Brotherly Pain

In the novel, The Sound and the Fury, the pride of the family in conjunction with the brothers’ love for their sister tears the family apart. Each of the characters in the story have many internal, mental issues with their positions in their family which are only heightened as a result of Caddy’s promiscuity. Both Benjy and Quentin suffer after Caddy lost her virginity because their love for their sister tears them each apart mentally, knowing that Caddy has changed and that they no longer can control the occurrences in her life.

Caddy’s promiscuity effects Benjy greatly and his reaction to her loss of virginity shows that Caddy’s actions changed the lives of those around her. When Caddy first comes into the house after she had been deflowered, Benjy senses that she has been with a boy and attempts to make her cleanse herself of her sins by washing them off as she had done before. Though, in his mind, this seems the sensible way to redeem herself, for Caddy the cleansing is not a possibility and she is aware that she is too far-gone from personal reconciliation. Benjy throws a fit that Caddy will not give herself completely to him anymore, and though he does not fully understand Caddy’s actions, he seems to understand that he can no longer control Caddy’s actions and that he cannot be the only boy in her life any longer. We, as readers, can see that this is the beginning of Caddy abandoning her brother, whom she loved so dearly, and that she will only further isolate him from her life. The next time, chronologically, that the reader can tell that Benjy needs his sister but she is no longer there to support him is when he waits by the golf course, moaning when the golfers say “caddie”. This shows that Benjy still wants to wait by the gate for his beloved Caddy as he did when he was little, because to his adolescent mind, she comes home through the gate. He still hopes that if he is loyal to the sister who treated him so kindly that she will come back to take care of him as she used to. When Caddy lost her virginity, she bean to throw her brother, Benjy, who so idolized her, to secondary importance. This change effected Benjy, and his emotions took over so that Benjy kept trying to bring his sister back, unaware that she would not return to his side.

Caddy’s actions began to deteriorate the mental state of Quentin from the beginning of her changes and slowly, he began to lose all hope for the future. Quentin loved Caddy to the point that he would admit to the world that he had committed incest so that the world would reject them together. He is torn apart because he believes in the morals of the south and that women should be cautious with their bodies. He is proud of his heritage and wants to retain the stature that his family possessed in better times. When Quentin discovers the promiscuity of Caddy, it forces him to convince her that she never loved Dalton Ames and that she can overcome her promiscuity. Even after Quentin has gone back to Harvard, he cannot get his sister out of his mind, as shown when he fights a fellow Harvard student and loses, all to protect the names of sisters everywhere. Quentin tries, and fails to protect his sister from the real world, but realizes that he cannot keep her from something he, himself, does not understand. This realization drives him all the way to suicide because he cannot bear the disgrace of his family and the loss of his truly beloved sister because of her life choices. Caddy’s actions tears him to pieces to the point that death is a better outlet than fretting about every instance that had occurred when Caddy lost her virginity, became pregnant, and married a man she didn’t love in order to cover her pregnancy.

The Compson family is distraught over the choices that Caddy has made, and though they were not wholly normal before her actions, the knowledge of her losing her virginity and becoming pregnant out of wedlock is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Caddy was the finishing moment that tore the family to pieces and put her brothers out of their minds (733).