The title of this work is taken from Shakespeare’s MACBETH:
“Life’s but a walking shadow,
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury….”
___________
Who, When, Where?
The “who” of the story is the once prominent Compson family of Faulkner’s imagined Yoknapatawpha County in the state of Mississippi. The “when,” three consecutive days in April, 1928, culminating on Easter Sunday, 1928, and then June 2, 1910, the day of Quentin Compson’s suicide. The four sections of the novel are not sequential. That is, the first section is April 7, 1928, the second June 2, 1910, the third April 6, 1928, and the last section April 8, 1928. The 1928 action is all centered in Jefferson, Mississippi, while the June 2, 1910 section is set in Cambridge, Mass. and environs, where Quentin Compson would be finishing his first year at Harvard.
The last section is author observant (not omniscient). The other three sections are first person accounts. Faulkner employs the stream of consciousness technique for these three sections. Time, therefore, flows back and forth in the minds of the first-person informants. Much of the puzzlement this work produces results from the discontinuity of time and the switches in settings that result from “listening in” on the thoughts of the informants. The puzzlement is most trying in the first section, April 7, 1928, as the informant for the action is Benjamin “Benji” Compson, the family’s severely retarded, re-named, and nearly 33-year-old son. Benji has a limited vocabulary, but does respond to certain words, such as “caddie,” and also seems to understand elementary language. He appears not to articulate speech. He often focuses on colors, lights, smells, etc., and he is obviously very attached to his absent sister Caddy.
Besides Benji, the Compson family is populated by an alcoholic lawyer father, a neurotic self-centered and feckless mother, a villainous, sadistic and money-grubbing brother, the “fallen woman,” Caddy, Quentin the mentally ill brother (in love with his sister and perhaps the ideal of Southern womanhood, but who would not touch her himself and who cannot defend her from those who would take advantage), Quentin, the illegitimate daughter of Caddy whose father is unknown, and who absconds with a carnival man in the 1928 sections of the story, after having stolen money rightly belonging to her from her Uncle Jason. Finally, there is Damuddy, the maternal grandmother who dies in the Compson house as recollected in the first section of the story, and the in-and-out Maury, the maternal uncle who seems to live off the Compson family. The cast of characters also includes Negro servants, the most prominent being Dilsey, the matronly, dutiful “protectress” of all the weaker members of the Compson family—the good and faithful servant, compassionate, not sentimental, a woman who preserves her dignity despite the vicious racism that clearly lurks beneath the social surface. I see her as the only heroic individual in the story.
A funeral, a suicide, an assignation, a theft a marriage—much of the big action of this novel takes place in the background. Faulkner seems not to want that kind of action as a focus. Rather, he looks at consequences of such action, the psychology of it, the nature of family attachment and family values, the nature of goodness and evil, the richness and complexity of everyday life. Perhaps surprisingly, this novel is filled with subtle humor—amidst all the distress. Still there are many questions left unanswered in my mind. Perhaps I need another read.
Another read? That would be my third. I first read The Sound and the Fury as a college senior, in a class called The Experimental Novel—my last semester before going on to medical school. It was too much for me at that time. It didn’t stick. Perhaps one more read in my lifetime is in order. Because this is a classic.
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I'm sure the book is great..
I'm sure the book is great... but I received a beat up copy with writing on almost every page. I picked this up for a book club so I won't be returning it as I need to get to reading. The book cover is not the one shown in pictures. I may have over looked the description but it was not clear I'd be receiving such a poorly copy of the book.
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