Home > The Sound and the Fury Summary & Study Guide

The Sound and the Fury | Introduction

The Sound and the Fury, published in 1929, was William Faulkner's fourth novel and is considered his first masterpiece. The story is set in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha that Faulkner created for the setting of his third novel Sartoris. Faulkner set fifteen of his novels and many short stories in this geographical location that he invented, the descriptions of which mirror the area in northern Mississippi where he spent most of his life. While he is called a Southern writer, most critics praise this book and many of Faulkner's other fictional works for their universal and humanistic themes. The book was published in the year of the great stock market crash on Wall Street in 1929 and sales were meager. Faulkner did, however, gain considerable critical recognition for the work.

Before writing The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner found himself overly involved with the problem of selling his previous books to publishers. He decided to refocus his attention back on his writing so that he could create a finely crafted work. The result was The Sound and the Fury. The inspiration for the novel came from one of his short stories, "Twilight." He had created the character of Caddy in this story. In a scene where Caddy has climbed a pear tree to look into the window where her grandmother's funeral is being held, her brothers are looking up at her and they see her muddy pants. Faulkner claimed he loved the character of Caddy so much that he felt she deserved more than a short story. Thus the idea for The Sound and the Fury was born.

The Sound and the Fury Summary

April Seventh, 1928
Set in Mississippi during the early decades of the twentieth century, The Sound and the Fury tells the tumultuous story of the Compson family's gradual deterioration. The novel is divided into four sections, each told by a different narrator on a different date. The three Compson brothers, Benjy, Quentin, and Jason, each relate one of the first three sections while the fourth is told from an omniscient, third-person perspective. At the center of the novel is the brothers' sister, Caddy Compson, who, as an adult, becomes a source of obsessive love for two of her brothers, and inspires savage revenge in the third.

The first section is narrated by Benjy, a thirty-three-year-old mentally handicapped man who is unable to speak and doesn't fully comprehend the world around him. His perceptions in the present are combined with memories of childhood and adolescence and, as a result, his narrative provides a disjointed and incomplete interpretation of events. In the opening scene, Benjy is standing by a fence near a golf course where the regularly heard cry of "here, caddie" is a constant reminder of the sister who has now married and left home. He is accompanied by one of the family's servants, Luster, who is trying to find the quarter he lost so he can go to the travelling show playing in town that night. As they crawl through a broken place in the fence, Benjy snags himself on a nail and is immediately reminded of a similar experience he had with Caddy. From here, Benjy's monologue continues to shift back and forth between the present and the past.

Although the significance of many of Benjy's fragmented memories is not immediately evident, several important incidents are revealed. What is most apparent is Benjy's strong attachment to Caddy, who smells "like trees." It has been almost eighteen years since Caddy's wedding, yet Benjy continues to await her return at the fence. Besides her wedding day, other significant memories include the changing of Benjy's name from Maury, the image of Caddy's muddy drawers as she climbs the pear tree, and an incident at the fence involving a young school girl.

June Second, 1910
The novel's second section relates Quentin's final day before he commits suicide. Quentin is a student at Harvard but his obsessive thoughts about his sister's sexuality and marriage of convenience to Herbert Head far outweigh any academic aspirations. Memories of past events again intrude on the present and, as a result, Quentin's narration is not unlike Benjy's. (The technique, where thoughts interrupt each other and move back and forth, is known as "stream-of-consciousness.") However, Quentin's intense awareness of time lends his section a more coherent structure. He wakes to the sound of his watch, a gift from his father intended to help him "forget [time] now and then," twists off its hands and, instead of attending his morning classes, prepares for... ยป Complete The Sound and the Fury Summary