The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner’s 1929 classic, The Sound and the Fury is a mind-bending journey through the thoughts, memories, and relationships of the Compson family. Using his landmark stream-of-consciousness style of narration, Faulkner explores the inner workings of this once aristocratic Southern family in early 20th century Mississippi.

The Sound and the Fury Analysis of the book by William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury is a modernist novel by William Faulkner published in 1929. The novel tells the story of the Compson family, a once great, aristocratic Southern family that has begun to break apart and fall into decline.

The story is set in Faulkner’s fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, in the early 20th century. It is told from the point of view of three of the Compson brothers and one omniscient third-person narrator.

The Sound and the Fury is considered a classic of American literature, appearing at number six on Modern Library’s 1998 list of best English-language novels of the 20th century.

The novel is well-known for its disjointed, non-linear narrative structure and stream-of-consciousness writing style.

The Sound and the Fury Summary

The Sound and the Fury is divided into four parts or chapters, with four distinct narrators, at four different points in time.

Part 1: April 7, 1928

The first part of The Sound and the Fury is narrated by Benjamin “Benjy” Compson, the intellectually disabled youngest of the Compson children. Benjy’s section spans from 1898 to 1928, with large and sometimes disjointed jumps in time and place. Because of his disability, Benjy has no concept of time. Therefore the entire first part is narrated as if the action is happening in the present, even though much of the section consists of Benjy’s memories from various points in the past.

April 7 is Benjy’s thirty-third birthday, and he goes with Luster, a Black teenager, to a nearby golf course. The two watch the golfers, and when some of them call out to their caddie, Benjy is reminded of his sister, Caddy, his favorite of his siblings.

Flitting back and forth between past and present, Benjy remembers various happenings from childhood. His memories move from Caddy’s wedding, to seeing his sister’s muddy underwear as she climbed a tree, and to Caddy leaving home after her husband’s discovery that her child was another man's.

As Benjy and Luster return home, Benjy sees Caddy’s daughter, Miss Quentin, on a swing with a boy. Miss Quentin, who has lived with the Compsons since she was a baby, appears so much like her mother at this moment that Benjy thinks that Miss Quentin is, in fact, Caddy.

Part 2: June 2, 1910

The second part of the novel is narrated by Quentin Compson, the eldest of the Compson children. Like Benjy’s section, Quentin’s narrative is non-linear and jumps between the present day and Quentin’s memories of the past.

Part 2 is narrated by Quinten Compson as he attends Harvard University. Pixabay.

Quentin attends Harvard University, and he is preparing to commit suicide. Quentin wanders the streets of Cambridge, and, like Benjy, most of his thoughts and memories pertain to his sister, Caddy. He remembers his sister losing her virginity to a man named Dalton Ames, resulting in her pregnancy.

Horrified, Quentin tries to tell their father that he has committed incest and is the father of Caddy’s child. His father, however, is unconcerned, and Caddy marries another man, Herbert Head, who sends her away when he learns of her illegitimate child.

Back in the present, Quentin leaves his dorm room, presumably to drown himself.

Part 3: April 6, 1928

Part 3 is narrated by Jason Compson, the third of the Compson children. Having taken over as head of the family following the death of Mr. Compson, Jason works at a farm supply store and nurses a near single-minded obsession with material wealth.

Miss Quentin, Caddy’s daughter, who is now seventeen years old, receives a check every month from her mother. Jason, however, has been intercepting these checks for almost fifteen years. He uses the thousands of dollars he has stolen from his sister and niece to invest in the stock market and maintain a mistress in Memphis.

While returning home, Jason sees Miss Quentin accompanied by an unknown man. He tries to catch them, leaving his car but returns to find that the two have let the air out of his tires.

Back at home, Jason, Miss Quentin, and Mrs. Compson argue over dinner.

Part 4: April 8, 1928

An omniscient, third-person narrator narrates the final section of The Sound and the Fury. It is Easter Sunday, and Part 4 mostly follows the actions of Dilsey Gibson, the Compsons’ Black cook and servant. While Dilsey is going about her morning chores, the household discovers that Miss Quentin has broken into Jason’s bedroom, stolen the money he had taken from her, and vanished.

Jason is furious and takes off in search of his niece.

Meanwhile, Dilsey and Luster take Benjy with them to attend the Easter service in their church. On their way home, Luster does not take the usual route, and this distresses Benjy, who begins to panic. Jason returns without having found Miss Quentin and succeeds in calming his brother by taking his accustomed route home.

Appendix: Compson: 1699-1945

In 1946, sixteen years after The Sound and the Fury was published, Faulkner wrote an appendix that detailed the complete history of the Compson family. This appendix, included in all later editions of the novel, begins with the arrival of the first Compson ancestor to the United States and ends with the continued disintegration of the Compson family following the end of The Sound and the Fury.

The appendix explains that, following the death of Mrs. Compson, Benjy was sent to live in a mental institution. Jason sold the family home and dismissed all of the servants, and Caddy moved to France, never to be seen in Jefferson again.

The Sound and the Fury Characters

• Quentin Compson III is the eldest Compson child. He is a smart boy who leaves Jefferson to attend Harvard University. However, he is overly protective of his sister and becomes increasingly distressed by her promiscuity. While in Cambridge, he kills himself.

• Candace “Caddy” Compson is the only girl among the Compson children. She is headstrong, independent, and adventurous. While she never actually appears in the present time of the novel, Caddy dominates the memories of both Benjy and Quentin. After she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she quickly finds another man to marry in order to avoid scandal. However, when her husband discovers the truth about her pregnancy, he sends Caddy away, and she leaves her young daughter in the care of her family.

• Jason Compson IV is the third Compson child. He is an angry, bitter man who works at a farm supply store and becomes the head of the Compson household after his father’s death. For years, he steals money from Caddy that she sends to support her daughter.

• Benjamin “Benjy” Compson is the youngest Compson child. He has an intellectual disability that is a source of shame and embarrassment for his family. He is not close with any of his family members, except for Caddy, who was always kind to him before her departure.

• Jason Compson III is the head of the Compson family. He is an alcoholic lawyer who dies in 1912.

• Caroline Bascomb Compson is Mr. Compson’s wife and the mother of the four Compson children. A neurotic hypochondriac, Mrs. Compson shows little affection for her children and leaves most of their upbringing to the family servant, Dilsey.

• Miss Quentin Compson is Caddy’s daughter. Like her mother, she is headstrong and promiscuous. In particular, she does not get along with her uncle Jason, and after discovering that he has been intercepting the checks from her mother, she steals back the money and escapes.

• Dilsey Gibson is the Compson’s longtime servant. She has looked after the family for many years and was mostly responsible for raising the Compson children.

The Sound and the Fury Setting

The Sound and the Fury, like many of William Faulkner's other works, was well-known for its structural and stylistic innovations.

Setting

Like much of William Faulkner’s work, The Sound and the Fury is set in Jefferson, Mississippi, in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The novel takes place in the early 20th century, a time of great upheaval and change in the Southern United States. Following Reconstruction, much of the South continued to grapple with the legacy of slavery and the resulting changes to the region’s values and traditions.

Formerly wealthy, white Southern families saw their way of life change in the early 20th century. Pixabay.

The formally aristocratic Compson family resists these changes. They struggle to let go of the old ways and adapt to the changing world, therefore falling into decline.

Title

The title of The Sound and the Fury is taken from a line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1623). In Act 5 of the play, Macbeth says:

The sentiment of this passage, lamenting the meaninglessness of life a recurring idea throughout The Sound and the Fury as members of the Compson family cling to old-fashioned Southern values that have become warped into self-destructive tendencies. Furthermore, the novel also begins as a story “told by an idiot” with Benjy’s narration.

Style and structure

The Sound and the Fury is divided into four parts, plus an appendix, and employs a variety of narrative and stylistic techniques.

The first three sections of the novel are narrated in the first person. Part 1 and Part 2, particularly, use a non-linear, stream-of-conscious narration style. This means that the story follows the direction of the narrator’s thoughts, whatever they might be, in place of a logical plot.

Although both Parts 1 and 2 use this non-linear, stream-of-consciousness style, each is quite different to account for the different thought processes of each character. Part 1, for example, narrated by Benjy, is narrated as if all the action is happening in the present because Benjy has no understanding of time due to his mental disability. In Part 1, Faulkner also sometimes uses italic text to signify that Benjy’s thoughts are shifting to a different time.

Part 3, narrated by Jason, is the most linear and straightforward of the three brothers’ narratives, perhaps because his character is the most unambiguous of the three.

In the final section, Faulkner changes style yet again and introduces an omniscient, third-person narrator. This narrator focuses on the experiences of Dilsey, the Compsons’ servant.

The Sound and the Fury: Meaning

Some key themes in The Sound and the Fury are family dynamics and relationships, the inadequacy of language and communication, and the consequences of changing Southern values. Let's see the analysis of these themes.

Family

The Sound and the Fury is a novel about a family in decline. Through the shifts in perspective throughout the story, Faulkner illustrates the conflicts and tangled relationships that exist on all levels of the Compson family.

The rebellious Caddy, in particular, is a source of tension for each of her brothers. Although she never actually appears in the novel, much of the plot revolves around her. Benjy mourns the loss of the only family member who treated him with kindness, Quinten’s obsession with his sister’s purity seems to contribute to his suicide, and Jason steals thousands of dollars from Caddy that is intended for her daughter.

None of the Compsons’ relationships are particularly conventional. Quinten’s determination to protect his sister, for example, results in his claim to have committed incest with Caddy in a desperate bid to take responsibility for her pregnancy. Mrs. Compson’s self-absorption prevents her from mothering any of her children, who are largely raised by Dilsey Gibson.

Changing Southern values

Along with the Compson family, the aristocratic South of the pre-Civil War era is also in decline. The characters in The Sound and the Fury are caught up in a changing world to which they struggle to adapt. Once a wealthy, important family, each member of the Compson family, from the alcoholic Mr. Compson to the promiscuous Caddy to the suicidal Quentin, now shows some kind of self-destructive and self-absorptive tendency. Their decline and self-destruction symbolically mirror the fall of the Old South, the romanticized era of sprawling plantations and beautiful Southern belles.

Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, many of these aristocratic Southern families found themselves economically devastated, and many plantations fell into literal decay.

As a formally aristocratic family, the Compsons have subverted many of the very Southern values that they once held, reflecting the larger decline of the region. The values that once marked them as an important family have become self-destructive and have in turn isolated the Compsons from the rest of their community.

In the quote above, Mrs. Compson makes a clear distinction between the Compson family and "common people." However, the Compsons have sold off most of their land to pay for Quinten's education, Benjy is disabled, Caddy is promiscuous, and Jason is perpetually angry; nothing remains of the Compsons' formally affluent lifestyle. Yet, instead of admitting this, the family insists on living in the past as if nothing had changed.

Quinten, for example, is the one who holds most strongly to these old values, trying in vain to uphold his family's honor. He tries to embody the ideals of the Southern gentleman, and he cannot accept Caddy’s complete lack of interest in playing the part of the Southern lady. He feels honor-bound to protect her virtue, yet these traditional Southern values are crumbling around him, leading to Quinten’s eventual suicide.

Language, communication, and subjectivity

The variation of stylistic choices that Faulkner employs throughout the novel draws attention to the inadequacy of language and communication by displaying the subjectivity of individual experience. Each character’s voice is unique. They each use language in their own way in an attempt to express their reality, yet each falls short.

By showing the same events from multiple viewpoints throughout the novel, Faulkner reveals the discrepancies between each account and how each character fails to make themselves understood to others.