Comparison of Sound & the Fury & Invisible Man

Faulkner does not simply see the old South as a wonderful realm of manners and morality, and the new America as a voracious, materialistic and immoral monster swallowing that old South. Faulkner presents a family and a community, however, which were once noble and unified by traditions and conventions based on human rather than primarily material concerns, and he argues that that noble and moral unity is in the process of being destroyed by larger and more inhumane social and economic imperatives. The death of the South is symbolized in the image of the statue: "They approached the square, where the Confederate soldier gazed with empty eyes beneath his marble hand in wind and weather."

While Ellison is similarly critical of American society, his condem

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a challenge to those who question his unique decision: Perhaps that's my greatest social crime, I've overstayed my hibernation, since there's a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play. "Ah," I can hear you say, "so it was all a build-up to bore us with his buggy jiving. He only wanted us to listen to him rave!" But only partially true: Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? As mysterious, ambivalent, challenging and ambiguous as Ellison's narrator's conclusion might be, it is far more simple and clear than the narrative journey or the conclusion of Faulkner's novel. From the beginning, with the narration of the 33-year-old idiot Benjy, the reader struggles for his or her footing. Benjy my be an idiot, but he is also the one character in the family and the novel who maintains the innocence in which the nation was born. He retains his innocence because he is incapable of being disillusioned or corrupted, as the other characters are not. Benjy is ce
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2126
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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