In The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner uses nature imagery to explore the Compson family dynamics. Through trees, honeysuckle, and jimsonweed, Faulkner shows how rebellion, loss of innocence, and neglect define members of the family.
In the book, trees symbolize rebellion, freedom, and how the Compson women defy familial authority. When Caddy climbs the trees to peek at Damuddy’s funeral, her brothers and Versh immediately interjects, “‘Your paw told you to stay out that tree’” (45). Yet Caddy is not intimidated and invokes her father’s instruction that she be obeyed, displaying how she slyly escapes authority by working around the rules.Caddy climbs anyway, above everyone else, further emphasizing her defiance against her family. The tree she climbs is the first place where she shows that her desire for knowledge matters more than what the men in her family permit her to do. A generation later, Jason, echoing his father, prohibits his niece Quentin to sneak out, yet he is unsuccessful. Luster notes about her, “‘They come every night she can climb down that tree’” (50). This shows that Quentin’s climbing of the tree is much more frequent and consistent than Caddy’s, suggesting a greater range of freedom. Since Jason is the only one now that actively opposes her and Luster and Benjy simply watch as bystanders, Quentin is much more successful in her endeavors. The book vividly describes her actions through the lines, “It came out of Quentin’s window and climbed across into the tree. We watched the tree shaking” (74). Through this imagery, the shaking of the tree presents her rebellion in a physical way. For both Caddy and Quentin, the tree is the one place that the Compson family cannot reach, and each time the girls climb the tree, they are choosing freedom over the family’s restricting expectations.
Faulkner also uses the smell of honeysuckle to show how Caddy’s loss of virginity affects Quentin. In their childhood, the smell was a part of the innocent world they lived in. Caddy saying, “You used to like it” (153), emphasizes the transformation Quentin underwent. Even though the smell didn’t change, things around it did. Caddy’s loss of virginity turns the honeysuckle from a reminder of innocent childhood into something Quentin relates to the shame of their family. Quentin thinks, “Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber flabbily filled, getting the odor of honeysuckle all mixed up” (128). Here, the honeysuckle is associated with rotting and decay, suggesting that Quentin sees Caddy’s promiscuity as a kind of death. When she loses her virginity, Quentin enters a state of delirium and the honeysuckle represents this. When he says, “I had to pant to get any air at all out of that thick gray honeysuckle” (151), it implies that the scent is suffocating him, like a thick cloud of gray smoke. “Gray” could also describe how the warmth of honeysuckle was drained, the same way Caddy’s loss of innocence took away Quentin’s understanding of the world. When Quentin confesses, “Honeysuckle was the saddest odor of all, I think” (169), his transformation is complete. Honeysuckle, a simple pleasant smell from childhood, is now a constant painful reminder of his once pure Caddy Compson.
Jimsonweed, a toxic and hallucinogenic plant, is used to show how poorly Benjy is treated and that his distorted perception of reality could be caused by something other than his cognitive disability. At first, Luster hands jimsonweed to Benjy whenever he becomes distressed, saying, “Here’s you a jimson weed” (6), as a way of quieting him. He treats Benjy more like a chore to complete rather than a human being. But, when Dilsey confronts Luster after he knocks Benjy’s weeds over, he never mentions the jimsonweed at all, telling her that, “[Benjy] was playing with that bottle full of dogfennel and all of a sudden he started up bellering” (56). The replacement of jimsonweed with a different harmless plant shows how Luster tries to hide something that is hurting Benjy. This demonstrates the cruelty of his caretaking. The effects of the weed are also written directly into Benjy’s narration. Jimsonweed is known to cause hallucinations, disorientation, and an inability to differentiate between sleeping and waking. Benjy’s section hints at these symptoms. He repeatedly describes “bright shapes” moving across his vision, saying that “the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep” (75). The phrase “even when Caddy says that I have been asleep” implies that he is unable to distinguish his dreams from reality. The wheel imagery of “bright tops of wheels” (11) reflects blurred vision and confusion, symptoms associated with jimsonweed toxicity, hidden in his abstract stream of consciousness. At the end of the book, the broken flower that “drooped over Ben’s fist” (321) while “his eyes were empty and blue and serene” (321) shows an image of vacancy in his mind, and this dissociation points to the effects of jimsonweed. These details suggest that Benjy’s confusing narration is due to not only his disability, but the exposure to a toxic plant that nobody seems concerned about removing from his hands.
Through trees, honeysuckle, and jimsonweed, Faulkner uses the natural world to display key issues in the family. Rebellion, lost innocence, and neglect are themes that define each member of the family and ultimately contribute to their fate.