CLASS CONFLICT AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN WILLIAM FAULKNER’S THE SOUND AND THE FURY:A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The paper explores the concept of class conflict and social inequality in William Faulkner, the sound and the fury (1929) as created through Marxist interpretations, with focus on how the novel criticizes the economic decline, social hierarchy, and ideological domination in the postbellum American South. Although most of the available criticism addresses the modernist narrative techniques and the psychological complexity of Faulkner, the paper prefigures material conditions and class relations that define the existence of the characters. The analysis, which involves a qualitative close-reading method based on the Marxist theory, explains the breakup of the Compson family as the allegory of the breakdown of the aristocratic structures of South and the precariousness of inherited privilege in shifting capitalist realities. The paper notes the difference between all moral and economic bankruptcy of Compsons and the endurance of working-class characters like Dilsey who represents exploited labor and endured social hardship. It also examines how intersecting forms of social inequality in the novel are supported by structures of patriarchy and racial hierarchy that entails the patriarchal norms and racial subjugations as systems of ideology to normalize exploitation. These results prove that The Sound and the Fury is not only a literary experiment conducted by one of the modernists but also a effective social text that reveals the oppression of classes and the decline of ideologies which highlights the relevance of the Faulkner work to the Marxist literary theory.