Interpretations Of The Sound And The Fury From The Perspective Of Myth And Archetypal Criticism

William Faulkner is an outstanding modern novelist of the 20th century in American literature. His fiction is deeply rooted in the old South of America. He looks back at the changing history of American South and people's psychological reactions to it. The Sound and the Fury is one of them. As Faulkner's masterpiece, it presents the declining process of the Compson family through the Compsons'interior monologues, shows the decaying of the Southern values and further explores the spiritual crisis of modern men.This thesis chooses Myth and Archetypal criticism represented by Jung and Frye to analyze The Sound and the Fury. Myth and Archetypal criticism is a type of critical theory that emerged in 1930s and was popular in 1950s and 1960s. It attempts to dig out the recurring narrative structures, images, symbols and character types in literary works and to find out the basic forms behind-archetypes. It applies various archetypes to the analysis and evaluation of literary works. This thesis creatively employs the theories of archetypal women, shadow and anima to analyze characters in the novel, makes a research on the connotations of objects such as fire and water, and analyzes the biblical structure, plot and themes in the novel by making an ironical contrast. It searches for the relationship between the use of archetypes and themes of the novel to help readers understand the novel thoroughly.Through the analysis of various archetypes in the novel, the writer comes to conclusion that Faulkner presents a common concern of the degeneration of the South America after the Civil War and hint obliquely at the bankruptcy of morality in American South by contrasting people and stories in the novel with those in the Bible.