfectly clean"
but faded "neat tieless blue shirts," which, in defiance
of society's idea of what constitutes man's work, he makes
himself.

The Hamlet, too, wears a faded blue shirt, uniquely

 

fashioned, not the contrived, attention getting outfit of
"count no count" or the just folks "overhalls" of one of
Will Varner's jokes. It does not set itself apart from

the culture it portrays, but neither does it participate

in its prejudices or habits of mind. It has the "inno-
cence" to see in an over-sized prepubescent blonde all the
glory, magnetism, and humor of the eternal feminine, and

to make of the story of Mink Snopes not another Caldwellian
saga of the victimized dirt farmer, but a unique combina-
tion of farce and revenge tragedy.

This cultural "innocence" marks much of Faulkner's
work, but none so emphatically as The Hamlet. Perhaps
this is why the novel conveys, as Reed says, "a feeling
of continuing surprise, not just to us, but to the

16 The implied author seems often to be surprised'

author."
and delighted: by Ratliff himself, by Flem's ability to
get around the Varners, by Eula, by Houston's devotion to
his Lucy, by the bullet that actually makes its way out of
Mink's gun, by Flem's success in duping Ratliff. Like
Ratliff, The Hamlet itself seems to enjoy seeing what it

did not expect to see.

173

This Openness to surprise is further revealed in the
novel's approach to character. Cleanth Brooks speaks of
the "compound of irony and wonder"17 with which The Hamlet
approaches its characters. To focus on the "wonder" is
to notice how much the authorial consciousness seems to
enjoy the uniqueness of his human creations, an enjoyment
that has exactly the "tone" of Ratliff's storyteller's
enthusiasm for human excesses and idiosyncracies. Warren
Beck defines the grotesque as "sheer pleasure that a man

should be so markedly himself,"18

and this is a pleasure
luxuriously indulged in by The Hamlet. In this novel many
characters are so markedly themselves as to elicit the
-wonder and enjoyment of all their observers. Will Varner,
obviously a favorite with Ratliff and the implied author,
rises and breakfasts in the middle of the night only to do
nothing whatsoever all day. Mrs. Varner, after years of
employing a cook, still cannot believe her capable of the
most minor culinary feat. Labove's "incredibly old"
grandmother clatters around the house in cleated football
shoes and a letter sweater. Mrs. Snopes can see just far
enough out of the trap that is her life to name a son
Launcelot. Vynie Snopes wants a separator so badly that
she trades her only cow for it. Mink Snopes shoots a man
with a gun "oiled" with bacon grease, then tries to commit
suicide by wedging his neck behind a moving wagon wheel.
All of these characters and their doings are the product

of the mind of a person who is open to all kinds of human

174

realities, who enjoys his fellow man and their peculiari-
ties instead of dealing with them defensively. His
"wonder" is that "innocent" ability of the self—realizing
person to see and enjoy others for what they are, without
having to view them through a rigid system of defenses.

Maslow speaks of the "deep feeling of identification,
sympathy, and affection," demonstrated by his subjects
for the rest of humanity.19 Though a healthy person is
superior to many of his fellow men (in his ability to
perceive, to understand and to judge, in his capacity for
enjoying that which is not labelled, and in his indepen-
dence from social pressure), he never condescends. And,
as Brooks has noted, the Faulkner of The Hamlet "simply
does not condescend to his characters, not even by feeling
compassion for them. His interest in his characters goes
far beyond modes of condescension."2O In our observation
of Ratliff we see that his dealings with suffering human-
ity parallel the implied author's approach to the "less
fortunate" in The Hamlet as a whole. When Mink Snopes's
wife must carry on, attempting to support her family and
to endure her husband's plight, Ratliff comes to her aid,
feeling for her "a sort of shocked and sober . . . not
pity, rather concern," as he watches her cope with the
"old agonies: terror, impotence, hope" (H, p. 260). The
"old agonies" are the same for all, and Mrs. Snopes's
unfortunate condition does not deprive her in Ratliff's

eyes of dignity or importance. "Pity" is simply eliminated

175

as a proper response. Even Ratliff's response to the idiot
Ike is one of identification rather than pity. In the face
of his own unwitting participation in Flem's victimization
of Ike, Ratliff feels "something black . . . , a suffoca-
tion, nausea" (H, p. 85). The suffering of another be-
comes his suffering. When he sees Ike and the cow, their
activities transformed by Lump into a carnival act, he
feels that "it was as though it were himself inside the
stall with the cow, himself looking out of the blasted
tongueless face at the row of faces watching him who had
been given the wordless passions but not the specious
words" (H, p. 196). Similarly, Ratliff's approach to Mrs.
Armstid's plight is not to feel pity for her, but to re-
count for the other men the awesome list of her duties,
so as to make clear her stature as a human being, and
her right to their reSpect. His story implies what Maslow
would call his "sympathy and affection" for her as a fellow
human, but his insistence on not giving her the five
dollars himself implies that he assumes, too, her equal
capacity to be responsible for herself. His interest in
her is strong, but it does not include the fashionable
"compassion" which might ameliorate her condition, but at
the eXpense of true human fellowship.

The Hamlet as a whole shares Ratliff's perspective.
Wherever human suffering is portrayed in the novel, the
the circumstances and technique of its presentation are

such as to ask the reader to identify with the sufferer

176
without condescending. By allowing us to view each charac-
ter's obsession-as if from the inside, the implied author
uses a subtle rhetorical device to persuade us to identify
with him, to see his suffering as if it were our own. In

The Hamlet this is done differently than in The Sound and

 

the Fury, for example, where the fact that we hear Jason's
story in his own voice encourages us to grant him fellow-
human status. Here stories of the sufferers are told in
the third person, but with a sense of participation in the
sufferer's perspective. The story of Ike and the cow,
presented in the controversial "mock epic" section of "The
Long Summer" is a case in point. I see this section as
more than a spoof of the pastoral tradition, and certainly
as less than a depiction of the ideal love.21 Rather,

it is a treatment of Ike's romance from what would be
Ike's point of view, if he were capable of having one;

the story is told in what would be Ike's words if he had
words, and is given the importance and stature that Ike
would give it if he had the power. This is the peak of
Ike's existence, and by seeing it as if from his own per-
spective, we participate in its intensity--to the extent,
of course, that such participation is possible.

The obsessions and sufferings of the rest of the
characters are approached in much the same way. The ex-
tensive and rather exaggeratedly juicy depiction of Eula
allows, indeed forces, us to share in what is, objectively

speaking, Labove's bizarre obsession with a girl who is

177
too young even to be called jail bait. We identify with
his suffering because we have been "bounced" into an ob-
session with her ourselves by an implied author who is
obviously far from immune to her appeal. The presentation
of Mink's case is similar. We are witness to his inevi-
table decline towards disaster and its causes, but we know
so much about the extraordinarily frustrating conditions
of his existence, and we have gone through the experience
with Houston and the heifer in such painstaking detail
that we cannot help but identify with some of his anger
and bitterness-—even Varner does a little of that. And
even though Mink is a little man in every sense of the
word, he defies us to patronize or pity him. "I ask you
to let me alone," he says to his slimy cousin (H, p. 242).
As a bitter, tortured man, much afflicted with the "old
agonies," he asks not pity, but a respectful distance,
and that is what he gets: from the sheriff, from his
creator, and from us. Houston's grief commands the same
uncondescending respect and appreciation, and so do Henry
Armstid's wretched circumstances.

As with Ike's idyll, which we must be careful not to
approach with an excess of solemnity, since it is obviously
part of a rural genre whose dominant tone is humorous, the
stories of these fellow sufferers contain a leavening of
humor that rescues them from the sentimental and promotes
the sense of irony lauded by Brooks. Ratliff's sense of

humor, another mark of the healthy man, is shared by the

178
novel as a whole, which asks the reader to leaven his
identification with the suffering of others with an occa-
sional laugh at the gap between what is and what ought to
be. Maslow describes the humor of his healthy subjects
as "unhostile," and "philosophical," the "humor of the
real," which "consists in large part of poking fun at human
beings in general when they are foolish, or forget their
place in the universe, or try to be big when they are

22 The humor of The Hamlet helps to

actually small."
clarify the novel's perspective on the suffering of its
characters. Though, as we have seen, we are encouraged

to identify with and respect those who suffer, we are also
encouraged to maintain an ironic distance. We are asked
to participate in their obsessions, but not in the unre-
lieved way that we must participate in those of Quentin
Compson or Addie Bundren or Joe Christmas. Mrs. Mink
Snopes, for_example, takes over some of the household
chores of Ratliff's nieces and nephews even though her
workload is already incredibly heavy. The sacrifice is
excessive and unnecessary, and, amusingly, her reward is
their "juvenile contempt" for her efforts. Labove's

first response to Eula is hilarious in its excessive
drama. "Don't leave her here!" he thinks desperately to
himself (Eula is about eight at the time). Mink's revenge
tragedy becomes blackly humorous as he wrestles with

Houston's recalcitrant corpose, "the son of a bitch started

coming to pieces on me," he says (H, p. 258). And Mrs.

179
Armstid's hissing tennis shoes, and her ridiculous asser-
tion that she would know the five dollars that she made
by weaving if she saw it, help to keep her martyrdom in
perspective.
The tall tale, which Millgate defines as an "essential

"23 provides another form of

feature of the novel's mode,
humor in The Hamlet, one that is directly parallel to
Ratliff's manner of presenting human experience in the

early pages of The Hamlet. The tall tale is a form well

 

adapted to the humor of the healthy men, since it exhibits
a robust appreciation for the possibilities of the human
species at the same time that it mocks our pretensions
about our place in the universe, especially when, as in
The Hamlet, it is presented in a realistic context,
Maslow's subjects find humor in the spectacle of human
beings "forgetting their place in the universe" and arro—
gating to themselves a sort of super human ability to af-
fect events, or "trying to be big when they are actually
small," and overestimating their impact on the world.

The tall tale is, by its very nature, a story involving
people who step outside the bounds of the actual in order
to perform some unlikely fast, or present some unlikely
spectacle, and in The Hamlet these stories inevitably end
with a resounding crunch as the adventurers are forced to
come in contact with the world of the real. The impact

of the stories is comprised of a combination of admiration

for men's ability to reach, and amusement at his failure

180
to grasp.

As he introduces us to Ab Snopes in the early episodes,
Ratliff proves himself a teller of tall tales by his re—
fusal to restrict himself to the literally true, or even
to the plausible. Ab's absolute defiance of the man to
whom he must, for his livelihood, be subordinate, may be
as unlikely as the idea that a horse can be inflated with
a bicycle pump, but both episodes celebrate the great re-
sources of human nature at the same time that they high-
light amusingly man's vulnerability and his tendency to
overstep himself. The Hamlet follows Ratliff's lead in
indulging in this kind of tall tale humor. The story of
Eula, for example, and of the trials of her brother, who
must transport her "mammalian elipses" around Frenchman's
Bend have some characteristics of the "tall tale." Eula's
sexual appeal is freely and vigorously exaggerated, and so
is Jody's agony as the protecting brother. Eula is the
Paul Bunyan of female sexuality, a legend created without
inhibition. When she eventually gets into trouble and,
grotesquely enough, marries Flem, we are introduced in a
grimly humorous way to the limits of the power of even
the most overwhelming human sensuality. Likewise, the
mutual attachment of Lucy Pate and Houston, with its
quality of the fated and its Ulysses like period of separa-
tion is humorously exaggerated. Lucy has a kind of super-
natural magnetism that renders the male Houston helpless

to resist in spite of his strenuous efforts to do so. Her

181

death, while hardly "funny," is ironic. The point of this
tall tale is that even the most spiritual and intense human
relationship overestimates itself if it thinks that it can
be "big" enough to circumvent even the most incidental
accident of fate. And the tales found in "The Peasants"
have a similar impact and function. The magnificent mean—
ness and unruliness of the spotted horses is hardly within
realistic bounds. Certainly the incident of the slit vest
is a classic:

The stranger gathered himself then sprang away.

As he did so, a second horse slashed at his back,

severing his vest from color to hem down the

back exactly as the trick swordsman severa a

floating veil with one stroke.

'Sho now,' Quick said. 'But sup ose a man

dont happen to own a vest' (H, p. 273 .
Suppose he don't indeed. The end result of the spotted
horses episode is a crunching return to the actual in the
form of Henry Armstid's broken leg and Vernon Tull's
catastrophic encounter. In the exaggeration of the mean-
ness and wildness of the horses, and the cookie eating
Texan's coolness, we find a celebration of the vast possi-
bilities of life on earth, and in the realistic denoue-
ment we find a grimly humorous treatment of its limita-
tions.

But, perhaps most importantly, the story of the old
Frenchman's Place, with its classic elements--the salted
claim, the psychic, the greed maddened participants-~is

less a realistic view of Flem's ability to con just about

anybody, than it is a slightly self-mocking example of

182
the raconteur's art. Here we find that Ratliff, who is
so good at telling stories on others, stories that demon—
strate his appreciation for man's capacities at the same
time that they mock his pretensions, is caught in such a
story himself. As Edwin Moses points out, it is, realis-
tically speaking, highly unlikely that the Ratliff that

24 and

we know would have been taken in by such a hoax,
other critics have beenvastly irritated by the apparent
inconsistency in Ratliff's characterization. "No, it will
not do," says Irving Howe testily.25 Actually, this episode
has little to do with the realistic side of Ratliff's
portrait. It is part of the distinctive self actualizing
humor of The Hamlet that he must be hoisted on his own
petard in a story that exaggerates man's capacities only
in order to mock his pretensions. The final episode of
The Hamlet is no more realistic than Eula's extraordinary
lethargy or Buck Hipps's desire for cookies, and it has
much the same impact and function.

Ratliff has an appreciation for life in general that
goes along with his appreciation for his fellow man and
his humor. The healthy man, says Maslow, lacks cynicism
and staleness, has a "continued freshness of appreciation"
that allows him to enjoy life, and never to suffer from
the burnt out syndrome”?6 Ratliff enjoys his trade so
much, for example, that he pursues it even though he would

not have to, since people would be happy to feed him just

for the pleasure of having him around. "Shrewd dealing"

183

brings him a pleasure that "transcends mere profit." He
likes the thing for itself. And he loves "retailing"
the news that he is always the first to have (H, p. 68).
He enjoys the simple bodily pleasures also. It is signifi-
cant that, unlike the other men of The Hamlet, he takes an»
active interest in food, not so likely to go without it
when circumstances are pressing. Realizing even before
he checks the dates onflthe coins that Flem has tricked him,
he makes coffee and a batch of skillet cornbread over the
open fire, cooking some bacon to go along with it, and
cats with enjoyment while the others continue to dig.
And even when he is recovering from his gall bladder oper—
ation he finds things to appreciate in the experience of
convalescence.

. . . the sheer happiness of being out of bed

and moving once more at free will, in the sun

and air which men drank and moved in and talked

and dealt with one another . . . He did not still

feel week, he was merely luxuriating in that

supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence (H, p. 68).
For many the enforced inactivity would be either an an-
noyance, or an excuse to avoid effort. For Ratliff it
is in itself enjoyable. I

The Hamlet as a whole has this same appreciation for
the small pleasures of life, the same lack of "staleness"
that we find in Ratliff. In our discussion of the use of
homely detail in the novel, we have noted its loving
treatment of the minutiae of human existence. In none of

the Faulkner novels studied earlier do we dwell so much

on food,_for example, or on sex as a pleasure rather than

184
as an occasion for tortured ambivalence, or as an outlet
for aggression. Other simple things, such as fence sitting,
or sprawling and chatting in front of Varner's store, or
the "blue and drowsy and empty days filled with silence
and the smell of burning leaves and woodsmoke" (H, p. 259)
that compose the fall before the winter no one will ever
forget, are also presented as actively enjoyable.

Along with the healthy person's enjoyment of simple
things comes his lack of cynicism about life in general.
That Ratliff has a sense of irony is made abundantly clear
in the stories he tells, but it does not lead him to de-
velop a cynical philosOphy. At least once in the novel he
takes exception to what might be considered a classically
cynical twentieth century response to the "old agonies."
Seeing Ike for the first time, he says, "And yet they tell
us we was all made in His image." But Bookwright's reply,
"From some of the things I see here and there maybe he was,"
meets with a reproach from Ratliff, "I dont know as I
would believe that even if I knowed it was true" (H,

p. 81). Ratliff simply refuses to consider life a tale
told by an idiot, and this refusal characterizes The Hamlet
as a whole, and accounts for some of the differences in
atmosphere between it and the earlier novels considered.
The Hamlet is not so self-consciously optimistic as, say,
the Nobel Prize speech, but it does present a world in
which humane values are prized, and human beings are given

dignity and worth.

185

In the creation of Eula, for example, we find a cele—
bration of fertility, of the ongoingness of the human
species, that is absent or more ambiguous in earlier
novels. Her attraction is unadulterated and intense,
undiluted by the questions that surround the portrayals
of Caddy, or Dewey Dell, or Lena.

Human dignity is also affirmed in The Hamlet, albeit
in a subtle manner much different from the rather direct
attention given it in The Reivers. We hear no speeches
about it, but it is embodied throughout the novel: in the
character of Ratliff, who carries himself with a calm as-
suredness, and does not kow tow even to Will Varner, in
the respect for Ike's humanity shown by Mrs. Littlejohn
and Ratliff, and even by Houston, in Mink's refusal to
steal from the man he has so disastrously murdered, in
Mrs. Armstid's composure during her encounter with Flem,
even in Eula's refusal to call what she is in "trouble."

The value of romantic love is also affirmed by 2H3
Hamlet in ways that it is not by the earlier novels. We
have the love affair of Lucy and Jack Houston, whose love
is rich and life shaping, perhaps the only successful
portrayal of a fulfilling relationship between consenting
adults in all of Faulkner's work. Strangely enough, the
portrayal of Ike's interlude with Houston's cow is also
a celebration of the power of love, though a certain lack
of earnestness made inevitable by the very nature of the

story prevents us from seeing Ike as a white knight. Here

186

again, as in the treatment of suffering humanity, 2E2
Hamlet walks a fine line between the sentimental and the
nay saying. The humane value of love as man's salvation
and joy is affirmed, but the recognition that love is also
a maker of fools saves the affirmation from any hint of
sentimentality.

Charity, another form of love, is also affirmed as
a value in The Hamlet, in much the same way that it is

affirmed by the creation of Dilsey in The Sound and the

 

‘Hggy. It is seen not as an easy solution to the "old
agonies," since the objects of charity in both novels are
able to benefit little from anyone's assistance, but as

an activity that ennobles whoever engages in it, and ex-
emplifies the solidarity and worth of mankind in general.
It is not Mrs. Compson, or the girl Quentin, or even Benjy,
really, who benefit from Dilsey's care. It is mankind in
general who is "washed" in her "blood." In the same way,
Ratliff's involvement with Mink's wife cannot save her,

but it can serve as a humane gesture, reflecting positively
on the quality of life in Jefferson. Mrs. Littlejohn's
protection of Ike makes more difference to our view of

the Frenchman's Bend community than it does to Ike himself,
and the sheriff's suggestion that Mink be given a seat in
the shade could hardly have less impact on the obsessed
man himself, but it does present the possibility of broth-
erly love from an unexpected source. In the context of

The Hamlet we learn to appreciate such gestures. Like the

 

187
birthday cake that Dilsey buys for Benjy, they give off a
light which may not illuminate the gloom, but which is in
itself beautiful.
According to Maslow, his mentally healthy subjects
were invariably found to be "problem-centered rather than
ego centered,"27 and here too Ratliff and the implied

author of The Hamlet conform to his description. We can

 

see the significance of this more clearly if we compare
Ratliff to our other subjects. As we have observed, Jason
Compson is crippled in his dealings with his family and
the outside world by his compulsive need to see himself

as superior to others. His ego needs leave him wretchedly
unable to deal with any problem outside of himself. Anse
Bundren, faced with the problem of transporting Addie's
body to Jefferson, is more preoccupied with his own mis-
fortune than with the problem itself, and relies a good
deal on the effective exercising of his claims to achieve
an almost accidental success in solving it. And the con-
flicts within Joe Christmas's tortured psyche occupy him
fully. There is no question of his attempting to deal with
external problems.

Ratliff's crusade against what later comes down to be
known as Snopesism is evidence of his interest in problems
outside of himself. He has a fascination with the Snopeses
as a phenomenon, and as a problem that he would like to
solve. He demonstrates considerable tenacity when it comes

to thinking of solutions to this and other problems, and

188
he is not averse to making the effort to carry them out.
One of his most telling lines is spoken in a conversation
with Tull and Bookwright during which he discovers that,
while he has been on what you might call sick leave, Flem
has begun cheating blacks through usury. "It aint right,"
says Tull, "But it aint none of our business." "I believe"
Ratliff replies, "I would think of something if I lived
there" (H, p. 71).

Several times he does think of something, and, though
his plans are never entirely successful, they do demon-
strate a determination to have an effect on the outside
world, to change the direction of circumstance instead of
indulging in paranoid tirade, or committing suicide, or
expecting his wishes to be magically granted, or striking
out violently and irrationally. The goat deal, the raised
voice designed to jolt Varner out of his complacency, the
plan to separate Ike from his cow, the description of Mrs.
Armstid's workday delivered in front of Flem, even the
ill-conceived 01d Frenchman's Place caper: all are the
schemes of a would-be solver of problems.

According to Reed, "power" is the theme of the Snopes

28 In The Hamlet we find

trilogy and knowledge is power.
that a great deal of emphasis is placed on knowing one's
way around, on being able to analyze and propose solutions
to problems, on perpetrating the clever deal. It is a
novel that looks outward rather than inward, that deals

with man as part of a social unit rather than as an

189
individual psyche, and thus it is a novel that places far
more emphasis on problem solving than the earlier, more
"psychological" novels. Though, like Ratliff himself,
the novel is unable to propose successful solutions to the
problems it confronts, like him, it does not turn away
from them. From Ab Snopes's battle of wits with De Spain,
to Ratliff'smisguided attempt to make his fortune and
stop Flem, the focus in The Hamlet is on doing; the man
to be admired is the man who can use his human ingenuity
to deal with the harsh requirements of life in rural
Mississippi and to combat evil, with or without success,
in the form of Snopesism.

In its vividly conveyed perceptions of reality, its
clear judgments, its accepting attitude towards a varied
and sometimes difficult collection of humanity, its humor,
and its focus on doing rather than on feeling, The Hamlet
conforms to Maslow's descriptions of the signs of mental
health. Our analysis of the "core of norms and choices"
that comprises the essence of the novel, reveals that it
is consistent with the drive towards self—realization.

The reader comes to accept this "core" and to participate
in this healthy drive through his identification with
Ratliff, who consistently reveals the qualities and atti-
tudes encomed and approved of by the novel. The primary
implied author-character-reader triangle of The Hamlet is
one designed to "bounce" the reader into an attitude about

mankind that modern psychology would define as "healthy."

190

Since the drive towards "health" is, as we have seen,
a movement away from conflict and towards integration,
The Hamlet is a more unified novel than The Sound and the
Fury, As I Lay Dying, or Light in August. The implied
author's rhetoric is consistent with his mimetic por-
trayals, and all aspects of the novel--its imagery, its
tone, its humor, its choice of subjects, its plot--work
together to express a coherent world view. In this novel
humanity and the human condition are seen and evaluated
from a clear, unchanging perspective, which insists on
the appreciation of man's capacities, both large and
small, and which offers sympathy for and identification
with its difficult, but not necessarily hopeless, plight.
In the battle between Flem Snopes and Ratliff and his
ragtail minions, Flem emerges the victor, but the whole of
The Hamlet works to make us see that there is much to be
celebrated and enjoyed even in a world not always designed

to suit human needs and preferences.

191
NOTES

lMaslow uses the latter term, but "selfcrealization"
seems to me to express more clearly the Opposite of "self.
alienation." Maslow's theories are most usefully set
forth in Motivation and Personality (New York 1970), and
Towards a Psychology of Being (New York, 1968).

2Faulkner's later novels, The Town, The Mansion, and
The Reivers are also "positive,“ but they are not as
coherent, or as "healthy" as The Hamlet.

 

3Quoted in Michael Millgate, The Achievement of William
Faulkner (New York, 1966), p. 196.

4William Faulkner, The Hamlet (New York, 1956), p. 12.
Subsequent references to this work will appear in the text.

5Joseph F. Trimmer, "v. K. Ratliff: A Portrait of
the Artist in Motion," Modern Fiction Studies, XX (1954),
452-

6Warren Beck, Man in Motion, Faulkner's Trilogy
(Madison, 1963).

7Benjamin McClelland, "Not Only to Survive, But to
Prevail: A Study of William Faulkner's Search for a Redeemer
of Modern Man," Dissertation Abstracts, 32:6438A.

8Edwin Moses, "Faulkner's The Hamlet: The Passionate
Humanity of V. K. Ratliff," Notre Dame English Journal,
VIII (1973). 98-109.

9JOseph’Reed, Faulkner's Narrative (New Haven and
London, 1973), p. 223.

10Maslow, Motivation, p. 154.

11See Faulkner in the University, Frederick L. Gwynn
and JosephElother, eds. (Chaflottsville, 1959). p. 204.

l2Maslow, Motivation, p. 153.

13Reed, p. 225.

14Irving Howe, William Faulkner (New York, 1962),
p. 248.

15It is unlikely that Ratliff actually witnesses this
scene himself, just as it is unlikely that the Pet Stamper-
Ab Snopes horse trade is to be taken as literally true.
But the source and impact of Ratliff's detailed imagery

192

is the same as if he were presented as an all—knowing,
"reliable" narrator.

16Reed, p. 225.

17Cleanth Brooks, William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha
Country (New Haven, 1963). p. 172.

18Back, p. 146.

19Maslow, Motivation, p. 165.

ZOBrooks, p. 173.

21Joseph Gold in "The Normality of Snopesism:
Universal Themes in Faulkner's The Hamlet," in Faulkner:
Four Decades of Criticism, Linda Welshimer Wagner, ed.
(East Lansing, 1973). is not the only critic to praise
Ike's ability to love as the proper "antidote to
Snopeism.

22Maslow, Motivation, p. 169.
23Millgate, p. 186.

24Moses, p. 104.

25Howe, p. 248.

26Maslow, Motivation, p. 163.
27Maslow, Motivation, p. 159.

28Reed, p. 222.

CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION

The work of William Faulkner is certainly perceived
by many as falling in that rather intimidating artistic
category which does not invite the appreciation of the
casual audience. The originality of his technique, the
complexity and ambiguity of his "message" for modern man,
the frequent Opacity of his prose style, and his bizarre
choice of subject matter combine to make his novels seem
suitable only for the highly trained reader, whose goal
is not pleasure, but exegesis. As avant garde "high art"
they seem independent of the realm of common human emo-
tions and responses, existing in a rarefied aesthetic
and intellectual atmosphere where only academics dare to
tread.

This study has aimed to remove Faulkner, at least
temporarily, from this context, maintaining that his work
has as much to do with the homely matters of how human
beings think and behave in everyday situations as with
the fashioning of beautiful vases suitable for kissing,*

 

*The vase image comes from Faulkner, who likened his
pleasure in The Sound and the Fuiy to that of the Roman
artisan who made himself one perfect vase and wore its
edges away with kissing.

193

194

or the expounding of complex philoBOphies. By focusing
on his mimetic achievement, and on the very human responses
of his "writing selves" and their characters and readers,
we have sought to see him in the light of a porch sitting
teller-of—tales, whose first goal is to elicit strong emo-
tional responses from his auditors, reSponses which stem
from their participation in the human content of his
stories. The application of psychological theory has been
designed to explore and explain the pleasure, confusion,
exasperation, laughter, satisfaction, and anger that make
up these reactions, and, in the process, to evaluate the
nature of the tale teller's achievement. The study aims
to make Faulkner's work more accessible to all readers.
Critics of the psychological method often express the
fear that psychological interpretation inhibits reader
response by interposing an alien structure on the literary
experience. But my goal has been to draw the reader
closer to the sources of his natural enjoyment of and
interest in fiction, and thus to intensify his pleasure.
By examining Faulkner's characters, and the second selves
that he created to rule over their novelistic worlds, as
‘if they were human, and by speculating about their rela-
tionship to the real human beings who read about them,
the study seeks to humanize the literary experience itself.

We have treated Jason Compson, Anse Bundren, Joe
Christmas and V. K. Ratliff as if the mimetic illusion

were entirely successful, as if they were in fact real

195
people, neighbors, perhaps, whose lives we have been able
to watch closely and measure against a theoretical struc-
ture designed to explain human motivation and behavior.
In doing so we have, if nothing else, extended our con-
tact with them, multiplied our excuses for discussing
them, increased our pleasurable sense of having partici-
pated in their lives. But the approach also has analytical
rewards specifically related to the individual character-
izations studied. The application of Third Force theory
has offered us a means of assessing and evaluating the
characters, of increasing our understanding of their in-
dividual human natures and our ability to measure their
success as mimetic creations. Overall, the study is in-
tended to present a detailed, appreciative, and revealing
consideration of the art of characterization.

The chapter on Jason Compson, for example, seeks to
treat not just his heavily ironic section of the novel,
but virtually every detail that we are given about his
life, attempting to review and accoumtfor every revelation
of his human nature made by the novel. In doing so, it
intends to offer not only a new awareness of the richness
of his portrayal, but an extension of our pleasurable
sense that we are in close contact with a fellow human
being. Particularly by giving us a way to talk about
Jason's childhood, a subject that is pretty much irrelevant
to the central concerns of The Sound and the Fury, but is,

nevertheless, very interesting in itself, our approach

196

enriches and increases our involvement in Jason's humanity
in a way that a more traditional approach, intent on prov-
ing the novel's "unity," for example, could not do. In
addition, Horney's detailed theories about the arrogant
vindictive personality give us a standard by which to
analyze Jason's nature and to measure the consistency and
"reality" of his portrait. By matching the events of his
life and his emotional responses to Horney's account, we
are able to trace the origins of his unpleasant personal-
ity, to understand the sources of his reaction to a given
situation, and to appreciate his vividness, his similar-
ity to a man that we might meet in real life. We can no
longer see him simplistically, as a mere villain, or a
mere vehicle for his creator's irony, nor canwe make
the more drastic error of considering him as a spokesman
for "sanity" or common sense. We are instead forced to
notice that he is a complicated human being, and to take
his complexity into account when considering him in re-
lation to the novel as a whole.

The study of Anse offers slightly different rewards
in this category. While Jason is generally regarded as a
fully realized character, though his nature may not be
fully understood, Anse is usually dealt with as if he were
a flat comic type. A particular contribution of the psycho-
logical approach in his case is that it allows us to appre-
hend what is, in fact, Anse's considerable complexity, in

this way intensifying our pleasurable illusion that he is

 

 

197

real. The application of Horney's concept of the "neu-
rotic claim" seems to open up our view of him. No longer
merely the butt of the joke, he becomes a human being
with understandable motives and a characteristic way of
interacting with others. In addition, as we analyze and
evaluate these motives and interactions, we become ac-
quainted with his considerable limitations, and our view
of him is clarified. When we understand the implications
of what he says and does, we cannot make the mistakes made
by other critics in their assessments of his accomplish-
ments. It becomes clear that it is inappropriate to praise
Anse for guiding his family through fire and water, or for
showing tenacity in the face of adversity, since these
achievements are merely the by-products of his self
alienation. Nor can we ignore the capacity for inflicting
real damage on others that is consequent on his total self
involvement. By seeing Anse as a character quite able to
stand up on his hind legs and cast a shadow, and by examin-
ing carefully the nature of the shadow that he casts, we
increase our pleasure in and comprehension of an important
part of the human experience of As I Lay Dying.

The chapter on Joe Christmas is also much concerned
with attempting to bring to our attention, and thus help
us to enjoy, the vast amount of information that the novel
provides about his character. But the primary advantage
of our approach in his case is that it helps us work towards

a clear interpretation of the nature of his personality.

 

 

198
He is the most complex of our subjects, his motives and
reactions often so obscure and bizarre that the reader's
ability to see him as a human being in whose life it would
be possible to participate is inhibited. By Offering
explanations for Joe's perverse rejection of.all human
warmth, his violent reactions, and his strangely joyful
surrender, Horneyan theory helps to clarify our view of
his character, and allows us to appreciate the reality of
his portrait in human terms. It also prevents us from
labelling him inappropriately. He cannot, for example, be
a modern existential hero if his actions are compulsive
rather than willed.

Finally, the study attempts to extend and elucidate

Faulkner's appealing and vivid portrait of V. K. Ratliff
through the application of Maslovian theory. By giving
us a detailed way to talk about Ratliff's success as a
human being, the concept of self-actualization both extends
our pleasurable sense that we are participating in his life,
and gives us a positive standard by which we may judge his
"goodness" and "health." Ratliff is not actually presented
as a traditional "main" character in The Hamlet, and for
‘this reason he may fail to get the notice he deserves.
The action of the novel cannot really be said to revolve
around him and his concerns; rather he floats in and out
of the narrative, his brush with death dealt with almost
incidentally, his involvement in many of the climactic

moments that of sideliner rather than participant. The

 

 

pus

199
use of Maslovian theory to examine his character in detail
has the effect of highlighting it, of bringing to our at-
tention a rather elusive, but highly successful mimetic
achievement. It also seeks to resolve questions about
his desirability as a human being, which stem from our
lack of a positive standard for judging human worth. Some
critics have faulted Ratliff for being too materialistic
or not "loving" enough, for example, while others, as we
have seen, insist that he is totally admirable. In other
words, his effect on readers has not been consistent. By
offering a modern "guide and model" for evaluating human
motives and behavior, Maslovian theory allows us to see
that Ratliff is, in fact, as good a man as his creator
would have us believe him to be.

But the goals of this study are not only related to
its treatment of individual characters. Third Force theory,
applied to the concept of the implied author and his in—
teraction with characters and readers, has aided in our
attempts to open up the creative process for our examina—
tion, and it has helped to reveal much about the human
dynamics of the novels studied.

The studies of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay

 

Hyng reveal a common pattern. In each novel the repressed
aggressive trends of the implied author lead to ambiguity.
This ambiguity is found in the impact of both novels, and
is the result of the conflicting signals of the implied

author's rhetoric, his intrapsychic conflicts brought into

 

 

 

200
play by his interactions with his own creations. In
both novels the implied author gives the reader two mes-
sages. The dominant and more overt message is that one
should empathize with the sensitive and/or helpless victims
who are usually considered the novel's most "sympathetic"
characters, making an effort to understand and care about
their sometimes obscure, complex, and difficult ways of
viewing the world, and resenting those who persecute
them. The secondary and more covert message is that these
characters and their concerns are laughable, and that it
is he who comes out on tOp, not he who sacrifices, with
whom we should empathize. Though a study of the critical
literature on these novels turns up hints that other readers
have felt the impact of the "covert messages" that I de-
scribe, none have had a systematic way of dealing with
them, and thus they have gone largely unrecognized and
undiscussed. By offering a way of understanding these
conflicts, Horneyan theory makes an interesting, and per-
haps very important contribution to Faulkner studies.

The study of Light in August, deals not in subtle
distinctions and qualifications, but in radical strategies
and intense conflicts. The use of Horneyan theory in this
case leads to the rather startling assertion that the im-
pact of Light in August is related closely to the implied
author's almost voluptuous indulgence of aggressive trends
(in which he encourages the reader to share), and to his

attempts to disguise and compensate for this indulgence

 

 

201
in various ways, including the martyrdom of Joe Christmas.
We find that there is a profound split between the "com-
pensating" sepect of the implied author, which praises and
asks our approval of the world view implied by the Lena-
Byron-Hightower plot, and which sees Joe Christmas as a
helpless victim of his environment, and his "indulging"
aspect, which leads him to use every covert rhetorical
device at his command to persuade the reader to accept a
world view parallel to that of the arrogant-vindictive Joe
Christmas. Ultimately we are able to see that the power
of the novel resides in its ability to fulfill aggressive
desires in disguised form, and this explains much about
the peculiarly violent and muddy atmosphere of the novel,
and the difficulty critics have had in agreeing on its
significance.

The study of The Hamlet, on the other hand, asserts
that the power of that novel lies not in its exploitation
of conflict, but in its movement toward the unity that re-
sults from the pursuit of healthy self realization. There
is an enormous difference between the perspective implied
by Light in August and that implied by The Hamlet which
Third Force theory allows us to account for systematically.
In doing so, it reveals the unique and significant achieve-
ment of The Hamlet. Here the implied author-character-
reader "triangle" is free of ambiguity and conflict. The
"healthy" outlook of the implied author is reflected in
the portrayal of Ratliff and urged on the reader by its

 

202
incorporation into the rhetoric, and even the technique,
of the novel itself. As a result, the novel is devoid of
the thrill that accompanies participation in forbidden
fantasy, and without the perversely enjoyable humor that
stems from our covert association with Jason Compson and
Anse Bundren, but it is possessed of an openness to human
possibilities and, indeed, to life in general, that is
unique in the Faulkner canon.

This particular psychological approach, then, seeks
to bring us new insight into the achievements of Faulkner's
most creative period: the highly effective realistic
characterizations, the rhetorical power that transcends
the objective mode and allows the reader to participate
in some complex and fascinating perspectives, the creation
of varied and vivid worlds for our delighted observation.
Though three of the novels studied are revealed to be
"flawed" because of their relationship to the defensive
strategies of their creators, each study has sought to
offer an appreciation and explanation of the impact of
the novel concerned, rather than to dismiss it because of
the "imperfections" that psychological analysis reveals.
This study seeks to use modern psychological theory in a
positive and illuminating way, as a means of dealing with
the often neglected human element of the novelistic ex-

perience.

 

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