Artistic principles of delineating the American “interior” in W. Faulkner’s novel “The Sound and the Fury”

Abstract

Describing the tragic decay of a once honoured and distinguished the Compsons’ family, posterity of the southern nobility, W. Faulkner states the idea that mainly a rejection of their ancestors’ notions of honour and dignity, religious and other human values, has led its members to the moral decay and degradation. And the masterful use of the modernist poetics’ achievements, i. e. a stream of consciousness, constant shifts of time, breaking the chronology of narration, demonstrating Time and Space as discrete objects as well as his superb art of montage, his impressionistic approach describing the grotesque heroes’ feelings, emotions and the luxuriant nature of the American South with its wealth of colours, sounds, odours, as well as the creation of symbolic images and leitmotifs – all this helps the author to reveal artistically the essence of the matter – the theme of the Compsons’ tragic decay and the incredible suffering of its members and their total loneliness. But a doomed to suffering Faulkner’s hero struggles to the end. The moral centre of narration in the novel is a black elderly servant Dilsey, brave and compassionate, capable of sacrifice, who is the personification of the traditional moral and religious values.