Plot Overview
Attempting to apply traditional
plot summary to The Sound and the Fury is difficult.
At a basic level, the novel is about the three Compson brothers'
obsessions with the their sister Caddy, but this brief synopsis
represents merely the surface of what the novel contains. A story told
in four chapters, by four different voices, and out of chronological
order, The Sound and the Fury requires intense
concentration and patience to interpret and understand.
The first three chapters of the novel consist of the
convoluted thoughts, voices, and memories of the three Compson brothers, captured
on three different days. The brothers are Benjy, a severely retarded
thirty-three-year-old man, speaking in April, 1928;
Quentin, a young Harvard student, speaking in June, 1910;
and Jason, a bitter farm-supply store worker, speaking again in
April, 1928. Faulkner tells the fourth chapter
in his own narrative voice, but focuses on Dilsey, the Compson family's
devoted “Negro” cook who has played a great part in raising the
children. Faulkner harnesses the brothers' memories of their sister
Caddy, using a single symbolic moment to forecast the decline of
the once prominent Compson family and to examine the deterioration
of the Southern aristocratic class since the Civil War.
The Compsons are one of several prominent names in the
town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Their ancestors helped settle the
area and subsequently defended it during the Civil War. Since the
war, the Compsons have gradually seen their wealth, land, and status
crumble away. Mr. Compson is an alcoholic. Mrs. Compson is a self-absorbed
hypochondriac who depends almost entirely upon Dilsey to raise her
four children. Quentin, the oldest child, is a sensitive bundle
of neuroses. Caddy is stubborn, but loving and compassionate. Jason
has been difficult and mean-spirited since birth and is largely
spurned by the other children. Benjy is severely mentally disabled,
an “idiot” with no understanding of the concepts of time or morality.
In the absence of the self-absorbed Mrs. Compson, Caddy serves as
a mother figure and symbol of affection for Benjy and Quentin.
As the children grow older, however, Caddy begins to
behave promiscuously, which torments Quentin and sends Benjy into
fits of moaning and crying. Quentin is preparing to go to Harvard,
and Mr. Compson sells a large portion of the family land to provide funds
for the tuition. Caddy loses her virginity and becomes pregnant.
She is unable or unwilling to name the father of the child, though
it is likely Dalton Ames, a boy from town.
Caddy's pregnancy leaves Quentin emotionally shattered.
He attempts to claim false responsibility for the pregnancy, lying
to his father that he and Caddy have committed incest. Mr. Compson
is indifferent to Caddy's promiscuity, dismissing Quentin's story
and telling his son to leave early for the Northeast.
Attempting to cover up her indiscretions, Caddy quickly
marries Herbert Head, a banker she met in Indiana. Herbert promises
Jason Compson a job in his bank. Herbert immediately divorces Caddy and
rescinds Jason's job offer when he realizes his wife is pregnant with
another man's child. Meanwhile, Quentin, still mired in despair
over Caddy's sin, commits suicide by drowning himself in the Charles
River just before the end of his first year at Harvard.
The Compsons disown Caddy from the family, but take in
her newborn daughter, Miss Quentin. The task of raising Miss Quentin falls
squarely on Dilsey's shoulders. Mr. Compson dies of alcoholism roughly
a year after Quentin's suicide. As the oldest surviving son, Jason
becomes the head of the Compson household. Bitterly employed at
a menial job in the local farm-supply store, Jason devises an ingenious
scheme to steal the money Caddy sends to support Miss Quentin's
upbringing.
Miss Quentin grows up to be an unhappy, rebellious, and
promiscuous girl, constantly in conflict with her overbearing and vicious
uncle Jason. On Easter Sunday, 1928, Miss
Quentin steals several thousand dollars from Jason and runs away
with a man from a traveling show. While Jason chases after Miss
Quentin to no avail, Dilsey takes Benjy and the rest of her family
to Easter services at the local church.
A Note on the Title
The title of The Sound and the Fury refers
to a line from William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth,
a Scottish general and nobleman, learns of his wife's suicide and
feels that his life is crumbling into chaos. In addition to Faulkner's
title, we can find several of the novel's important motifs in Macbeth's
short soliloquy in Act V, scene v:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps
in this petty pace from day to day
To the
last syllable of recorded time,
And all our
yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to
dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And
then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.
(V.v.18–27)
The Sound and the Fury literally begins
as a “tale / Told by an idiot,” as the first chapter is narrated
by the mentally disabled Benjy. The novel's central concerns include
time, much like Macbeth's “[t]omorrow, and tomorrow”; death, recalling
Macbeth's “dusty death”; and nothingness and disintegration, a clear
reference to Macbeth's lament that life “[s]ignif[ies] nothing.”
Additionally, Quentin is haunted by the sense that the Compson family
has disintegrated to a mere shadow of its former greatness.
In his soliloquy, Macbeth implies that life is but a
shadow of the past and that a modern man, like himself, is inadequately
equipped and unable to achieve anything near the greatness of the
past. Faulkner reinterprets this idea, implying that if man does
not choose to take his own life, as Quentin does, the only alternatives
are to become either a cynic and materialist like Jason, or an idiot
like Benjy, unable to see life as anything more than a meaningless
series of images, sounds, and memories.
