Memory

Memory in William Faulkner’s novels specifically //The Sound and the Fury// and //Light In August//, is the principle theme that inhibits each character’s development and to become an integral part in society. Despite Quentin Compson's, a white male who grew up in an aristocratic family in TSAF, and Joe Christmas's, an orphan who travels without an identity and as a “drifter” in LIA, race and social upbringings, Faulkner incorporates Freudian philosophies to help correlate his principle idea of, “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders” (LIA 119). Both Quentin and Christmas suffer through traumatic childhood experiences in which they falter to understand due to ambivalence and age which is then “nurtured by fear” (Forter 261). They both have recollections of their childhood experiences that dominates their actions and daily activities, in which Forter states, “the potential for retrospective, traumatic identity-construction is installed not just be the processes of patriarchal gender formation that so preoccupy Freud, but also by the processes governing the production of class and racial identity” (Forter, 261). Thus, Faulkner’s usage of memory is intertwined with a lack of identity, masculinity, and control which brings both protagonists to agony and ultimately death as their only means to achieve their desire.

Quentin’s narration, in TSAF, is constructed around Caddy’s loss of virginity, pregnancy out of wedlock, and marriage. He uses ideas of incest and death as an escape to cope with his childhood trauma but Faulkner implicitly denotes Caddy’s actions an allegory that governs Quentin’s lack of control, masculinity, and identity. His lack of understanding as a child corrupts him as he goes to Harvard, growing in constant fear and paranoia of his failures to prevent Caddy’s mishappenings as a child. The constant ticking of his broken watch, desire of death, fantasies of incest (LIA 77, 79) and running away with Caddy are all precursors that illustrate the stigma of his memories that shape into what he may believe as proper versus improper. From the smell of roses and honeysuckle brings moments of recollection that are associated with purity of Caddy while ticking of the clock, conversations with his father (TSAF, 76, 78, 116) brings a temporary dislodged state of mind between the past and present. “Freud's interpretation of present suffering in terms of a transfixed, compulsive repetition of past events (rather than of those events' displaced expression in symptoms) has the effect of homogenizing and dehistoricizing the experience of time itself” (Forter 269). Memories are able to reconstitute itself through similar objects, scents, and sound but then are distorted to prevent a continuation of traumatic events. Quentin fantasizes of incest and running away with Caddy as an approach to “dehistoricize”, or change the past to create a better present/future.

Joe Christmas’s, in LIA, lack of identity is centered around how the city in Jefferson dictates his masculinity, identity, and ability for control. His first stigma was when he was five years old caught by the dietician, “You little rat!...Spying on me! You little nigger bastard!" (LIA, 122). The scrutiny of this statement evokes a racial and gender insecurity onto Joe Christmas which is not understood till he encounters his first/almost sexual intercourse. “There was something in him trying to get out, like when he had used to think of toothpaste. But he could not move at one, standing there, smelling the woman smelling the negro all at one; enclosed by the womanshenegro...Then it seemed to him that he could see her-something, prone, abject; her eyes perhaps. Leaning he seemed to look down into a black well and at the bottom saw to glints like reflections of dead stars...He kicked her hard, kicking into and through a choked wail of surprise and fear. She began to scream, he...hitting at her with wide, wild blows...enclosed by the womanshenegro and the haste” (LIA, 157). These two distinct moments clearly pinpoint Faulkner’s belief of “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.” Joe Christmas could not apprehend the dietician’s implication of “nigger” and “bastard” emphasizing his inferiority and lack of masculinity “linked to femininity” (Forter, 272) all the while as he grew to age, the first sexual encounter he recollects is back to the moment with the dietician. He sees his own reflection in the black girl's eyes. He is reminded of his own “blackness” of inferiority and attempts to beat his reflection out by assorting to violence on to the girl. He attempts to win back the masculinity he lost as a child. “In order then to stave off the trauma of "being" the black woman, Joe engages in her physical brutalization-a brutalization that we can read as the post-oedipal, "intersubjective" equivalent of vomiting, an act that seeks to abject and revile what it insists is "not-me," and so to mark the limits of a purportedly white male self.” (Forter, 273). Thus, trauma as a child accounts to distortion of memories that makes the past and present become indistinguishable to one another. His actions signify what he was unable to do as a child, defend his masculinity and identity. Instead, the dietician stole it by using derogatory terms which Christmas was unable to comprehend. As he grew older, he attempts to gain what the dietician stole by admitting towards violence all the while he is consciously unaware what prompts his actions.

**Works Cited**
 Forter, Greg. " Freud, Faulkner, Caruth: Trauma and the Politics of Literary Form." //Narrative//' 15(3): October 2007, 259-285.