CompsonsInM

Near the end of this third volume in the Snopes trilogy, Faulkner's narrative bluntly recalls the fates of Quentin, Caddy and Caddy's daughter. He also revises Benjy's story: having in the "Appendix" described the way Jason sent Benjy to the state's mental home after their mother's death, he here says that Mrs. Compson "whined and wept" so much after Jason committed Benjy that Jason agreed to bring his brother "back home," where two years later Benjy set fire to their house, and perished himself in the flames (354). He also provides a kind of coda to the Compsons' story, when the narrative describes how Flem comes to own "what was left of the Compson place" (354). Jason loses what remains after the fire when he tries to outsmart Flem, and gets outsmarted by him instead. Flem turns the property into a suburban development named "Eula Acres." But "the Compson place" is - or rather was - more than a piece of land. The narrative refers to what the family stood for when it "had had a place in the history of Jefferson (357). Although Jason himself survives, his effort to reverse the family history of loss, and even build a monument of sorts to the Compsons' former greatness, ends in failure.