Narrative Analysis Of The Implied Central Character In The Sound And The Fury

William Faulkner is regarded as one of the most well-known American writers in 20th century. Of his works, The Sound and the Fury is of the most significance and wide influence as his masterpiece. He expresses his characters'connotation and thematic ideas with multiple modernistic methods in his works. The novel has been mainly studied from the viewpoints of themes, characters, and Faulkner's experimental techniques such as stream-of-consciousness. But analysis conducted from narrative strategies to analyze the image-building of Caddy is limited. By means of Gerard Genette's narratology, the thesis makes a thorough exploration to the application and significance of three aspects in The Sound and the Fury: narrative time, focalization and narrator. The specific narration makes the specific way of molding characters. Caddy, who is apparently not one of the narrators and disappears gradually, actually is the center of the novel all the time. It is in these narrative processes that we can detect the deterioration of personality, which mirrors the losses and pains in the spirit of modern man. Faulkner's work, transformed his composite voice to a lasting, universal reflection of life and human history. This paper provides a new angle of view to understand the implied character in the novel.