Loss, Immorality and Melancholy Anonymous College

When the Civil War ended, the Southern countryside and its people were crippled nearly beyond all hope. Of the most dramatic decline, Southern aristocrats took the cake. Before the war, the first half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a number of prominent Southern families such as the Compsons. These aristocratic families embraced traditional Southern values. Men were expected to act like gentlemen, displaying courage, moral strength, perseverance, and chivalry in defense of the honor of their family name. Women were expected to be models of feminine purity, grace, and virginity until it came time for them to provide children to inherit the family legacy. The Civil War and Reconstruction devastated many of these once-great Southern families economically, socially, and psychologically. The Compson family in his novel The Sound and the Fury represents Faulkner’s acknowledgment of the interruption of Southern aristocratic values, triggered by economic, social and psychological devastation from the Civil War and Reconstruction Period. The Compsons represent a deviation from these old Southern ideals. Almost every main character depicts a loss of touch with reality, an emergence into immorality, and characteristics of...