Quentin’s Journey toward Sister Death in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury

Quentin Compson is a tragic hero who suffers from the decay of the family and the nihilistic lack of all idealism. He feels pressure of the burden of his family’s past greatness and its present decline, particularly in connection with his sister Caddy. As his monologue involves his desperate struggle for his sister’s honor, Quentin is abnormally preoccupied with her feminine chastity. Quentin cannot bring any of his acts to completion until he decides to put an end to his life. What occurs to him in the morning of his last day first are time and Saint Francis of Assisi, who feared death but finally became reconciled with his own mortality so as to call it his sister. Thus Quentin desires to finish his struggle with time and intends to adopt the fraternal view of death of Saint Francis. And then, for Quentin, death is another dimension of himself, a part of natural order. At last, he hurries to get everything in readiness in order to embrace his sister death.