William Faulkner

September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962

Nobel Prize in Literature (1949)Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1955, 1963)National Book Award (1951, 1955)

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 related 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 first, April 7, 1928, is written from the perspective of Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, an intellectually disabled 33-year-old man.

The second section, June 2, 1910, focuses on Quentin Compson, Benjy's older brother, and the events leading up to his suicide.

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.

From the perspectives of the three Compson sons

In the fourth and final 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 (Caddy's daughter), with glimpses of the thoughts and deeds of everyone in the 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.

When the disgraced Caddy left the Compson household in 1911, she did not take her daughter. Miss Quentin remained with the family to be raised as a Compson.

Although her presence is pervasive throughout, Caddy does not actually appear in the novel. She is reconstructed through the memories of her three brothers, each of whom remembers and relates to her in a different way.

The events of the first section of The Sound and the Fury take place some 17 years after Caddy’s departure. The first section is notoriously difficult to read: its narrator, Benjy, has an intellectual disability.

The precise character of his disability is not known; he is sometimes called a “looney” or, more commonly, an “idiot.”

Evidently, his disability affects his ability to speak (he communicates by “moaning”) and to reason. It also distorts his sense of time, such that he cannot distinguish between the past and the present.

Benjy experiences all time as the present and thus narrates all events, including and especially memories of past events, as though they occur in the present. Unbeknownst to him, the events he narrates as “the present” actually span a 30-year period, from 1898 to 1928.

The second section commences on June 2, 1910, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where its narrator, Quentin, attends Harvard University.

Although Quentin has no intellectual disability, Quentin’s section, like Benjy’s, oscillates between the past and the present. The actions of the present (here, 1910) are Quentin’s as he prepares to commit suicide.

Quentin’s preparations are partly practical and partly symbolic: they include breaking his grandfather’s watch, packing up his belongings, writing letters to his loved ones, purchasing weights (two six-pound flatirons) with which to drown himself, and visiting the nearby Charles River Bridge, where he will eventually commit suicide.

Quentin’s present actions are set against his memories of key events in his life, most of which involve Caddy or Caddy’s lovers.

The third section of The Sound and the Fury returns to Yoknapatawpha County in the year 1928.

Unlike the previous two, Jason’s section is straightforward and, for the most part, linear: it chronicles his present activities and interactions, both at the Compson house and the farm-supply store where he works.

The focal point of his narration is his 17-year-old niece, Miss Quentin, who, as Jason describes her, is very much like her mother: headstrong, rebellious, and promiscuous.

Jason disdains Miss Quentin—and yet he relies on her for money. Each month Caddy sends Miss Quentin a $200 check, which Jason intercepts and keeps for himself.

For nearly 15 years Jason has kept up this scheme undiscovered—until April 6, 1928, when Caddy sends a money order (requiring a signature) in place of a check, and Miss Quentin, at last, learns about her uncle’s subterfuge. Still, Jason withholds the money.

The fourth section of the novel picks up on April 8, 1928, two days after Jason’s section and one day after Benjy’s.

The fourth section is narrated in the third-person and focuses primarily on Dilsey, the Compsons’ black servant. On the morning of April 8, the author-narrator observes Dilsey performing her chores, as usual, in the Compson house.

As she prepares breakfast, Dilsey talks to Luster, who tells her that someone broke into Jason’s bedroom the night before. Moments later, it is discovered that Miss Quentin not only broke Jason’s window but entered his bedroom, found her mother’s money, stole it back, and fled the house.

Jason, furious, goes to chase her but ultimately fails to catch her.

In Jason’s absence, Dilsey, Luster, and Benjy attend Easter service at Dilsey’s church. The visiting minister preaches about redemption, and Dilsey, thinking of the Compsons and the events of the morning, begins to cry.

Benjy was committed to an asylum in 1933; Jason moved into an apartment above the supply-store; and Caddy moved to Paris, where she lived at the time of the German occupation of France (1940–44). Neither Caddy nor her daughter returned to Yoknapatawpha County.