As Quentin Compson travels across the countryside with his college friends, the reality of the situation becomes terribly confused by past memories and feelings. After a little girl follows him for miles around town, his sexuality comes to the forefront of his consciousness and turns into disjointed memories of his sister Caddy. Quentin's constant obsession in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury surrounds a defining sexual act with his sister. Although the physical act never appears in plain language, Quentin's apparent lapse into internal monologue demonstrates his overwhelming fixation with Caddy as well as a structured depiction of their relationship. Sexual language pervades his inner consciousness: scents, sounds and colors represent his passion and desire. The elements of nature, if associated with the sister, become erotic; levels of description, no matter how seemingly mundane, tend to be steeped in sexuality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Quentin's transition to past events with Caddy begins in the middle of a typical conversation with his friends as they drive around town. His attention to reality is destroyed by an unconscious slip into his sister's thoughts. As the little girl's eyes draw Quentin into a reverie of sexual exploration, his words wander haphazardly, before the image of his sister, prone on the riverbank, even comes to mind. "If I tried with all my might to stop it, I would cry and I thought about how I had thought I couldn't be a virgin, with so many of them walking in the shadows and whispering with their sweet feminine voices that lingered in the air. Places dark and the words that come out and the scent and the eyes that you could feel but not see?" (93). Although this rambling phrase refers to “female voices” – the female wiles that haunt Quentin – his words move into a new realm of consciousness that focuses exclusively on his sister. Faulkner uses a system of italics to show Quentin's most intimate revelations; as he shifts from thoughts about virginity to more personal memories, the language changes from an all-encompassing statement about women to a singular elucidation about his sister. The first piece of cursive language punctuates a piece of dialogue and immediately implies a question of virginity. "Have you ever, have you ever. In the gray darkness a little light her hands intertwined" (93) is the repetition of Caddy's question to Quentin whether or not he had ever had sex. Faulkner continually inserts the image of Caddy sitting on the ground next to her brother with her hands clasped around her knees. Strangely, the image brings a sense of chastity to a sexually charged situation, as if she were intertwining her knees to insist against any improper movement to the contrary. The next language, which again interrupts a friendly dialogue between friends, has "her face looking up at the sky and the smell of honeysuckle on her face and throat." Faulkner prepares the reader for the continuation of some of the themes that constitute these initial eavesdropping into normal conversation. His face turned to the sky, the smell of honeysuckle, the gray darkness or light - all these descriptions continue to be performed in the remaining language of consciousness. Additionally, honeysuckle and light gray continue to be used as indicators of sexual language. Although these natural elements seem harmless, they evoke a visceral response in Quentin; immediately transforms the natural into the erotic through the association of nature with thepassion for his sister. The image of "running" recurs many times in Quentin's memories of his sister. Running with her, running after her: both descriptions follow one another continuously, while the most indicative eroticization of this theme is Faulkner's Shakespearean allusion to lovemaking, "running the beast with two backs". After the sexual moment with Quentin is over, Caddy finds her lover, Dalton Ames, and merges with his tall shadow. Quentin insinuates their connection right at the beginning of his stream of consciousness, "and the two of them blurred into each other forever." He is stricken with grief and jealousy and watches his beloved sister with another, stronger man. However, overwhelming guilt over one's actions most likely fuels jealousy. Although his words are constantly tainted with hints of sexuality, he maintains an almost overt religious confession immediately following his Shakespearean metaphor. “There was something terrible in me, terrible father, did you commit me, did you ever do this?” it implies an act of contrition, a presumed repentance for his incestuous act, towards his father and a higher power. His focus on virginity remains, as he repeats the phrase "Have you ever done this" as Caddy's constant question. “There was something terrible in me” has the figurative sense of a mental inability to follow a moral path as well as a more grotesque literal interpretation of a physical loss of virginity or the release of a burning desire. Caddy's words combine with Quentin's thoughts in many levels of understanding. The constant reference to her virginity, "Poor Quentin, you've never done anything like that, have you?" continues to consolidate the sexual act in his mind. The repetition of certain concepts and phrases cements the moment for Quentin and haunts him dramatically. The ramifications of the event, the feelings and passions involved, are repeated endlessly in a messy internal monologue. He understands the disgust and true evil surrounding his actions and again refers to his father's punishment. Sexual language, at its most transparent, bursts into Quentin's self-revealing declarations. "I'll tell Daddy, then it'll have to be because you love Daddy, then we'll have to go to the hell and the horror, to the clean flame? I fooled you all the time, it was me you thought was in the house where that damn honeysuckle was trying to don't think about the swing the cedars the secret rears the breath blocked drinking the wild breath the yes yes yes." Honeysuckle terrifies Quentin to the point that it is irremediably connected to his sexuality and his attraction to his sister. His inclination to confession is confused with lies and punishment; he doesn't know whether to admit the incest or let the family believe that Caddy was impregnated by another man. The overt sexual language at the end of the piece takes over rationality as a metaphor for orgasm. The acts are completely secret, but become more frenetic and physical as the words continue until the climax of "yes yes yes yes". Just as Caddy's throat and face affected him so much, the wild breathing, the blocked breathing pushes him into total distraction. The italicized interior monologue turns into a stream of disjointed, unpunctuated prose at a point where Quentin asks Caddy if she loved any of the men. with which she was involved. Quentin meets her "lying in the water her head on the sand spitting water flowing around her hips there was a little more light in the water her half saturated skirt sagging at her hips with the movement of the water in heavy ripples that were going nowhere renewed their own movement I stood on the shore I could smell the honeysuckle on the mouth of water.