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Anyway, the novel follows the decline of the Compson family in Jefferson, Mississippi, during the early 1900s, spanning 30 years. The family is dealing with the decline of their status and the breakdown of their reputation as former Southern aristocrats. Sort of reminded me of Sir Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor in that way. In that time, the family experiences financial ruin, loss of religious faith, and the erosion of their standing within the community. This all comes to a head and everything really goes to shit as the novel concludes.
The title comes from act 5 of Shakespeare's Macbeth, the character's most famous soliloquy:
“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.”
It's divided into four distinct sections with very different styles. The first section, written from the perspective of Benjy Compson, an intellectually disabled 33-year-old man, takes place on April 7, 1928, his birthday. The narrative style here is disjointed and marked by frequent chronological leaps. The second section, written in stream-of-consciousness, focuses on Benjy's older brother, Quentin Compson, a Harvard student, and the events leading up to his suicide on June 2, 1910. The third section, which occurs on April 6, 1928, is written from the cynical perspective of Jason, Quentin's younger brother. This dude is a real piece of shit. The final section, set on April 8, 1928, is written from a third-person omniscient point of view and centers on Dilsey, one of the Compsons' black servants, and her relationship with Jason and "Miss" Quentin Compson. The section provides insight into the thoughts and actions of the entire Compson family. We really see Jason lose his shit in this section.
Benjy, the first narrator, is the youngest child of the Compson family. He was originally named Maury, but when it became apparent that he was mentally slow, Mrs. Compson (this bitch) renamed him Benjamin to avoid disgracing the Bascomb name. Benjy has the ability to "sense things" but is unable to communicate his knowledge to others. He knows when his pattern of existence is violated, when Caddy has been promiscuous, and when his brother Quentin committed suicide. His section is a difficult read with his bouncing around in time based on his thoughts. As he thinks of something that happened long ago, the reader is flung into that time period. Some critics see Benjy as a Christ figure, who represents Christ's failure to save the modern world. His inability to speak and his castration, not gonna get into that, symbolize the impotence of Christ's message in the modern world. He functions as the moral reflector of the novel and helps the reader evaluate other characters based on how they interact with him.
The character Quentin is a type of Hamlet in that he is plagued by indecisiveness and contemplation, ultimately leading to his suicide. Despite his reluctance to attend Harvard, his mother insists that he go there for his education. I mean, it is fucking Harvard. However, his time at the prestigious institution is an unhappy one as he longs for his family and the familiar way of life he left behind. Quentin is the only Compson who is concerned with honor/love. He searches for meaning in life in the face of the absurd. However, he is constantly reminded of his father's nihilistic philosophy, which seems to be reaffirmed by the world around him. Mr. Compson's beliefs have a profound impact on him. According to Mr. Compson, life is meaningless and devoid of any inherent value beyond personal pleasure and the pretense of gentlemanly behavior. He espouses determinism and fatalism, viewing man as the product of his misfortunes and suggesting that no action can truly hold any significance. This makes it difficult for Quentin to find any sense of purpose or meaning in his own life. He's also obsessed with Caddy's virginity. A weird thing to obsess over, your sister's chaste. In the end, he tragically takes his own life by drowning in the Charles River, near the campus. His suicide is his attempt to hold on to his grief and avoid the meaningless existence that would result from forgetting it.
Looming over the whole novel, drifting in and out of each narrative is Mrs. Compson, an extremely unpleasant hypochondriac. She greatly contributions to the Compson family's downfall throughout. She is a self-absorbed, neurotic woman who cannot provide the love and care that her children need. Her whining leaves no room for the love that the children require, except for Jason. She is unable to understand Benjy's needs and only causes him to bellow louder when she attempts to help. She prefers Jason to her other children, despite him being a complete prick who deserves no love at all. In the final chapter, she reveals her belief that her aristocratic status gives her special privileges in the eyes of God, saying “Whoever God is, He would not permit that. I’m a lady. You might not believe that from my offspring, but I am.” She is obsessed with the concept of family and ancestry, but she shows no capacity to love or care for her children, who are the last hope she has for maintaining her legacy.
In the final section of the novel, Jason justifies his pursuit of Miss Quentin, who stole back the money he had been thieving for the last 15 years, money her mother, Caddy, was sending to her. His dependence on the stolen money pisses him off, and he ultimately realizes he will never succeed because he never takes responsibility for being an asshole. This just pisses him off more though, nearly leading to him getting murdered when he fucks with the wrong carney.
He explains everything to the sheriff in the best possible light in the hope of getting the $3000 back. But the sheriff and everyone else in Jefferson know he is full of shit and he is basically told to fuck off. The sheriff is mostly concerned with what Jason would do to Miss Quentin if he finds her, telling him not do anything crazy and that he knows Jason's been stealing the ducats. “I wouldn’t lay my hand on her,” Jason responds. “The bitch that cost me a job, the one chance I ever had to get ahead, that killed my father and is shortening my mother’s life every day and made my name a laughing stock in the town. I wont do anything to her.” Bitter and resentful, as usual, this is Jason's default setting. He laments the loss of the bank job promised by Herbert Head, whom he blames Caddy for divorcing forever ago. Ironically, his declaration that he will not harm Miss Quentin is accurate since she is already gone, intensifying his rage.
Most of the novel is set during the Easter weekend of 1928, a time associated with death, but also the hope of renewal and resurrection. The South and religion, oof. This placement is significant as it mirrors the weekend of Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday. Dilsey, the Compson family’s long-serving cook, is the subject of the last section of the novel, which takes place on Easter. She represents a moral and humane force. Her love for all creatures is unwavering, and she treats each member of the family with equal compassion. “I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin,” she says when shit has hit the fan. Amidst the Compson family's downfall, she stands out as a source of hope, embodying another Christ-like figure who has endured suffering and hardship throughout her life while maintaining values of hard work, endurance, love of family, and religious faith. She is the only character who has successfully resurrected these abandoned values amidst the crumbling Compson family.
Dilsey does not dwell on the past, instead choosing to focus on how she can help the family in the present. Her steadfast loyalty to the Compsons is rooted in her long history with them, and she is the only character who successfully resurrects the values of hard work, endurance, love of family, and religious faith that the Compsons have lost. On Easter Sunday, amid the chaos of the Compson household, Dilsey brings order and peace, offering the reader a glimpse of hope for redemption. Dilsey’s insight into the Compson family tragedy and her ability to see it in the context of a greater cycle reveal her conviction and faith in her own vision of eternity, which is entirely free of worldly concerns. Her acceptance of the passage of time and her ability to remain focused on the present make her a calming and comforting presence in the midst of the family’s disintegration.
The Compsons have no one to blame but themselves for the sorry state they find themselves. Ther corruption of Southern values results in a household devoid of love, the force that once bound them together. The parents are distant and ineffectual, and Caddy, the only child who shows an ability to love, is disowned. Quentin's love for Caddy is obsessive and overprotective, and none of the men experience true romantic love. Dilsey is the only character who maintains her values without the corrupting influence of self-absorption, making her the only hope for the renewal of traditional Southern values in an uncorrupted form. She represents the torchbearer for these values and the only hope for the preservation of the Compson legacy. Faulkner suggests that the problem is not necessarily the values of the old South but the fact that these values were corrupted by families like the Compsons, and they must be recaptured for any Southern greatness to return.
So that is my take on The Sound and the Fury, a work of art among the greatest of American novels. Without it, no way Faulkner receives the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. A true literary achievement. Gonna have have to dive in to the rest of his work, it seems.
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