Deficiency of Maternal Love as a Cause for the Dysfunctional Family in The Sound and the Fury

Faulkners The Sound and the Fury is considered to be an American classic. What sets this novel apart from other novels is its unique technique of narration. Especially its first three Chapters are a repetition of the same narrative, recapitulating the story of Caddy recounted by her three brothers, Benjy, Quentin, and Jason. Why, then, we naturally ask, is this narrative to come into being? To answer this question we have to take into account how Faulker felt about this novel. In an answer to a graduate student at Virginia University, Faulkner said very clearly that he loved Caddy very much and that even though her three brothers told the story of her three times, her story could not be finished. That is why he himself became a narrator to tell her story iη the fourth chapter of the novel. He also told that after finishing the novel he felt peace and ecstasy. We then ask why he felt peace and ecstasy after completing the fiction. We come to notice that the subtext of the novel is FaulknerS own childhood experience. Just as the novel is about the lack of motherly love for the Compson children, Faulkner was raised in a dysfunctional family where mothers love was sorely lacking. So we can assume that his biographical background has become the raw material for this novε1, and in the process of writing this novel his pent-up longing for maternal affection has been eased. We therefore can conclude that his writing of this novel has been a self-help psychoanalytic cure for himself