full title
The Sound and the Fury
author
William Faulkner
type of work
Novel
genre
Modernist novel
language
English
time and place written
1928; Oxford, Mississippi
date of first publication
1929
publisher
Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith
narrator
The story is told in four chapters by four different
narrators: Benjy, the youngest Compson son; Quentin, the oldest
son; Jason, the middle son; and Faulkner himself, acting as an omniscient,
third-person narrator who focuses on Dilsey, the Compsons’ servant.
point of view
Benjy, Quentin, and Jason narrate in the first person,
as participants. They narrate in a stream of consciousness style, attentive
to events going on around them in the present, but frequently returning
to memories from the past. The final section is narrated in third-person
omniscient.
tone
The world outside the minds of the narrators slowly
unravels through personal thoughts, memories, and observations.
The tone differs in each chapter, depending on the narrator.
tense
Present and past
setting (time)
Three of the chapters are set during Easter weekend, 1928,
while Quentin’s section is set in June, 1910.
However, the memories the narrators recall within these sections
cover the period from 1898 to 1928.
setting (place)
Jefferson, Mississippi, and Cambridge, Massachusetts
(Harvard University)
protagonist
The four Compson children: Caddy, Quentin, Benjy, and
Jason
major conflict
The aristocratic Compson family’s long fall from grace
and struggle to maintain its distinguished legacy. This conflict
is manifest in Caddy’s promiscuity, her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, her
short marriage, and the ensuing setbacks and deaths that her family
members suffer.
rising action
Caddy’s climbing of a tree with muddy drawers; Benjy’s
name change; Caddy’s pregnancy and wedding; Quentin’s suicide; Benjy’s
castration; Mr. Compson’s death from alcoholism
climax
Miss Quentin’s theft of Jason’s money, and her elopement
with the man with the red tie
falling action
Dilsey’s taking Benjy to Easter Sunday service and
Benjy’s trip to the cemetery
themes
The corruption of Southern aristocratic values; resurrection
and renewal; the failure of language and narrative
motifs
Time; order and chaos; shadows; objectivity and subjectivity
symbols
Water; Quentin’s watch; Caddy’s muddy underclothes;
Caddy’s perfume
foreshadowing
Caddy’s muddy drawers when she climbs the pear tree
foretell an inevitable dirtying of the Compson name that will never
wash away.
