The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. It employs several narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner’s fourth novel, and was not immediately successful. In 1931, however, when Faulkner’s sixth novel, Sanctuary, was published—a sensationalist story, which Faulkner later said was written only for money—The Sound and the Fury also became commercially successful, and Faulkner began to receive critical attention.
Overview
The Sound and the Fury is set in Jefferson, Mississippi, in the first third of the 20th century. The novel centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. Over the course of the 30 years or so relayed in the novel, the family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically.
The novel is separated into four narratives. The first, reflecting events occurring and consequent thoughts and memories on April 7, 1928, is written in the voice and from the perspective of Benjamin «Benjy» Compson, an intellectually disabled 33-year-old man. Benjy’s section is characterized by a disjointed narrative style with frequent chronological leaps.
The second section, taking place on June 2, 1910, focuses on Quentin Compson, Benjy’s older brother, and the events leading up to Quentin’s suicide. This section is written in the stream-of-consciousness style and also contains frequent chronological leaps.
In the third section, set a day before the first on April 6, 1928, Faulkner writes from the point of view of Jason, Quentin’s cynical younger brother.
In the fourth section, set a day after the first on April 8, 1928, Faulkner introduces a third-person omniscient point of view. This last section primarily focuses on Dilsey, one of the Compsons’ Black servants, and her relations with Jason and «Miss» Quentin Compson (daughter of Quentin’s sister Caddy), as Dilsey contemplates the thoughts and deeds of everyone in the Compson family.
In 1945, Faulkner wrote a «Compson Appendix» to be included with future printings of The Sound and the Fury. It contains a 30-page history of the Compson family from 1699 to 1945.
Plot
Part 1: April 7, 1928
The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin «Benjy» Compson, a source of shame to the family (primarily his mother) due to his diminished mental capacity; the only characters who show genuine care for him are his older sister Caddy and Dilsey, one of the family’s black servants. His narrative voice is characterized predominantly by its nonlinearity: spanning the period 1898–1928, Benjy’s narrative is a series of non-chronological events presented in a stream of consciousness.
The presence of italics in Benjy’s section indicates significant shifts in the narrative. Originally Faulkner conceived the use of different colors of ink to signify chronological breaks. This nonlinearity makes the style of this section particularly challenging, but Benjy’s style develops a cadence that, while not chronologically coherent, provides unbiased insight into many characters’ true motivations. Moreover, Benjy’s caretaker changes to indicate the time period: Luster in the present, T.P. in Benjy’s teenage years, and Versh during Benjy’s infancy and childhood.
In this section we see Benjy’s three passions: fire, his sister Caddy, and the golf course on land that used to belong to the Compson family. But by 1928 Caddy has been banished from the Compson home after her husband divorced her because her child was not his, and the family has had to sell pastureland to a local golf club to finance Quentin’s Harvard University education. In the opening scene, Benjy, accompanied by Luster, a servant boy, watches golfers on the nearby golf course as he waits to hear them call «caddie»—the name of his favorite sibling.
When one of them calls for his golf caddie, Benjy’s mind embarks on a whirlwind course of memories of his sister Caddy, focusing on one critical scene. In 1898 when their grandmother died, the four Compson children were forced to play outside during the funeral. To see what was going on inside, Caddy climbed a tree in the yard, and while she looked inside, her brothers — Quentin, Jason and Benjy — looked up and noticed that her underwear was muddy.
This is Benjy’s first memory, and he associates Caddy with trees throughout the rest of his arc, often saying that she smells like trees. Other crucial memories in this section are Benjy’s change of name (originally «Maury» after his wastrel maternal uncle) upon the discovery of his disability in 1900; the marriage and divorce of Caddy (1910); and Benjy’s castration, resulting from an attack on a girl that is alluded to briefly within this chapter, wherein a gate is left unlatched and Benjy is out unsupervised.
Part 2: June 2, 1910
Quentin, the most intelligent of the Compson children, gives the novel’s best example of Faulkner’s narrative technique. We see him as a freshman at Harvard University, wandering the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, contemplating death, and remembering his family’s estrangement from his sister Caddy. Like the first section, its narrative is not strictly linear, though the two interweaving threads, of Quentin at Harvard on the one hand, and of his memories on the other, are clearly discernible. Throughout this section, Quentin makes preparations for his suicide by drowning, including leaving letters for classmates.
Quentin’s main obsession is Caddy’s virginity and purity. He is obsessed with Southern ideals of chivalry and is strongly protective of women, especially his sister; he is horrified when she engages in sexual promiscuity. He turns to his father for help and counsel, but the pragmatic Mr. Compson tells him that virginity is invented by men and should not be taken seriously. He also tells Quentin that time will heal all. Quentin spends much of his time trying to prove his father wrong, but is unable to do so.
Shortly before Quentin leaves for Harvard in the fall of 1909, Caddy becomes pregnant by a lover she is unable to identify, perhaps Dalton Ames, whom Quentin confronts. The two fight, with Quentin losing disgracefully and Caddy vowing, for Quentin’s sake, to never speak to Dalton again. Quentin tells his father that they have committed incest, but his father knows that he is lying: «and he did you try to make her do it and i i was afraid to i was afraid she might and then it wouldn’t do any good» (112). Quentin’s idea of incest is shaped by the idea that, if they «could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us» (51), he could protect his sister by joining her in whatever punishment she might endure. In his mind, he feels a need to take responsibility for Caddy’s sin.
Pregnant and alone, Caddy marries Herbert Head. Quentin finds him repulsive, but Caddy is resolute: she must marry before she gives birth. Herbert finds out that the child is not his, and sends Caddy and her new daughter away in shame. He also rescinds his offer of a bank job to Caddy’s brother Jason, who holds Caddy responsible for this misfortune and never forgives her.
Quentin’s wanderings through Harvard as he cuts classes follow the pattern of his heartbreak over losing Caddy. For instance, he meets a small Italian immigrant girl who speaks no English. Significantly, he calls her «sister» and spends much of the day trying to communicate with her, and to care for her by finding her home, to no avail. He thinks sadly of the downfall and squalor of the South after the American Civil War. Tormented by his conflicting thoughts and emotions, Quentin commits suicide by drowning.
Part 3: April 6, 1928
The third section is narrated by Jason, the third child and his mother Caroline’s favorite. Ironically, he is the only child who does not want, need, or return her love. It takes place the day before Benjy’s section, on Good Friday. Of the three brothers’ sections, Jason’s is the most straightforward, reflecting his single-minded desire to make money. He worries obsessively about his (bad) investments in the cotton market, which symbolize the financial decline of the South.
By 1928, Jason’s father has died and Jason has become the family breadwinner. He supports his mother, Benjy, and Miss Quentin (daughter of Caddy, the family’s second-born), as well as the family’s servants. The unjust burden makes him bitter and cynical, with little of the passionate sensitivity of his irresponsible older brother and sister.
He goes so far as to blackmail Caddy into making him Miss Quentin’s sole guardian, then uses that role to steal the support payments that Caddy sends for her daughter, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars over 17 years, stashing thousands in cash in a strongbox. Jason uses the money to maintain a mistress in Memphis and play the stock market. Miss Quentin and her lover later recoup some of the money by climbing through a window and purloining the strongbox.
This is the first section narrated in a mostly linear fashion, compared with Benjy and Quentin’s disjointed stream of consciousness. It follows the course of Good Friday, a day on which Jason decides to leave work to search for Miss Quentin, who has run away, seemingly in pursuit of mischief. Here we see most immediately the conflict between the two predominant traits of the Compson family, which Caroline attributes to the difference between her blood and her husband’s: on the one hand, Miss Quentin’s recklessness and passion, inherited from her mother and Compson’s grandfather; on the other, Jason’s ruthless cynicism, drawn from his mother’s side. This section also gives the clearest image of domestic life in the Compson household, with
