A Polyphonic Interpretation Of Faulkner’s Racial Discrimination In The Sound And The Fury

The Sound and the Fury is the most representative work of William Faulkner.The study of the novel has been prosperous, and researchers all over the word finddifferent perspectives to interpret it. Among those hot issues, Faulkner’s attitudetowards the black is the most controversial one. It is a perpetual issue which has neverreached an agreement.The thesis attempts to, on the basis of Bakhtin’s polyphony theory and Wayne C.Booth’s implied author’s voice theory, find five voices (Benjy, Quentin, Jason andDilsey and the author’s), classify and compare the voices that represent Faulkner’sfalse image of Dilsey and Dilsey’s own voice that shows her a strong and independenthuman being.The thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter is an introduction toFaulkner and related criticism about the controversial issue on Faulkner’s attitudetowards the black, especially the black mammies. The second chapter deals withpolyphony in the novel. In Chapter Two, the theory of polyphony and its threefeatures, including dialogism, heteroglossia and unfinalizability, are introduced anddiscussed, with the purpose of applying polyphony theory into finding four voices inThe Sound and the Fury: the “fool” Benjy’s voice, the neurotic Quentin’s voice, theparanoiac Jason’s voice and the observer Dilsey’s voice. All these voices pave thepath for Chapter Three’s further study. The third chapter is the core part of this thesis.In Chapter Three a close text analysis is adopted to find clues of Compson members’attitudes towards the blacks, especially Dilsey. Besides, implied author’s voice is alsodug out in the light of Wayne C. Booth’s implied author’s voice theory. The thesistries to find that Dilsey’s image in Quentine’s, Jason’s and the author’s implied voicesremains a tame black mammy who has an “animal devotion to the Compsons”. The image is quite different from that in the novel’s last section—Dilsey’s own voice. Thefinal chapter summarizes the study. Through Dilsey, the thesis observes that Faulknerdoesn’t give his character a “greater humanity”. Actually, in the deep side of his heart,he can not get rid of his brand as a white man who looks down upon andunconsciously treats the black differently. Thus, Faulkner still has his discriminationtowards the black.