The Lost Generation (G. Stein) was defined by Fitzgerald as a “New Generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought and all faiths in man shaken.”Its framework = cruelty of war occasioning the shift from “the survival of the fittest” (Darwin, Spencer) to “the extinction of the fittest” (theme)Gatsby and the Green Light (Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. Ware: Wordsworth, 1993.)1.“I didn’t call him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone – he stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.” (16)

2. ‘If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,’ said Gatsby. ‘You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.’Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects in the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk. ‘Who’s this?’‘That? That Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.’The name sounded faintly familiar. ‘He’s dead now. He used to be my best friend.’There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the bureau – Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly – taken apparently when he was about eighteen.‘I adore it,’ exclaimed Daisy. ‘The pompadour. You never told me you had a pompadour – or a yacht.’‘Look at this,’ said Gatsby quickly. ‘Here’s a lot of clippings – about you.’ [...] As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart. (60-62)

3. On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled down on the sand.Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailor’s eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther... And one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (115)

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Time in Modernist Writings – Juxtaposition / Suspension of Chronology / Past into Present[Daisy]: ‘What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon, and the day after that, and the next thirty years?’‘And she doesn’t understand,’ he said. ‘She used to be able to understand. We’d sit for hours –’He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favours and crushed flowers.‘I wouldn’t ask too much of her,’ I ventured. ‘You can’t repeat the past.’‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. ‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,’ he said, nodding determinedly. ‘She’ll see.’He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was...... One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned towards each other. Now it was a cool night with the mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were burning out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees – he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something – and elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. (70-71)

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Library Scene – A Window to Jazz Age SocietyA stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot. ‘What do you think?’ he demanded impetuously.‘About what?’ He waved his hand towards the book-shelves.‘About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.’‘The books?’He nodded. ‘Absolutely real – have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and – Here! Lemme show you.’Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the ‘Stoddard Lectures.’‘See!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too – didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?’ (30)

Gatsby and the American Dream [Nick Carraway to Gatsby’s father] ‘had you seen him lately?’‘He came out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.’He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy book called Hopalong Cassidy.‘Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.’He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last fly-leaf was printed the word SCHEDULE, and the date September 12, 1906. And underneath:

Rise from bed 6.00 A.M.Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling 6.15-6.30 ”Study electricity, etc. 7.15-8.15 ”Work 8.30-4.30 P.M.Baseball and sports 4.30-5.00 ”Practise elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00 ”Study needed inventions 7.00-9.00 ”

GENERAL RESOLVES

No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipharable]No more smoking or chewingBath every other dayRead one improving book or magazine per weekSave $ 5.00 [crossed out] $ 3.00 per weekBe better for parents

‘I come across this book by accident,’ said the old man. ‘It just shows it, don’t it?’‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I ate like a hog once, and I beat him for it.’ (110)

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The Sound and the Fury

[Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. 1929. New York: Norton, 1994.] Matrix image of the book as identified by Faulkner: “the fatherless and motherless girl climbing down the drainpipe to escape from the only home she had, where she had never been offered love or affection or understanding.” (Faulkner’s interview with Jean Stein qtd in Meriwether 232)

Faulkner’s life approach as prevailing versus endurance corresponding to character typology in The Sound and The Fury as doers versus talkers:

“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” (Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10th, 1950)

Title significance

Consider the following quote. What does “sound and fury” refer to? What would be their significance in Faulkner’s novel? “Out, out, brief candle.Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.” (Shakespeare, Macbeth 5.5 101)

Women’s traditional role in the American South – early 20th century:“The Southern woman was caught in a social doubleblind: toward men she was to be submissive, meek and gentle; with the children and slaves in the management of the household, she was supposed to display competence, initiative and energy. But she remained a shadowy figure, always there and ever necessary, but rarely emerging in full force.” (Richard King, A Southern Renaissance)

Dominant modernist technique: stream of consciousness / Bergson’s durée- Proustian model of association through similarity via metaphorical

imagination (volume 1 Swann’s Way of Remembrance of Things Past, 1913): an everyday object is infused with a powerful emotive force and becomes the trigger for reawakening a buried experience – result: palimpsest-like effect, scenes visible behind or within others

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Ways of Knowing: Modernist Perspectivism and Juxtaposition"If I say you and T.P. can come too, will you let him hold it." Caddy said. "Aint nobody said me and T.P. got to mind you." Frony said. "If I say you dont have to, will you let him hold it." Caddy said. "All right." Frony said. "Let him hold it, T.P. We going to watch them moaning." "They aint moaning." Caddy said. "I tell you it's a party. Are they moaning, Versh." "We aint going to know what they doing, standing here." Versh said. "Come on." Caddy said. "Frony and T.P. dont have to mind me. But the rest of us do. You better carry him, Versh. It's getting dark." Versh took me up and we went on around the kitchen. When we looked around the corner we could see the lights coming up the drive. T.P. went back to the cellar door and opened it. You know what's down there, T.P. said. Soda water. I seen Mr Jason come up with both hands full of them. Wait here a minute. T.P. went and looked in the kitchen door. Dilsey said, What are you peeping in here for. Where's Benjy. He out here, T.P. said. Go on and watch him, Dilsey said. Keep him out the house now.Yessum, T.P. said. Is they started yet. You go on and keep that boy out of sight, Dilsey said. I got all I can tend to.A snake crawled out from under the house. Jason said he wasn't afraid of snakes and Caddy said he was but she wasn't and Versh said they both were and Caddy said to be quiet, like Father said. You aint got to start bellering now, T.P. said. You want some this sassprilluh. It tickled my nose and eyes.  If you aint going to drink it, let me get to it, T.P. said. All right, here tis. We better get another bottle while aint nobody bothering us. You be quiet, now. We stopped under the tree by the parlor window. Versh set me down in the wet grass. It was cold. There were lights in all the windows. "That's where Damuddy is." Caddy said. "She's sick every day now. When she gets well we're going to have a picnic."  "I knows what I knows." Frony said.  The trees were buzzing, and the grass. "The one next to it is where we have the measles." Caddy said. "Where do you and T.P. have the measles, Frony." "Has them just wherever we is, I reckon." Frony said.      "They haven't started yet." Caddy said. They getting ready to start, T.P. said. You stand right here now while I get that box so we can see in the window. Here, les finish drinking this here sassprilluh. It make me feel just like a squinch owl inside.      We drank the sassprilluh and T.P. pushed the bottle through the lattice, under the house, and went away. I could hear them in the parlor and I clawed my hands against the wall. T.P. dragged the box. He fell down, and he began to laugh. He lay there, laughing into the grass. He got up and dragged the box under the window, trying not to laugh. "I skeered I going to holler." T.P. said. "Git on the box and see is they started." "They haven't started because the band hasn't come yet." Caddy said.      "They aint going to have no band." Frony said.      "How do you know." Caddy said.      "I knows what I knows." Frony said.      "You dont know anything." Caddy said. She went to the tree. "Push me up, Versh."      "Your paw told you to stay out that tree." Versh said.      "That was a long time ago." Caddy said. "I expect he's forgotten about it. Besides, he said to mind me tonight. Didn't he say to mind me tonight."      "I'm not going to mind you." Jason said. "Frony and T.P. are not going to either."      "Push me up, Versh." Caddy said.      "All right." Versh said. "You the one going to get whipped. I aint." He went and pushed Caddy up into the tree to the first limb. We watched the muddy bottom of her drawers. Then we couldn't see her. We could hear the tree thrashing.      "Mr Jason said if you break that tree he whip you." Versh said.      "I'm going to tell on her too." Jason said.      The tree quit thrashing. We looked up into the still branches.      "What you seeing." Frony whispered. I saw them. Then I saw Caddy, with flowers in her hair, and a long veil like shining wind. Caddy Caddy      "Hush." T.P. said. "They going to hear you. Get down quick." He pulled me. Caddy. I clawed my hands against the wall Caddy. T.P. pulled me. "Hush." he said. "Hush. Come on here quick." He pulled me on. Caddy "Hush up, Benjy. You want them to hear you. Come on, les drink some more sassprilluh, then we can come back if you hush. We better get one more bottle or we both be hollering. We can say Dan drank it. Mr Quentin always saying he so smart, we can say he sassprilluh dog, too."      The moonlight came down the cellar stairs. We drank some more sassprilluh. (24-25)

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Renaming – Clashing Mindsets

Nathalie Sarraute in L’Ere du soupçon on name ambiguity in The Sound and the Fury:Ce prénom qu’il promène d’un personnage à l’autre sous l’oeil agacé du lecteur, comme le morceau de sucre sous le nez du chien, force le lecteur de se tenir constamment sur le qui-vivre [...] il doit, pour identifier les personnages, les reconnaître aussitôt, comme l’auteur lui-même, par le dedans, grâce à des indices qui ne lui sont révélés que si, renonçant à ses habitudes de confort, il plonge en eux aussi loin que l’auteur et fait sienne sa vision.

Consider the following excerpt on renaming. The question that arises is the following: is the relation signifier - referent arbitrary or not and what are the arguments as sustained in the dialogue between Caddy and Dilsey?

That’s right, Dilsey said. I reckon it’ll be my time to cry next. Reckon Maury going to let me cry on him a while, too.His name’s Benjy now, Caddy said.How come it is, Dilsey said. He ain’t wore out the name he was born yet, is he. Benjamin came out of the bible, Caddy said. It’s a better name for him than Maury was.How come it is, Dilsey said.Mother says it is, Caddy said.Huh, Dilsey said. Name aint doing to help him. Hurt him, neither. Folks don’t have no luck, changing name. My name been Dilsey since fore could remember abd it be Dilsey when they’s long forgot me.How will they know it’s Dilsey, when it’s long forgot, Dilsey, Caddy said.It’ll be in the Book, honey, Dilsey said. Writ out.Can you read it, Caddy said.Wont have to, Dilsey said. They’ll read it for me. All I got to do is say Ise here. (37)

And I saw the dead, great and small alike, standing before the throne. Books were opened, and then another book was opened, the book of the living. The dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the book. (Book of Revelations 20, 11-15)

[Mrs. Compson to Dilsey]“You might hand me the bible.”“I give hit to you dis mawnin, befo I left.”“You laid it on the edge of the bed. How long did you expect it to stay there?”Dilsey crossed to the bed and groped among the shadows beneath the edge of it and found the bible, face down. She smoothed the bent pages and laid the book on the bed again. Mrs. Compson didn’t open her eyes. Her hair and the pillow were the same color, beneath the wimple of the medicated cloth she looked like an old nun praying. “Dont put it there again,” she said, without opening her eyes. “That’s where you put it before. Do you want me to have to get out of bed to pick it up?”Dilsey reached the book across her and laid it on the broad side of the bed. “You cant see to read, noways,” she said. “You want me to raise de shade a little?”“No. Let them alone. Go on and fix Jason something to eat.” (187)

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