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<title> Juxtaposition and multiple point of view </title>
This essay will deal with the use of juxtaposition and multiple point of view in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time. Multiple point of view and juxtaposition are techniques typical for modernist writers. These two ways of writing "challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms" (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms). Together with the novels themselves critical articles are also used in this essay.

In Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio juxtaposition is personified in Jesse Bentley, the old man at the Bentley farm. "There [are] two influences at work in [him] and all his life his mind had been a battleground for these influences" (p 40). One of these two things in him is "the old thing" (p 40) which means that he wants "to be a man of God" (p 40). As a farmer he lives "close to nature and there were forces in the passionately religious man that ran out to the forces in nature." This side of him is literally a 'back to nature' drawing, a philosophic and, as said earlier, an "old thing" - wanting to be a disciple of Jesus - compared to the other side in him, which is very 'modern': he is interested in machines. "He invented a machine for the making of fence out of wire. Faintly he realized that the atmosphere of old times and places that he had always cultivated in his own mind was strange and foreign to the thing that was growing up in the minds of others" (p 40). This materialistic side, "the greedy things in him" (p 41) is the complete opposite of the God-side and with these two "influences" (p 40) coexisting in one and the same person the conflict is not far away. Another character who has similar traits of conflict is Reverend Curtis Hartman. Just after having lifted his eyes from the Holy Bible he sees "a woman lying in her bed and smoking a cigarette while she read[s] a book" (p 87). After this sight "in the soul of the minister a struggle awoke. From wanting to reach the ears of Kate Swift, and through his sermons to delve into her soul, he began to want also to look again at the figure lying white and quiet in the bed" (p 88). This conflict is commented on by Sally Adair Rigsbee in her article "The feminine in Winesburg, Ohio". She writes: "Through his intense obsession with Kate Swift [the woman in the bed], the passion Curtis Hartman needs to renew his religious commitment is born. However, because he does not see Kate as a human being but as the female object of his contemplation, his religion, like Jesse Bentley's, is warped by the split between religious symbols and the meaningful realities of human experience" (p 181, Adair Rigsbee). As the title of the article indicates, the article treats the feminine in the novel and that the feminine and the patriarchal are two different forces; the feminine works in the background and the patriarchal is more conspicuous and present. "In Winesburg, Ohio communication is blocked because of the devaluation of the feminine qualities of vulnerability and tenderness even though the artist's creativity springs from deep feelings of vitality which Anderson associates with the feminine", Adair Rigsbee states (p 178). This creativity with a feminine source is well described by Enoch Robinson's painting. "The painting is of a man driving down the road to Winesburg. The look on the man's face indicates that he is vaguely aware of 'something hidden' behind ' a clump of elders' beside the road. ... 'It's a woman and, oh, she is so lovely! She is hurt and is suffering but she makes no sound'" (p 178, Adair Rigsbee). This is how it is throughout Winesburg, Ohio - "she makes no sound", or in the beginning she tries, but gives up after having been misunderstood too many times. One of these misunderstood women is Louise Bentley. "All during the first year Louise tried to make her husband understand the vague and intangible hunger that had led to the writing of the note and that was still unsatisfied. Again and again she crept into his arms and tried to talk of it, but always without success" (p 51, Winesburg, Ohio). "To [her husband], Louise is a sexual object whose human voice he suppresses by kisses which are not a mark of affection but an unconscious means of ignoring and belittling his wife's desperate effort to be her deepest self" (p 179, Adair Rigsbee). This cleavage between them leads to the "rejection of her child: 'It's a man child and will get what it wants anyway'" (p 179, Adair Rigsbee). Looking at these examples it is clear that there is a juxtaposition relationship between the feminine and the masculine or patriarchal in Winesburg, Ohio. 

Juxtaposition is also a common feature in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. In the article "Faulkner's Negro" Thadious M. Davis touches upon the subject that the Compsons (white) and the Gibsons (black) are each other's opposites. "Representing opposition to the sterility and decay evidenced by the white family, the Gibsons project a vital creativity, an inventiveness in looking at life and a spiritedness in confronting it all" (p 395, The Sound and the Fury) He also states that "Juxtaposed to the various kind of lunacy demonstrated by the Compsons are the Gibsons - practical, 'common-sense variety' blacks whose individual and collective voices create an eloquent contrast to the white world and form, on a level of emotion and reason, a more viable approach to life" (p 395, The Sound). To sum up, Davis states that "the two groups, Compsons and Gibsons, occupy the same physical sphere [...] yet are of two different worlds - each one impelled by its own values and priorities. Each group retains an orientation to life that, though familiar to its own peers, is private and inaccessible to the outside group" (p 397, The Sound).

The Sound and the Fury was intended to be a novel about Caddy, Faulkner has said, and Caddy can be seen as the character who ties everything together. She represents different things to different characters, and consequently, the narratee sees her from multiple points of view as the different characters express their feelings about her. For Benjy, Caddy is the feeling of love, someone who cares for him, not because she has to, like Luster, but because she loves him. She does not want him to be a burden to the family. "I want him to go out with me" (p 5, The Sound) she says when she is going out to play. "Caddy knelt and put her arms around me [Benjy] and her cold bright face against mine [Benjy's]. She smelled like trees. 'You're not a poor baby. Are you. Are you. You've got your Caddy. Haven't you got your Caddy'" (p 6, The Sound). For Quentin she is a threat against the honour of the family; she has lovers and he takes on the role to protect her. She is also something of his bad conscience since she is the reason for him almost committing incest. Jason dislikes her since she "beat [him] out of a job" (p 129, The Sound) and Mother sees Caddy as a disgrace to the family and does not want to have her name mentioned. These multiple views of Caddy gives the narratee a spectrum of perspectives of her character.

The use of multiple point of view can also be found in Hemingway's work. In her article on In Our Time Jacqueline Vaught Brogan argues that Hemingway's work should 'be seen as a cubist anatomy' (p 1, Vaught Brogan) and she mentions the "use of repetition to achieve, ironically, not similar but differing perspectives" (p 6-7, Vaught Brogan). One example of this is found in the chapter called "The Doctor and The Doctor's Wife": "They sunk the ends of their cant-hooks into one of the logs and swung against it to loosen it in the sand. They swung their weight against the shafts of the cant-hooks" (p 24, In Our Time, italics added). The verb 'swung' is used twice, but in different constructions. Another passage illustrating repetition is found in the chapter about soldier Krebs: "You did not need a girl unless you thought about them. He learned that in the army. Then sooner or later you always got one. When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did not have to think about it. Sooner or later it would come. He had learned that in the army" (p 72, In Our Time, italics added). The second and the last sentence are almost identical except for the word 'had' in the last one. The repetition of phrases adds new dimensions to the description. At other instances the words that are repeated are farther apart, like in this passage from "Big Two-Hearted River: Part I" (p 137, In Our Time): 

"There was no underbrush in the island of pine trees. The trunks of the trees went straight up or slanted toward each other. The trunks were straight and brown without branches. The branches were high above. Some interlocked to make a solid shadow on the brown forest floor. Around the grove of trees was a bare space. It was brown and soft underfoot as Nick walked on it. This was the over-lapping of the pine needle floor, extending out beyond the width of the high branches. The trees had grown tall and the branches moved high, leaving in the sun this bare space they had once covered with shadow. Sharp at the edge of this extension of the forest floor commenced the sweet fern."

The repetitions in this passage are like whispered echoes of the earlier version of the word repeated. Even though the word 'branch/es/' is used four times and 'floor', 'brown' and 'high' are used three times respectively, the passage does not seem repetitive. The result is that the image of the forest becomes clearer to the reader. This kind of repetition can be compared to one of the passages that Vaught Brogan takes up: "Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain" (p 91, Vaught Brogan). Her comment on this passage is that Hemingway 
[...] achieves subtle changes in perspective through repetitions that [...] change both semantically and structurally" (p 7, Vaught Brogan). This, in turn, can be compared to the type of repetition used in the beginning of the chapter about Mr. and Mrs. Elliot: 
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot tried very hard to have a baby. They tried as often as Mrs. Elliot could stand it. They tried in Boston after they were married and they tried coming over on the boat. They did not try very often on the boat because Mrs. Elliot was quite sick. She was sick and when she was sick she was sick as Southern women are sick. That is women from the Southern part of the United States." (p 85, In Our Time)

The verb 'try' is used five times, four times in present tense and once in past tense. The word 'sick' is also used five times. This type of repetition reinforces the meaning of the word. When Mrs. Elliot is described with the word 'sick' five times in sentences similar in constructions the reader can really understand that this woman is feeling very sick. Moreover, the repetition of the two words can be an illustration of how 'sick' Mrs. Elliot is of trying "to have a baby" (p 85).

As seen in these works, juxtaposition and multiple point of view are common features in modernist texts. The usage of these techniques enriches the impression of the work and adds more reality and life to it.
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