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''The Sound and the Fury'' (1929) is one of [[William Faulkner]]'s most famous novels, and considered by many to be his [[Magnum Opus]]. Because it's by William Faulkner, it is both mildly incomprehensible and heart-wrenchingly tragic (once you manage to figure out what's going on). The book, about the [[Big Screwed-Up Family|extremely dysfunctional Compson family]], is set in the [[Deep South]] during the early 1900s. The main story is about the four Compson siblings: Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Caddy. The book is divided into four sections, each told by a different member of the Compson family. The first section is from the perspective of Benjy, who is mentally retarded and doesn't ''quite'' understand what is going on. The second section is told by Quentin, who by that time has pretty much forsaken his family and is a student at Harvard. Quentin has issues. The third section is told by Jason, and it is the first section that is in any way comprehensible. The last section is a standard third person omniscient narrative focusing on Dilsey, the Compson's black cook, and the only character who realizes the self-destructive behaviors of the Compsons.▼
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| author = William Faulkner
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▲''[[The Sound and the Fury]]'' (1929) is one of [[William Faulkner]]'s most famous novels, and considered by many to be his [[Magnum Opus]]. Because it's by William Faulkner, it is both mildly incomprehensible and heart-wrenchingly tragic (once you manage to figure out what's going on). The book, about the [[Big Screwed-Up Family|extremely dysfunctional Compson family]], is set in the [[Deep South]] during the early 1900s. The main story is about the four Compson siblings: Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Caddy. The book is divided into four sections, each told by a different member of the Compson family. The first section is from the perspective of Benjy, who is mentally retarded and doesn't ''quite'' understand what is going on. The second section is told by Quentin, who by that time has pretty much forsaken his family and is a student at Harvard. Quentin has issues. The third section is told by Jason, and it is the first section that is in any way comprehensible. The last section is a standard third person omniscient narrative focusing on Dilsey, the Compson's black cook, and the only character who realizes the self-destructive behaviors of the Compsons.
In 1945, Faulkner wrote an [http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner/main/index.html appendix] that clears up a few issues and describes what happens to everyone that wasn't already dead by the novel's end.
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* [[Brother-Sister Incest]]: Just to be clear: Caddy and Quentin DID NOT have a sexual relationship, although Quentin spends the entirety of his section ranting about how they did. This is a lie that he told to his father, who made him believe that [[A Man Is Not a Virgin|A Man Who Is Not A Virgin Is Worthless]].
* [[Closer to Earth]]: Benjy. He can ''smell'' Caddy's lost virginity.
* [[Dead Guy, Junior]]: Caddy names her daughter after {{spoiler|her brother Quentin, who killed himself.}} This results in a surprising moment in Benjy's narrative in which Quentin is mentioned carrying out a particular action, but this action is described using feminine pronouns. It almost looks like a typo for a moment, until the reader realizes there are two people named Quentin.
* [[Deep South]]: The broader scope of the novel is the fall of pre-Reconstruction southern society and its obstinate refusal to take the transition lightly.
* [[Defiled Forever]]: Even though Caddy wasn't raped by Dalton Ames, everyone has this reaction to her having lost her virginity to him.
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* [[Jerkass]]: Jason.
** Luster is pretty nasty towards Benjy.
* [[Literary Allusion Title]]: "the sound and the fury" is [[Shout
** And the first part could be seen as "a tale told by an idiot."
** [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|It's symbolic of all the meaningless traditions the Compsons desperately cling to]], {{spoiler|which ultimately culminate in their demise}}.
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* [[My Beloved Smother]]: Caroline Compson is this to her favorite son Jason, who turns out to be as terrible as she is (though in a different way).
* [[My Girl Is Not a Slut|My Sister Is Not A Slut]]: {{spoiler|In order to preserve Caddy's dignity after she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, Quentin confesses to committing incest with her so that their parents won't think she was sleeping around. Yes, in the Compson family, [[Skewed Priorities|pre-marital sex is a worse sin than incest]]}}.
* [[My Sister Is Off
* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: Quentin's father preaches nihilism to him.
* [[Non-Linear Character]]: Benjy literally cannot tell the difference between the past and the present - everything seems to be happening to him at the same time. Quentin is not one of these, but his disjointed narrative gives the impression of it.
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** Faulkner himself is much more on the idealistic side than his characters-- the ending shows that it is Dilsey and her family who will inherit the earth, because they are held up by some degree of hope.
* [[Suicide Pact]]: {{spoiler|Quentin tries, and fails, to make one with Caddy}}.
* [[The Noun and
* [[Unconventional Formatting]]: In Quentin's narrative, sentences are broken up with short phrases in italics, there are long passages with extremely disjointed arrangement of text, and as the narrative goes on it begins to shed punctuation, paragraph breaks, capital letters and conventional sentence structures. This is used to visually represent Quentin's declining mental state.
* [[Unreliable Narrator]]: Quentin. It can be difficult at times to discern what really happened.
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[[Category:Lit Fic]]
[[Category:The Sound and The Fury]]
[[Category:Literature of the 1920s]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sound and the Fury, The}}
[[Category:Literature]]
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