On the Loss of Caddy's Humanity of the Sound and Fury in the Perspective of Modernism

The Sound and Fury, one of William Faulkner's most successful novels, was his favorite one. The novel focuses on Caddy Compson's journey of degeneration to show us a piece of spiritual wasteland of modern people's life. In the perspective of modernism, this essay tries to analyze the image of Caddy. The procedure of the loss with her humanity will be a reflection of modern people's spiritual life. Thus the exploration of Caddy's loss of her humanity will help to probe into the roots of humanity loss of the modern people. Faulkner, whose full name is William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897-1962) was one of the most influential writers in the United States. His famous works include "The Sound and the Fury" (1929), "As I Lay Dying" (1930), "Light in August" (1932), "Absalom, Absalom!"(1936), etc. His writing was greatly influenced by the American modernist writers, such as T.S.Eliot, Anderson and so on. He showed the emptiness of modern people's life to the readers through depicting the social historic changes to present the spiritual wasteland of modern people. " The Sound and the Fury" was one of Faulkner's favorite works. The background of the story is Jefferson town. It described and presents Compson family which was prominent in the past and is declining now. It was the comprehensiveness of trivial events happened in Compson home in a few special days in a certain sense. It reflects the disintegration of the landlord family in the American South and a capitalist society's spiritual crisis is brewing. Or rather, this story is "an elegy sung towards the declining material civilization" (Yuan Kejia, 141).