The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
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The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character's voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner's masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. "I give you the mausoleum of show more all hope and desire. . . . I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools." --from The Sound and the Fury show lessTags
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tootstorm A sci-fi romp through--intentionally so--much of the same territory.
22
AdonisGuilfoyle The similarities are not obvious, but both stories contain the gothic destruction of two families. That, and there are two Quentins in Faulkner's novel to match the confusion of Cathys in 'Wuthering Heights', and Jason Compson is almost as cruel and twisted as Heathcliff. Enjoy!
810
Member Reviews
What happened to Scarlett O'Hara and her family after the events of Gone With The Wind? Reading The Sound and the Fury gives us a glimpse of the fate of the great aristocratic Southern families, 60 years after the civil way. Here are the Compsons of Jefferson, Mississippi, once as wealthy and socially fêted as the O'Haras and Wilkeses, now reduced to penury and rapidly disintegrating.
This is a real doughnut of a book. The dough is the three Compson brothers: Quentin, the eldest and brightest, last relic of the Southern Gentleman with a strong sense of honour; Benjy, damaged and disabled in some unspecified way (Faulkner wouldn't have know about it but today we might recognise Benjy's condition as autism); bitter, cynical, racist, show more mysogynist and unscrupulous Jason, the youngest. Around them are their hypochondriac mother Miss Caroline. their disillusioned and nihilistic father Jason Senior, dissolute Uncle Maury forever just putting the bottle bačk in the sideboard, and the black cook Dilsey Gibson with her three children and her grandson who keep the Compson household together even as it disintegrates.
But as with all doughnuts the centre is the hole in the middle, what glaringly isn't there. In this case the Compson sister Caddy (Candace); strong-minded, strong-willed, destined to escape from the Southern Belle role. She appears rarely and unlike her brothers isn't given her own voice but is spoken of often in her brothers' very different narratives, and as such is at the very centre of the book, its tragic heroine. To Benjy she's the only person who ever showed him any kindness; he haunts the golf course to hear the players call her name. To Quentin, who drowned himself while a student at Harvard, she was the inseparable best friend who was betrayed. To Jason she's a prize bitch to be kept well away, not only because of family disgrace but to stop her discovering what he's up to (diverting her cheques to her daughter, also Quentin, to himself).
This is a book with a fearsome reputation for impenetrability. The reputation put me off even trying Faulkner for many years, but Faulkner had read Joyce and, as a friend of mine advised, if you can handle Ulysses (and I can) then Faulkner should be easy-peasy. Well, it's not an easy read by any means, and it won't suit the kind of reader who wants a clear plot with everything spelled out, but it was a much more compelling read than I expected. Benjy's narrative, which seems to be what puts most people off with its frequent and sudden time shifts, I found went by quite silkily. Benjy is not altogether fool; he knows exactly what's going on even if he can't understand the significance, and by just letting the stream roll by without trying to analyse you get a vivid picture which is annotated by what follows. Quentin's descent into total breakdown as he wanders aimlessly round Boston on his last day on earth is harrowing but also touchingly funny in places. Jason transparently gives himself away as a bad lot. The final section, which mostly follows Dilsey through Easter Sunday, shows that it is Dilsey and her family, and not the Compsons, who are the future.
Did I understand it? Not entirely. I don't think that's possible at a first reading. I'll be revisiting it, not least to read Benjy's story again, more carefully in the light of what is revealed in the rest of the book. Meanwhile it's not hard to see how this stands as a magnificent work of art. show less
This is a real doughnut of a book. The dough is the three Compson brothers: Quentin, the eldest and brightest, last relic of the Southern Gentleman with a strong sense of honour; Benjy, damaged and disabled in some unspecified way (Faulkner wouldn't have know about it but today we might recognise Benjy's condition as autism); bitter, cynical, racist, show more mysogynist and unscrupulous Jason, the youngest. Around them are their hypochondriac mother Miss Caroline. their disillusioned and nihilistic father Jason Senior, dissolute Uncle Maury forever just putting the bottle bačk in the sideboard, and the black cook Dilsey Gibson with her three children and her grandson who keep the Compson household together even as it disintegrates.
But as with all doughnuts the centre is the hole in the middle, what glaringly isn't there. In this case the Compson sister Caddy (Candace); strong-minded, strong-willed, destined to escape from the Southern Belle role. She appears rarely and unlike her brothers isn't given her own voice but is spoken of often in her brothers' very different narratives, and as such is at the very centre of the book, its tragic heroine. To Benjy she's the only person who ever showed him any kindness; he haunts the golf course to hear the players call her name. To Quentin, who drowned himself while a student at Harvard, she was the inseparable best friend who was betrayed. To Jason she's a prize bitch to be kept well away, not only because of family disgrace but to stop her discovering what he's up to (diverting her cheques to her daughter, also Quentin, to himself).
This is a book with a fearsome reputation for impenetrability. The reputation put me off even trying Faulkner for many years, but Faulkner had read Joyce and, as a friend of mine advised, if you can handle Ulysses (and I can) then Faulkner should be easy-peasy. Well, it's not an easy read by any means, and it won't suit the kind of reader who wants a clear plot with everything spelled out, but it was a much more compelling read than I expected. Benjy's narrative, which seems to be what puts most people off with its frequent and sudden time shifts, I found went by quite silkily. Benjy is not altogether fool; he knows exactly what's going on even if he can't understand the significance, and by just letting the stream roll by without trying to analyse you get a vivid picture which is annotated by what follows. Quentin's descent into total breakdown as he wanders aimlessly round Boston on his last day on earth is harrowing but also touchingly funny in places. Jason transparently gives himself away as a bad lot. The final section, which mostly follows Dilsey through Easter Sunday, shows that it is Dilsey and her family, and not the Compsons, who are the future.
Did I understand it? Not entirely. I don't think that's possible at a first reading. I'll be revisiting it, not least to read Benjy's story again, more carefully in the light of what is revealed in the rest of the book. Meanwhile it's not hard to see how this stands as a magnificent work of art. show less
The first time I attempted this book, I made my way through a mere three pages before deciding it would be a waste. To date, it is the only book that I had the good sense to leave until later, as my usual response is to barrel through the pages come hell or high water. Perhaps it was a good thing that I had just finished slogging my way through a monstrous tome that left my brain incapable of facing down the beginning of Benjy's prose. I don't remember the title of whatever book left me in that state, but I do remember staring at the beginning pages of this one, my mind wandering in frozen disbelief over the contorted fragments that supposedly made up a story. So I left it until later, four years later if I remember correctly, and I'm show more glad that I did.
The writing in this book is notoriously difficult. Insert reference to quote from Macbeth, something something signifying nothing and all that jazz. You've heard it before, and I won't waste anyone's time reiterating it. However, now that I've finally reached the end, I can't say that I would change any part of it. Had the entire book been written in the style of the last section, largely cohesive with rare flares of descriptive prose and sudden jumps in point of view and timeline, it would not have been nearly as powerful. The story IS sound, and it IS fury, and you can't convey that without dipping the prose in that septic pool of chaotic madness. If I hadn't battled my way through Benjy, if I hadn't pulled myself inch by inch through Quentin, I wouldn't have understood the horror of Jason, or the final tragedy of the conclusion. To be frank, I wouldn't have cared.
But I did care. I did care because the haphazard mess of the beginning readied my mind for a reading that, instead of demanding a tenacious follower, asked for a bucket in which to fill errant drops. A drop of plot-line here, a drop of context there, many drops that filled in the blanks of the neurotic frenzy that is the Compson family. Nature versus nurture. Nature planted a singular seed of madness in the blood, and nurture drove each along different paths. You'll be gathering bits and pieces of this tangential story, wondering what it's all for, and then a single phrase will narrow the story to a focal point of singular rage and despair. When that happens, you'll understand what all that seemingly headless running about was for. All the disconnected hints and teases will culminate in an awful truth, and it isn't a feeling that any sort of linear timeline can convey.
For, if you read an edition that contains the foreword appendix written by the author, you'll be given that linear timeline right at the beginning. You'll know the hard, cold facts of this family long before the story begins. You'll know how they begin, and you'll know how they end, and you'll even get the major, notable events in between. You won't care about Benjy's plight, or Quentin's, or Jason's, or the whole family's, this Southern strain of blood that ends in a lost oblivion of death, bitterness, and idiocy. All you'll have is context, that collection of straightforward no-nonsense tidbits that make perfect sense and ultimately mean nothing. You can't expect them to, long before you have delved into the lives of these characters, the agonizing push and pull each one of them suffers in their respective place. You can't expect them to if you still wish to put this story in its place with each character neatly categorized and every loose end resolved in a satisfying conclusion.
This story is one involving the long slow death of lineage, the inexorable tugging and tearing of ideologies and timelines on a collection of souls that have been slung together in a collusion of familial blood and social connections. No one escapes the hell on earth that was apportioned to them, embodied in poisonous words that are fueled by a poisonous life conditioned by a poisonous world. Not even the idiot, who does not know the context and yet feels the agony, much as we the reader feel our way through the chaotic text of this story with an underlying sense of grief and despair, one that cannot be contained in a single quote, paragraph, page, or section. Not until it's much too late, and somewhere along the twisted path we lost our hearts to this tragic mess of a family that we knew was doomed from the start.
Somewhere amongst the sound and the fury that pain touched us, and the most we can do is join Benjy in the bellowing in response to that fearful anger. We know it signifies nothing. We know it does, much as anything with a beginning and an end will eventually be lost in the mists of time, and the world will roll on in ignorant bliss of its history. We know that. But it sure as hell doesn't feel that way. show less
The writing in this book is notoriously difficult. Insert reference to quote from Macbeth, something something signifying nothing and all that jazz. You've heard it before, and I won't waste anyone's time reiterating it. However, now that I've finally reached the end, I can't say that I would change any part of it. Had the entire book been written in the style of the last section, largely cohesive with rare flares of descriptive prose and sudden jumps in point of view and timeline, it would not have been nearly as powerful. The story IS sound, and it IS fury, and you can't convey that without dipping the prose in that septic pool of chaotic madness. If I hadn't battled my way through Benjy, if I hadn't pulled myself inch by inch through Quentin, I wouldn't have understood the horror of Jason, or the final tragedy of the conclusion. To be frank, I wouldn't have cared.
But I did care. I did care because the haphazard mess of the beginning readied my mind for a reading that, instead of demanding a tenacious follower, asked for a bucket in which to fill errant drops. A drop of plot-line here, a drop of context there, many drops that filled in the blanks of the neurotic frenzy that is the Compson family. Nature versus nurture. Nature planted a singular seed of madness in the blood, and nurture drove each along different paths. You'll be gathering bits and pieces of this tangential story, wondering what it's all for, and then a single phrase will narrow the story to a focal point of singular rage and despair. When that happens, you'll understand what all that seemingly headless running about was for. All the disconnected hints and teases will culminate in an awful truth, and it isn't a feeling that any sort of linear timeline can convey.
For, if you read an edition that contains the foreword appendix written by the author, you'll be given that linear timeline right at the beginning. You'll know the hard, cold facts of this family long before the story begins. You'll know how they begin, and you'll know how they end, and you'll even get the major, notable events in between. You won't care about Benjy's plight, or Quentin's, or Jason's, or the whole family's, this Southern strain of blood that ends in a lost oblivion of death, bitterness, and idiocy. All you'll have is context, that collection of straightforward no-nonsense tidbits that make perfect sense and ultimately mean nothing. You can't expect them to, long before you have delved into the lives of these characters, the agonizing push and pull each one of them suffers in their respective place. You can't expect them to if you still wish to put this story in its place with each character neatly categorized and every loose end resolved in a satisfying conclusion.
This story is one involving the long slow death of lineage, the inexorable tugging and tearing of ideologies and timelines on a collection of souls that have been slung together in a collusion of familial blood and social connections. No one escapes the hell on earth that was apportioned to them, embodied in poisonous words that are fueled by a poisonous life conditioned by a poisonous world. Not even the idiot, who does not know the context and yet feels the agony, much as we the reader feel our way through the chaotic text of this story with an underlying sense of grief and despair, one that cannot be contained in a single quote, paragraph, page, or section. Not until it's much too late, and somewhere along the twisted path we lost our hearts to this tragic mess of a family that we knew was doomed from the start.
Somewhere amongst the sound and the fury that pain touched us, and the most we can do is join Benjy in the bellowing in response to that fearful anger. We know it signifies nothing. We know it does, much as anything with a beginning and an end will eventually be lost in the mists of time, and the world will roll on in ignorant bliss of its history. We know that. But it sure as hell doesn't feel that way. show less
25. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
OPD: 1929
format: 348 pages within an ebook anthology: William Faulkner: Novels 1926-1929: Soldiers' Pay / Mosquitoes / Flags in the Dust / The Sound and the Fury
acquired: January 1 read: Apr 20-29 time reading: 12:22, 2.1 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic stream of consciousness novel theme: Faulkner
locations: Mississippi 1928 and near Harvard in Cambridge, MA, 1910
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.
,
I really just want to talk about the opening Benjy section.
I'll hold off a moment for context. This is the story of Caddie Compson, but typically for Faulkner so far, she doesn't get any say. We get the show more story first through each of her three brothers, in three sections, all stream of conscious, then from a 3rd-person narrator in the last section. Caddie is always off screen, her childhood, pregnancy, divorce, and separation from her daughter. The rest of family, and its five or six black servants, collapse in on themselves and their sense of pride and privilege. It's also a story of a family's dissolution.
That opening section, from Benjy. He's mute and mentally compromised and can only moan. When the book opens, it's his 33rd birthday and he's cared for by a charmingly inept young black servant, Luster, who must constantly manage him, and who feeds him. But Benjy observes everything. He watches and feels and can't interact or even express his feelings. He's like a reader.
Benjy also mixes timelines. When you open this book, you can vaguely sift out golf in the distance, but suddenly Luster is gone and there are other people around and Benjy seems different. It's confusing and can be frustrating. Timelines are changing, but how? What is what? When is when? Confused and intrigued I looked up some guidance online and got this very simple set of guidelines
So I had read 30 pages, amused and confused. After this, I went back to the beginning, and what I got was magical. Some of the best reading I've ever had. Benjy floats through time, weaving the present and various times in the past in meaningful ways. He catches everything essential, and much that is beautiful and he senses all this. He becomes somehow a warm beautiful character, even though we can't really know his character. But we know his condition.
The rest of this book is fine. Quentin, the boy, wanders around Harvard tortured. Jason is a monster. Dilsey, the main black house servant, is a hero of the book. For all the racism in Faulkner's other books, you can't help but adore all his black characters here. But Dilsey has a resolution and accidental warmth that stands out, notably in contradiction to the overly-proud dissolving family she serves.
This was a nice step into Faulkner's best stuff. I loved the book, and was enraptured by the Benji section.
2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/360386#8525171 show less
OPD: 1929
format: 348 pages within an ebook anthology: William Faulkner: Novels 1926-1929: Soldiers' Pay / Mosquitoes / Flags in the Dust / The Sound and the Fury
acquired: January 1 read: Apr 20-29 time reading: 12:22, 2.1 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic stream of consciousness novel theme: Faulkner
locations: Mississippi 1928 and near Harvard in Cambridge, MA, 1910
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.
,
I really just want to talk about the opening Benjy section.
I'll hold off a moment for context. This is the story of Caddie Compson, but typically for Faulkner so far, she doesn't get any say. We get the show more story first through each of her three brothers, in three sections, all stream of conscious, then from a 3rd-person narrator in the last section. Caddie is always off screen, her childhood, pregnancy, divorce, and separation from her daughter. The rest of family, and its five or six black servants, collapse in on themselves and their sense of pride and privilege. It's also a story of a family's dissolution.
That opening section, from Benjy. He's mute and mentally compromised and can only moan. When the book opens, it's his 33rd birthday and he's cared for by a charmingly inept young black servant, Luster, who must constantly manage him, and who feeds him. But Benjy observes everything. He watches and feels and can't interact or even express his feelings. He's like a reader.
Benjy also mixes timelines. When you open this book, you can vaguely sift out golf in the distance, but suddenly Luster is gone and there are other people around and Benjy seems different. It's confusing and can be frustrating. Timelines are changing, but how? What is what? When is when? Confused and intrigued I looked up some guidance online and got this very simple set of guidelines
1. Pay attention to Benjy's caretaker. When Versh is taking care of Benjy, he is around 3 to 5 years old. When it's T.P., Benjy is a teenager. When it's Luster, Benjy is 33
2. There are two Quentins - Benjy's suicidal brother and his promiscuous niece.
3. Bengy is named Maury at birth, after his uncle, but his mother insists that they change it after discovering his mental disability.
So I had read 30 pages, amused and confused. After this, I went back to the beginning, and what I got was magical. Some of the best reading I've ever had. Benjy floats through time, weaving the present and various times in the past in meaningful ways. He catches everything essential, and much that is beautiful and he senses all this. He becomes somehow a warm beautiful character, even though we can't really know his character. But we know his condition.
The rest of this book is fine. Quentin, the boy, wanders around Harvard tortured. Jason is a monster. Dilsey, the main black house servant, is a hero of the book. For all the racism in Faulkner's other books, you can't help but adore all his black characters here. But Dilsey has a resolution and accidental warmth that stands out, notably in contradiction to the overly-proud dissolving family she serves.
This was a nice step into Faulkner's best stuff. I loved the book, and was enraptured by the Benji section.
2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/360386#8525171 show less
Theoretically, my latest journey through Faulkner's southern Gothic masterpiece was a re-read. I knew I'd read it before, long ago, but I wasn't sure exactly how long ago until I riffled through it and discovered, nestled between the pages, a three-day visitor pass for the New Orleans public transportation system. I've only been to New Orleans once, which means I last read The Sound and the Fury at the tender age of fourteen, over a chilly January weekend in a hotel in the French Quarter. You have to admire my sense of effective setting. The ironwork grilles, pedestrian arcades and melancholy street performers must have made an evocative backdrop to this tale of familial disintegration in the American South.
Needless to say, however, show more considering my former youth and relative lack of familiarity with modernist literature, I remembered almost nothing about the novel before picking it up again this time. In fact, I remembered SO little about it that I actually made a list before I started re-reading. This is literally every single thing I could bring to mind about the novel, besides my assumption that, being Faulkner, it would be set in Mississippi:
As you can see, my grasp of the finer plot points was incomplete. Although my question mark in "Brother/sister incest (?)" turned out to be surprisingly accurate, I think the last item actually conflates three different scenes, two in this book and one in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada (in which the girl in question is actually not wearing any underwear! Salacious!). And while the first three items are true as far as they go, they don't exactly add up to the most memorable reading experience.
This time around, though, I thoroughly appreciated The Sound and the Fury. Having read other Faulkner since (most recently Absalom! Absalom!), I was prepared for consistently ponderous, florid-seeming prose, but Faulkner really carries off four distinct narrative voices in his four different sections. We get Benjy's jumpy, grief-stricken stream of consciousness, in which past, present and future are compressed into a single pane of existence; Quentin's obsessive, impotent gallantry and inability to reconcile his past with his present; Jason's flinty-cold, self-justifying righteousness; and the final section, the only one told in what I think of as "Faulknerian" prose, which is told in the third person and focuses on the inexplicably faithful servants in the Compson house. In each section, the same basic story is refracted through a different sensibility, revealing a new set of separate but overlapping facets, until the reader gradually pieces together what happened to the Compson family: how they loved each other, hated each other, and tore themselves to pieces.
This is one of those books, so many of them modernist, which are sometimes charged with "ruining the literary scene" and "turning literature into an exclusionary, unreadable mess." Forget that I think such claims are a big pile of poop; I'd still like to talk about why I think Faulkner's decisions here are so effective. Because basically, my opinion is this: while the style of the novel is indeed challenging at times, it's all in the service of something that's the OPPOSITE of exclusionary. To me, The Sound and the Fury operates on the same set of audience-baiting techniques that fuel the public's perpetual interest in crime novels. As a reader, Faulkner feeds me just enough information to whet my appetite about what's happened in the Compson house, yet denies me complete understanding until the very end. This doesn't seem to me obnoxiously elitist; it seems like good, solid storytelling technique.
The Sound and the Fury takes, no doubt, more effort on the reader's part than a more standard, whodunit-style story. But there are also many more levels on which the mysteries unfold, and all of those levels are interrelated, making it also much more interesting, at least to me. A reader beginning Faulkner's novel must first ascertain what's going on with the narrating voice: being thrown into Benjy's world, which isn't separated into past, present, and future, is disconcerting, a melange of jerky transitions, italics and effects without causes. As I began to get my bearings, I realized that italicized text signaled that Benjy was beginning to experience something, a scene from the past that had been triggered in his mind by the thoughts or events just preceding in the narrative (often themselves things that happened in the past). He relives these scenes with such vivid feeling that they're indistinguishable from the present, and, as his story progresses, the implied "triggers" that cause him to transition from one scene to another provide intriguing clues about the family's past and present. Why does Benjy cry when he looks at himself in a mirror? Why does Quentin seem sometimes to be male and at other times female? Why are certain places - the basement, the tree by the window - so packed with triggers for Benjy? How did the family decide that saying a certain name is taboo? Moving from one's first impressions to the point of asking questions like these is a bit like emerging from an atmospheric fog bank, and watching the landscape take its gradual shape.
With the transitions from one section to the next, Faulkner even creates cliffhangers: at the end of Benjy's section we share Benjy's priorities, and want to learn the answers to the questions he raises. Instead, we're spirited eighteen years back in time to Quentin's narrative, which introduces us to a whole new set of obsessions and motivations. By the time we're done meandering with the morose Harvard student around the Italian slums of Boston, we feel tenderly frustrated with him, and invested in his ominous trajectory - but we're suddenly yanked back to the day before Benjy's section, where we encounter the thoroughly unpleasant Jason. Every section helps to fit more pieces into place regarding plot, causes, and effects, but the author entices his audience masterfully in the meantime, and lets us swim in the stream of each character's thoughts and associations. It's not only a beautiful example of the old writing-class chestnut "Show, don't tell," but it allows the gaps and jumps in each narrative to reveal as much as the words that surround them. The prose takes on the texture of a canyon landscape, whose real substance is contained in yawning chasms not immediately visible from the ground.
(As a side-note, the sections in the Italian slums around Boston in 1910 were particularly intriguing to me because my partner David's paternal family are Italian-Americans from the greater Boston area. His grandmother was born in 1916, but the area in which she lived would have been very similar to that around which Quentin leads the little girl he meets in the bread shop.)
My point is that Faulkner's difficult prose serves a concrete function in terms of the narrative, and I think it performs that function extremely well. The Sound and the Fury felt more taut and well-controlled to me than Absalom, Absalom!. I think the structural challenges Faulkner set himself in this novel really brought out the best in him, and made for a gorgeous and suspenseful reading experience for me. show less
Needless to say, however, show more considering my former youth and relative lack of familiarity with modernist literature, I remembered almost nothing about the novel before picking it up again this time. In fact, I remembered SO little about it that I actually made a list before I started re-reading. This is literally every single thing I could bring to mind about the novel, besides my assumption that, being Faulkner, it would be set in Mississippi:
- Four sections told from different perspectives;
- Siblings/family saga
- First section is from the perspective of the mentally retarded brother;
- Brother/sister incest (?);
- A scene where a young girl climbs a tree and a boy (her brother?) can see her underwear.
As you can see, my grasp of the finer plot points was incomplete. Although my question mark in "Brother/sister incest (?)" turned out to be surprisingly accurate, I think the last item actually conflates three different scenes, two in this book and one in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada (in which the girl in question is actually not wearing any underwear! Salacious!). And while the first three items are true as far as they go, they don't exactly add up to the most memorable reading experience.
This time around, though, I thoroughly appreciated The Sound and the Fury. Having read other Faulkner since (most recently Absalom! Absalom!), I was prepared for consistently ponderous, florid-seeming prose, but Faulkner really carries off four distinct narrative voices in his four different sections. We get Benjy's jumpy, grief-stricken stream of consciousness, in which past, present and future are compressed into a single pane of existence; Quentin's obsessive, impotent gallantry and inability to reconcile his past with his present; Jason's flinty-cold, self-justifying righteousness; and the final section, the only one told in what I think of as "Faulknerian" prose, which is told in the third person and focuses on the inexplicably faithful servants in the Compson house. In each section, the same basic story is refracted through a different sensibility, revealing a new set of separate but overlapping facets, until the reader gradually pieces together what happened to the Compson family: how they loved each other, hated each other, and tore themselves to pieces.
If we could have just done something so dreadful and Father said That's sad too, people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today and I said, You can shirk all things and he said, Ah can you. And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.
This is one of those books, so many of them modernist, which are sometimes charged with "ruining the literary scene" and "turning literature into an exclusionary, unreadable mess." Forget that I think such claims are a big pile of poop; I'd still like to talk about why I think Faulkner's decisions here are so effective. Because basically, my opinion is this: while the style of the novel is indeed challenging at times, it's all in the service of something that's the OPPOSITE of exclusionary. To me, The Sound and the Fury operates on the same set of audience-baiting techniques that fuel the public's perpetual interest in crime novels. As a reader, Faulkner feeds me just enough information to whet my appetite about what's happened in the Compson house, yet denies me complete understanding until the very end. This doesn't seem to me obnoxiously elitist; it seems like good, solid storytelling technique.
The Sound and the Fury takes, no doubt, more effort on the reader's part than a more standard, whodunit-style story. But there are also many more levels on which the mysteries unfold, and all of those levels are interrelated, making it also much more interesting, at least to me. A reader beginning Faulkner's novel must first ascertain what's going on with the narrating voice: being thrown into Benjy's world, which isn't separated into past, present, and future, is disconcerting, a melange of jerky transitions, italics and effects without causes. As I began to get my bearings, I realized that italicized text signaled that Benjy was beginning to experience something, a scene from the past that had been triggered in his mind by the thoughts or events just preceding in the narrative (often themselves things that happened in the past). He relives these scenes with such vivid feeling that they're indistinguishable from the present, and, as his story progresses, the implied "triggers" that cause him to transition from one scene to another provide intriguing clues about the family's past and present. Why does Benjy cry when he looks at himself in a mirror? Why does Quentin seem sometimes to be male and at other times female? Why are certain places - the basement, the tree by the window - so packed with triggers for Benjy? How did the family decide that saying a certain name is taboo? Moving from one's first impressions to the point of asking questions like these is a bit like emerging from an atmospheric fog bank, and watching the landscape take its gradual shape.
With the transitions from one section to the next, Faulkner even creates cliffhangers: at the end of Benjy's section we share Benjy's priorities, and want to learn the answers to the questions he raises. Instead, we're spirited eighteen years back in time to Quentin's narrative, which introduces us to a whole new set of obsessions and motivations. By the time we're done meandering with the morose Harvard student around the Italian slums of Boston, we feel tenderly frustrated with him, and invested in his ominous trajectory - but we're suddenly yanked back to the day before Benjy's section, where we encounter the thoroughly unpleasant Jason. Every section helps to fit more pieces into place regarding plot, causes, and effects, but the author entices his audience masterfully in the meantime, and lets us swim in the stream of each character's thoughts and associations. It's not only a beautiful example of the old writing-class chestnut "Show, don't tell," but it allows the gaps and jumps in each narrative to reveal as much as the words that surround them. The prose takes on the texture of a canyon landscape, whose real substance is contained in yawning chasms not immediately visible from the ground.
(As a side-note, the sections in the Italian slums around Boston in 1910 were particularly intriguing to me because my partner David's paternal family are Italian-Americans from the greater Boston area. His grandmother was born in 1916, but the area in which she lived would have been very similar to that around which Quentin leads the little girl he meets in the bread shop.)
My point is that Faulkner's difficult prose serves a concrete function in terms of the narrative, and I think it performs that function extremely well. The Sound and the Fury felt more taut and well-controlled to me than Absalom, Absalom!. I think the structural challenges Faulkner set himself in this novel really brought out the best in him, and made for a gorgeous and suspenseful reading experience for me. show less
it's pretty amazing how this kind of narrative structure was thought up a hundred years ago; that the english language and the concept of time and memory could be warped such as they are here to mimic and do faith to such concepts as the trauma of failing to meet impossible expectations, being condemned as a nymphomaniac, bearing the brunt of responsibility for one's family, being and caring for someone with intellectual disabilities, and similar trials—all of which relate to playing a role within a family. as perspectives shift and different yet related characters go on with their lives at different points in their collective histories, the unifying thread in their individual outlooks is the constant throbbing of memories in the back show more of their mind, which plague them as they try to achieve their own ends. this is where the novel really shines, as it's through these interweaved narratives that themselves are split into back-and-forth/memory vs. present that the larger picture slowly fills in; side note, the fact that there are really multiple jasons and quentins was such a headache to understand at first! and of course, the appendix clears this up with no more room for ambiguity, but i don't mind this, as it's through the intricate and deliberate framing of every person's story that each key detail is revealed by the end, anyway. as such, the appendix is really only a (somewhat contradictory) refresher. i can appreciate the care that faulkner puts into and has for his characters; for instance, jason is completely irredeemable, which is fascinating given how much his mother had initially (and continued to) adore him and praise his (nonexistent) virtues. of course, his life is one defined by its relativity to that of his siblings, who receive either affection and care (benjy) or more importantly [to him, certainly], money (quentin and caddy). one can appreciate (in the old-school definition of the term) the burden he endures, as well as his bitter relationship with his neurotic, hand-wringing mother (whose constant lamenting about her inevitable passing no doubt resonates with readers who have similar relationships with similar mothers), while looking at his behavior as a whole and having nothing but contempt for this disrespectful, ungrateful, and downright evil motherfucker. on the other hand, readers are acquainted with benjy, for whom they have nothing but sympathy (if not pity) for; a perpetual child completely at the mercy of the most dysfunctional family ever, which isn't without its merits—namely their servant, Dilsey. in his appendix, faulkner makes a note of how the black servants are separate from the compson family, which does point to a particular reverence for black people in america and their struggles; in their distinct steadfastness for all their alienation and related trials, they prove their virtue. dilsey in particular is extremely fond of benjamin and expresses the most concern for his wellbeing of any other servant or family member (her adolescent grandson, luster, is less understanding of his needs). i think faulkner really wanted to make a point about how despite how fucked up and exploitative the white compsons are, dilsey's complete acceptance of benjamin for who he is (her defense of him before easter service is a very clear instance) proves that black people are simply better humans, regardless of whatever they are subjected to (or is it in spite of? or even because of? i don't know if i'd lean as far as "because of" but the material circumstances may point to that interpretation). the scene where readers first get a real glimpse of what dilsey has to put up with every day with her preparation of breakfast on easter while being berated by caroline compson elicits endless sympathy. overall, i can really appreciate faulkner's humanizing exploration of under-represented perspectives from that time by white authors (people with intellectual disabilities and black people, specifically), making us bear witness to glimmers of innocence and empathy amidst a world hurtling towards inevitable cruelty. show less
****warning: review contains spoilers****
Now, this was a difficult book. Rewarding, but such hard work that I worried from time to time that I was missing some important part of the structure or plot – as it turns out, I needn’t have worried, because Faulkner has complete mastery of his story… no matter how lost you feel in the sea of narration, all the salient points and atmosphere are communicated superbly.
Caddy Compson’s brothers – Benjy, Quentin and Jason – are all fixated on their sister (the only compassionate female family that they know, given the emotional absence of their mother) and it’s their relationship with her that moves and drives each of them. The first part of the book is narrated by Benjy, the show more ‘idiot’ undeveloped man-child whose lack of understanding of time make the first third of the story a sea of stream-of-consciousness, both with and without meaning, as he flits from the day he is currently narrating, to memories of the past. The loss of Caddy – who has been driven from the family home - leaves him bellowing and moaning, to be only briefly distracted and consoled.*
The next part is told by Quentin, whose love and need for his sister led him to lie about the child she conceived – rather than have the family believe her promiscuous and drive her out, he attempts to make them believe that he committed incest. Their father brushes this aside, and sends him to Harvard early. At the end of his narrated day, he commits suicide. This is the part of the book that flagged for me, because his preparations and challenges of the day obscured some of the most important points of reminiscence, and I found it tough going to seek them all out.
Just when one is tired of Quentin’s dragging, Jason Compson’s narration takes over. What a piece of work! Faulkner creates a truly horrid man; his own obsession with Caddy centres around her ex-fiance who had promised Jason a job in a bank, until Caddy’s pregnancy by another man was revealed. At this point in time, Caddy’s daughter – confusingly named Miss Quentin (some of Benjy’s early narration leaves the reader quite confused on this point until later) – is living in the Compson home, ostensibly being ‘kept’ by her uncle Jason, who is actually socking away the money her mother is sending her, for himself. This piece of fraud is, at least, satisfyingly resolved for the reader, but not before I had worked up such a head of hatred for this character, despite the neglect within the family that helped form these disparate but tied personalities.
A wonderful book; tough, heartbreaking, some of the fiercest writing I’ve ever read and I found there was an ongoing sense of accomplishment, whenever another small fragment of timeline was winnowed out of the various characters’ retelling. I didn’t like the characters enough to love the book, but I’m glad I stuck with it and am amazed at how Faulkner hid a complete and tight plot inside such wilfully undisciplined narration.
*I can’t remember at what point I realised that it was the vicinity of the golf-course that was causing Benjy distress, with the golfers calling ‘caddy’ every few minutes, but that’s the image that stays with me from this book – giant, lost Benjy running up and down the fence with the often spiteful Luster behind him, being tormented with his sister’s name. show less
Now, this was a difficult book. Rewarding, but such hard work that I worried from time to time that I was missing some important part of the structure or plot – as it turns out, I needn’t have worried, because Faulkner has complete mastery of his story… no matter how lost you feel in the sea of narration, all the salient points and atmosphere are communicated superbly.
Caddy Compson’s brothers – Benjy, Quentin and Jason – are all fixated on their sister (the only compassionate female family that they know, given the emotional absence of their mother) and it’s their relationship with her that moves and drives each of them. The first part of the book is narrated by Benjy, the show more ‘idiot’ undeveloped man-child whose lack of understanding of time make the first third of the story a sea of stream-of-consciousness, both with and without meaning, as he flits from the day he is currently narrating, to memories of the past. The loss of Caddy – who has been driven from the family home - leaves him bellowing and moaning, to be only briefly distracted and consoled.*
The next part is told by Quentin, whose love and need for his sister led him to lie about the child she conceived – rather than have the family believe her promiscuous and drive her out, he attempts to make them believe that he committed incest. Their father brushes this aside, and sends him to Harvard early. At the end of his narrated day, he commits suicide. This is the part of the book that flagged for me, because his preparations and challenges of the day obscured some of the most important points of reminiscence, and I found it tough going to seek them all out.
Just when one is tired of Quentin’s dragging, Jason Compson’s narration takes over. What a piece of work! Faulkner creates a truly horrid man; his own obsession with Caddy centres around her ex-fiance who had promised Jason a job in a bank, until Caddy’s pregnancy by another man was revealed. At this point in time, Caddy’s daughter – confusingly named Miss Quentin (some of Benjy’s early narration leaves the reader quite confused on this point until later) – is living in the Compson home, ostensibly being ‘kept’ by her uncle Jason, who is actually socking away the money her mother is sending her, for himself. This piece of fraud is, at least, satisfyingly resolved for the reader, but not before I had worked up such a head of hatred for this character, despite the neglect within the family that helped form these disparate but tied personalities.
A wonderful book; tough, heartbreaking, some of the fiercest writing I’ve ever read and I found there was an ongoing sense of accomplishment, whenever another small fragment of timeline was winnowed out of the various characters’ retelling. I didn’t like the characters enough to love the book, but I’m glad I stuck with it and am amazed at how Faulkner hid a complete and tight plot inside such wilfully undisciplined narration.
*I can’t remember at what point I realised that it was the vicinity of the golf-course that was causing Benjy distress, with the golfers calling ‘caddy’ every few minutes, but that’s the image that stays with me from this book – giant, lost Benjy running up and down the fence with the often spiteful Luster behind him, being tormented with his sister’s name. show less
This is probably the fourth time I've read [The Sound and the Fury]. I read it the first time the summer before starting junior year of high school - I must have been 16? I already considered myself a "reader" but this was the first book that completely dumbfounded me. I vividly remember being on a family vacation and trying to read it by the pool - not even being able to figure out a basic plot timeline or why in the world Quentin seemed to be both male and female!! It ended up being the book I was assigned to read and do a week of presentations to our honors English class with a group. We spent the whole year on it and I developed a deep love for the book and for the process of decoding a complicated book.
I periodically like to show more reread it and this time it was a beautiful edition that Folio Society recently printed that has the color coded type for the first section. The first section is Benjy's version of events. He is a 33 year old man with a mental disability who can't talk. His section moves frequently back and forth in time and this book uses 14 different colored inks to delineate the 14 different memories/time periods he comes in and out of. The colored ink is effective (and beautiful), but I'd definitely recommend reading in natural, bright light or some are hard to differentiate.
Every time I read this, I read it a little differently. This time I was particularly struck by the way Faulkner silences Caddy and her daughter Quentin, giving the male brothers their say and not giving her a chance to tell her side of the story. This is effective because it reflects her life, but it still makes me mad. I also noticed, probably because of the colored ink, that though all three brothers spend a lot of time mentally in the past, Benjy can completely immerse himself in each incident. Quentin, on the other hand, mingles past and present and various past events simultaneously, creating an even harder reading experience than Benjy's chapter. And Jason . . . oh Jason. Such a jerk, but actually a little funny too, in a brutal sort of way. "Once a bitch, always a bitch, I say".
In addition to the colored ink, this book has excellent end notes that help describe the plot and themes. Highly recommended! show less
I periodically like to show more reread it and this time it was a beautiful edition that Folio Society recently printed that has the color coded type for the first section. The first section is Benjy's version of events. He is a 33 year old man with a mental disability who can't talk. His section moves frequently back and forth in time and this book uses 14 different colored inks to delineate the 14 different memories/time periods he comes in and out of. The colored ink is effective (and beautiful), but I'd definitely recommend reading in natural, bright light or some are hard to differentiate.
Every time I read this, I read it a little differently. This time I was particularly struck by the way Faulkner silences Caddy and her daughter Quentin, giving the male brothers their say and not giving her a chance to tell her side of the story. This is effective because it reflects her life, but it still makes me mad. I also noticed, probably because of the colored ink, that though all three brothers spend a lot of time mentally in the past, Benjy can completely immerse himself in each incident. Quentin, on the other hand, mingles past and present and various past events simultaneously, creating an even harder reading experience than Benjy's chapter. And Jason . . . oh Jason. Such a jerk, but actually a little funny too, in a brutal sort of way. "Once a bitch, always a bitch, I say".
In addition to the colored ink, this book has excellent end notes that help describe the plot and themes. Highly recommended! show less
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"El ruido y la furia" es una novela del escritor estadounidense William Faulkner, publicada en 1929. La novela es conocida por su compleja estructura narrativa y el innovador uso de múltiples perspectivas. Cuenta la historia de la familia Compson, una familia sureña aristocrática en decadencia.
La novela se divide en cuatro secciones, cada una narrada por un personaje diferente y que ofrece show more una visión subjetiva de la historia de la familia. La primera sección está narrada por Benjy Compson, un hombre intelectualmente discapacitado, y se caracteriza por una narración de flujo de conciencia. La segunda sección está narrada por Quentin Compson, hermano de Benjy, y revela sus atribulados pensamientos y su obsesión por el honor familiar. La tercera sección cambia a la perspectiva de Jason Compson, el hermano cínico y amargado, y la cuarta sección está narrada por Dilsey, una sirvienta afroamericana de la casa Compson.
La narración explora temas como el tiempo, la memoria, la decadencia y la desintegración de la aristocracia sureña. La familia Compson es descrita como profundamente disfuncional, lidiando con la pérdida, la tragedia y el cambiante panorama social y económico del Sur de Estados Unidos a principios del siglo XX.
Uno de los acontecimientos clave de la novela es el declive de Caddy Compson, la hermana de los tres hermanos, cuya promiscuidad y fracasos matrimoniales contribuyen a la caída de la familia. A medida que se desarrolla la narración, los lectores son testigos de la desintegración de la familia y de las trágicas consecuencias de sus decisiones.
"El ruido y la furia" es célebre por las técnicas narrativas experimentales de Faulkner y su exploración de las complejidades de la experiencia humana. Se considera una obra maestra del modernismo y una obra desafiante pero gratificante que ahonda en los entresijos de la memoria, la conciencia y el paso del tiempo. show less
La novela se divide en cuatro secciones, cada una narrada por un personaje diferente y que ofrece show more una visión subjetiva de la historia de la familia. La primera sección está narrada por Benjy Compson, un hombre intelectualmente discapacitado, y se caracteriza por una narración de flujo de conciencia. La segunda sección está narrada por Quentin Compson, hermano de Benjy, y revela sus atribulados pensamientos y su obsesión por el honor familiar. La tercera sección cambia a la perspectiva de Jason Compson, el hermano cínico y amargado, y la cuarta sección está narrada por Dilsey, una sirvienta afroamericana de la casa Compson.
La narración explora temas como el tiempo, la memoria, la decadencia y la desintegración de la aristocracia sureña. La familia Compson es descrita como profundamente disfuncional, lidiando con la pérdida, la tragedia y el cambiante panorama social y económico del Sur de Estados Unidos a principios del siglo XX.
Uno de los acontecimientos clave de la novela es el declive de Caddy Compson, la hermana de los tres hermanos, cuya promiscuidad y fracasos matrimoniales contribuyen a la caída de la familia. A medida que se desarrolla la narración, los lectores son testigos de la desintegración de la familia y de las trágicas consecuencias de sus decisiones.
"El ruido y la furia" es célebre por las técnicas narrativas experimentales de Faulkner y su exploración de las complejidades de la experiencia humana. Se considera una obra maestra del modernismo y una obra desafiante pero gratificante que ahonda en los entresijos de la memoria, la conciencia y el paso del tiempo. show less
added by Peter_MacTroy
Escribir este libro foi para min como aprender a ler, coma se me achegase á linguaxe, ás palabras, co mesmo respecto e coidado de quen se achega á dinamita". Así describe William Faulkner (New Albany, 1897-Oxford, 1962) a súa experiencia con O ruído e a furia, a súa cuarta novela, publicada en 1929. A historia da ruína e decadencia da familia Compson, no Sur dos EUA, segue a show more representar para o lector de hoxe ese mesmo desafío, o da literatura como reinvención da linguaxe. Ao tempo, é un magnífico exemplo do pulo que posúe unha narración inspirada na vida, ese "conto contado por un idiota, cheo de ruído e de furia, que nada significa", segundo deixou dito Shakespeare en Macbeth. show less
added by pacocillero
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The Sound and the Fury GROUP READ in 2013 Category Challenge (April 2013)
Author Information
Born in an old Mississippi family, William Faulkner made his home in Oxford, seat of the University of Mississippi. After the fifth grade he went to school only off and on-lived, read, and wrote much as he pleased. In 1918, refusing to enlist with the "Yankees," he joined the Canadian Air Force, and was transferred to the British Royal Air Force. show more After the war he studied a little at the University, did house painting, worked as a night superintendent at a power plant, went to New Orleans and became a friend of Sherwood Anderson, then to Europe and back home to Oxford. By this time he had written two novels. The Sound and the Fury followed in 1929. Financial success came with Sanctuary in 1931, which he assisted in filming. Faulkner 's novels are intense in their character portrayals of disintegrating Southern aristocrats, poor whites, and African Americans. A complex stream-of-consciousness rhetoric often involves Faulkner in lengthy sentences of anguished power. Most of his tales are set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and are characterized by the use of many recurring characters from families of different social levels spanning more than a century. His best subjects are the old, dying South and the newer materialistic South. As I Lay Dying (1930), is a grotesquely tragicomic story about a family of poor southern whites. With Absalom, Absalom! (1936); the difficult parts of his famous short novel "The Bear" (published in Go Down, Moses, 1942); and the allegorical A Fable (1954), a non-Yoknapatawpha novel set in France during World War I; Faulkner returned to an innovative and difficult style that most readers have trouble with. Yet, interspersed among such works are collections of easily read stories originally published in popular magazines. There seems to be a growing sentiment among critics that the Snopes trilogy-The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959)-for the most part an example of Faulkner's "moderate" style, could well be among his most important works. Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature "for his powerful and artistically independent contribution to the new American novel," but it would appear now that he also deserved to win that honor for his contribution to world literature. When reporting his death, the Boston Globe quoted Faulkner's having once told an interviewer: "Since man is mortal, the only immortality for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. That is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must some day pass." In addition to the Nobel Prize, Faulkner received the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1950, and in 1951 he was given the National Book Award for his Collected Stories Collected Stories. For his novel A Fable he received the National Book Award for the second time, as well as the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. The Reivers (1962) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1963. In 1957 and 1958, he was the University of Virginia's first writer-in-residence, and in January 1959 he accepted an appointment as consultant on contemporary literature to the Alderman Library of that university. Although Faulkner was not without honors in his lifetime and has received world recognition since then, it is surprising to learn that, when Malcolm Cowley edited The Portable Faulkner in 1946, he found that almost all of Faulkner's books were out of print. By arranging selections from the works to form a continuous chronicle, Cowley deserves much of the credit for making readers aware of the way in which Faulkner was creating a fictive world on a scale grander than that of any novelist since Balzac. William Faulkner died in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1962. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Notable Lists
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Colecção Mil Folhas (23)
Grote Beren (26)
Vintage Books (V-5)
Lanterne (L 79)
Keltainen kirjasto (65)
Βίπερ (412)
A tot vent (219)
Penguin Modern Classics (2087)
rororo (27133)
Gallimard, Folio (162)
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Novels 1926-1929 : Soldiers' Pay / Mosquitoes / Flags in the Dust / The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! / Intruder in the Dust / Light in August / The Reivers / The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Has the adaptation
Is abridged in
Has as a reference guide/companion
Has as a study
Has as a commentary on the text
Has as a student's study guide
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Sound and the Fury
- Original title
- The Sound and the Fury
- Original publication date
- 1929-10-07
- People/Characters
- Quentin Compson; Benji Compson; Jason Compson; Caddy Compson; Dilsey
- Important places
- Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, USA (fictional county); Jefferson, Mississippi, USA (fictional city); Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Related movies
- The Sound and the Fury (1959 | IMDb); The Sound and the Fury (2014 | IMDb)
- First words
- Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
- Quotations
- Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say.
Got it at the getting place.
'You're not a gentleman, Spoade said. 'No, I'm Canadian.' Shreve said.
"Dogs are dead." Caddy said. "And when Nancy fell in the ditch and Roskus shot her and the buzzards came and undressed her." - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The broken flower dropped over Ben's fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right; post and tree, window and doorway, and signboard, each in its ordered place.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)DILSEY.
They endured. - Original language
- English US
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.52
- Canonical LCC
- PS3511.A86
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