Bleikasten’s Literary Analysis of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury Ess

Bleikasten’s Literary Analysis of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury By focusing on the figure of Caddy, Bleikasten’s essay works to understand the ambiguous nature of modern literature, Faulkner’s personal interest in Caddy, and the role she plays as a fictional character in relation to both her fictional brothers and her actual readers. To Bleikasten, Caddy seems to function on multiple levels: as a desired creation; as a fulfillment of what was lacking in Faulkner’s life; and/or as a thematic, dichotomous absence/presence. The first section of the essay, â€Å"The Most Splendid Failure,† examines The Sound and the Fury as a(n) (ironic) modern recognition of the novel as a failed art form – if not language as a failed communicator. Bleikasten recognizes the novel as a reversal of reading, a realization of experience, adventure, and life. Because Faulkner was (apparently) not writing for the public, The Sound and the Fury acted as an â€Å"intranarcissistic† object, a â€Å"self-gratification,† which honestly makes me imagine the novel as a form of grandiose masturbation. And Bleikasten would have to admit that I am not too far off. He writes, â€Å" †¦ the aesthetic is made one with the erotic† (415). But then the essay takes an odd turn. This self-gratifying fulfillment becomes a replacement of either a missing sister or a dead daughter (the latter of which I don’t understand because Faulkner’s daughter did not die - was she perhaps very sick as an infant?) It seems that Bleikasten is now associating the erotic with the familial - not that incest is an inappropriate topic of conversation. However, Bleikasten does not acknowledge this connection and I cannot understand how Faulkner was implying an incestuous desire in his somewhat romanticized... ...age of the novel (neglecting to mention the same one at the end) that confuses and upsets Benjy: â€Å"caddie† versus â€Å"Caddy,† calling on the ambiguities and failing qualities of language, and seeming to draw his essay into a neat circular argument. But he then continues in a somewhat random discussion of Caddy as simultaneously nowhere and everywhere and as a symbol of/for water. He briefly looks at the role of memory in response to a disappeared, yet obsessed-upon figure, although the purpose of this discussion eludes me. Bleikasten ends by accepting Caddy’s elusiveness as necessary given her role in a modern novel and as a woman who cannot be grasped both by male characters and a male author – but what about us female readers? Can we grasp her by reading into Faulkner’s language, or has his failed storytelling blocked her off from any potential female understanding?