The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner | Only The Serious Need Apply

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The Sound and the ...

	The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner Vintage, 1991 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 193 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers--the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason.

Difficult and Complex

The Sound and the Fury / 0-679-73224-1

Difficult and complex, The Sound and the Fury details the slow decline of the American South through the metaphor of the fictional Compson family. This book is so complex and rewarding because Faulkner introduces the concept of the unreliable narrator - the book is alternately narrated by three brothers, one mentally retarded, another depressed and suicidal, and the third arrogant, cruel, and vicious. Because of this, our impressions of the Compson family (and of the pivotal sister, Caddy, who is never given her own voice) must emerge from these flawed narratives, attempting to find common ground between all three, and realizing that even this common ground is suspect.

Is sister Caddy a sweet, noble girl, an angel who cares for her mentally retarded brother and eases his troubled passage through childhood? Or is she a promiscuous, wanton young woman who commits incest with her suicidal older brother because he wants desperately to share her "shame" with her, in an attempt to save her? Or is she a stupid, easily manipulated woman, who is tricked by her cruel younger brother into giving him guardianship of her daughter and sending "support" money for her which he then steals for himself? In the end, we suspect that Caddy is none of these things, and is simply a woman, with all the complex motives and neuroses that plague her brothers. It is, in a way, a shame that Caddy - as the lynchpin of the Compson family - is not given a voice of her own, but we also understand that we would not be able to trust her any more than the mental ramblings and confused remembrances of her brothers.

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Only The Serious Need Apply

William Faulkner compels his readers to think, and sometimes to think mightily. This is one of his books that underscores mightily. The reader will be richly rewarded in availing himself of this masterpiece.

A Difficult Classic

This book is surely an American classic from one of our quintessential American novelists, but it is best appreciated by literature majors with an entire semester available to study it. Faulkner's use of literary devices like the unreliable narrator and stream-of-consciousness prose is highly compelling, with great results from fractured personality types like the mentally handicapped (Benjy), the disturbed (Quentin), and the hate-filled (Jason). Faulkner was a brilliant observer of the deteriorating state of Southern culture and values during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, represented here by the pathetic collapse of the once-noble Compson family.

But this book is an excessively difficult and often exasperating read. I am not penalizing the book because I chose not to spend an entire semester studying it, because maybe I'm not giving it the credit it deserves. But on the other hand, Faulkner loses points for obfuscation, with characters not being properly introduced, multiple characters with the same names (like the two Quentins), and shifting time streams and points of view. Of course, all of these were intentional by Faulkner to create a surreal and emotional effect. But it sure is difficult to follow the story. Nonetheless, this book is still a classic, but ask yourself how much of a struggle you enjoy with your reading experience. [~doomsdayer520~]

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