William Faulkner was kind of a madman. In 1929, he dropped a novel that essentially told the same tragic story four different times, through four different sets of eyes, and expected readers to just... figure it out. It’s called The Sound and the Fury. Most people start it, get twenty pages into Benjy’s section, and throw the book across the room in a fit of literal "fury." Honestly? I don't blame them. It’s a mess of shifting timelines, stream-of-consciousness rambling, and a family that is disintegrating in real-time. But there’s a reason this book sits at the top of every "must-read" list nearly a century later. It isn't just a difficult book; it’s a visceral experience of how grief and time can absolutely wreck a human being.
The Compson Family: A Slow-Motion Train Wreck
At its heart, The Sound and the Fury is about the Compsons. They were once Southern aristocrats in Jefferson, Mississippi, but by the time we meet them, they’re basically a walking ghost story. They’ve lost their money, their social standing, and—most importantly—their moral compass. The parents are a disaster. Mr. Compson is a cynical alcoholic who spends his time drinking and quoting nihilistic philosophy. Mrs. Compson is a self-absorbed hypochondriac who thinks the world is out to get her specifically.
Then you have the children: Quentin, Jason, Caddy, and Benjy.
Caddy is the emotional center of the book, which is wild because she never actually gets her own chapter to speak. We only see her through the warped lenses of her brothers. To Benjy, she is the smell of trees and the only source of pure love. To Quentin, she is a symbol of family honor that has been "sullied" by her sexuality. To Jason, she is the reason for all his financial problems. The tragedy of the Compsons is that none of them can see Caddy—or each other—for who they actually are. They only see what they’ve lost.
Why the First 100 Pages Feel Like a Fever Dream
If you’ve tried reading The Sound and the Fury, you know the "Benjy Problem." The first section is told from the perspective of Benjy Compson, a 33-year-old man with a severe intellectual disability. He doesn't understand the concept of time. To him, something that happened in 1898 is happening right now alongside something from 1928.
Faulkner switches between these time periods without warning.
One second Benjy is crawling through a fence as an adult; the next, he’s a child playing in the creek with Caddy. If you look at the original manuscripts or certain special editions, you’ll see that Faulkner actually wanted these shifts printed in different colored inks so people wouldn't get so confused. The publishers told him it was too expensive. So, we’re left with italics. Usually, when the text shifts into italics in Benjy’s section, it means a jump in time has occurred. It’s a puzzle. You have to look for "anchors"—specific characters who are dead in the "present" but alive in the "past"—to figure out where you are.
It’s frustrating. It’s brilliant. It’s also the most honest depiction of how memory actually works. Our brains don't store memories in chronological folders; they’re triggered by smells, sounds, and physical sensations. Benjy is the ultimate narrator because he has no filters. He just feels.
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Quentin Compson and the Burden of Time
Then we get to Quentin. If Benjy lives in a world where time doesn't exist, Quentin lives in a world where time is a literal monster. His section takes place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he’s a student at Harvard. It’s June 2, 1910—the day he kills himself.
Quentin is obsessed with the concept of "Southern Honor." He can’t handle the fact that his sister Caddy has had sex outside of marriage, mostly because it signifies the end of the old world he desperately wants to live in. He tries to "protect" her by claiming he committed incest with her, hoping that a sin that big would somehow freeze time and keep them together in a private hell where no one else could touch them.
It’s dark stuff.
The prose in this section gets increasingly frantic. Faulkner stops using punctuation entirely at certain points. Sentences run on for pages. Quentin wanders around Boston, breaks his watch, and tries to escape the ticking of time, but he can't. He’s haunted by his father’s voice, telling him that "Man is the sum of his misfortunes." For Quentin, The Sound and the Fury isn't just a title; it’s his reality. Life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. He decides that if life has no meaning, he doesn't want to be part of the story anymore.
Jason: The Villain You Love to Hate
After the heavy, poetic tragedy of Quentin, Faulkner gives us Jason. And honestly? Jason is a jerk. He’s the third brother, and his section is the most straightforward, mostly because he’s a pragmatic, bitter, and incredibly mean-spirited man. He hates everyone. He hates his mother, he hates his niece (also named Quentin), and he especially hates Caddy.
Jason represents the "New South." He doesn't care about honor or history; he cares about money and the stock market. He spends his days working at a hardware store and embezzling the money Caddy sends for her daughter. While Benjy is lost in the past and Quentin is crushed by it, Jason is trying to exploit it.
His narrative is written in a sharp, biting tone. It’s full of sarcasm and genuine malice. It provides a necessary grounding for the novel, but it also shows just how far the Compson family has fallen. They’ve gone from tragic heroes to petty thieves.
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Dilsey and the Final Perspective
The final section is told in the third person, but it centers on Dilsey, the Compsons' Black cook and the only person in the book who seems to have any sense of peace. It’s Easter Sunday, 1928. While the Compson family is literally screaming at each other and falling apart, Dilsey takes Benjy to church.
There’s a famous line here: "I seed the first and the last."
Dilsey has watched this family for decades. She saw them at their peak and she’s watching them die. Unlike the Compsons, who are trapped in their own egos and their obsession with the past, Dilsey has faith. She exists in the present. She endures. In a book filled with "sound and fury," Dilsey is the silence and the strength. She is the only one who truly understands that while families and empires fall, life goes on.
Real-World Context: Why This Matters Now
Faulkner didn't write this in a vacuum. He was writing during the Southern Renaissance, a time when writers were trying to grapple with the legacy of the Civil War, slavery, and the collapse of the plantation economy. The Sound and the Fury is basically a post-mortem of a dead culture.
The title itself is a reference to Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
"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."
Faulkner is asking: If everything we built—our names, our wealth, our "honor"—is gone, what was the point? Was it all just noise?
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How to Actually Read This Book Without Giving Up
If you're going to tackle this, don't try to be a hero. You won't get it all on the first pass. Nobody does. Even scholars who have spent forty years studying Faulkner still argue about what happens in some of the gaps between the chapters.
- Don't stop in Benjy’s section. If you get confused, just keep reading. The "vibe" is more important than the literal plot in the first 100 pages. You'll start to recognize names like Luster, TP, and Roskus. Just let the images wash over you.
- Use a guide. There’s no shame in it. Websites like HyperSum or even just a solid SparkNotes summary for each section can help you keep the timelines straight.
- Listen to the rhythm. Faulkner was a prose stylist first. If you read the sentences out loud, the emotional meaning often becomes clearer than if you just scan them with your eyes.
- Pay attention to the dates. Each section is dated.
- April 7, 1928 (Benjy)
- June 2, 1910 (Quentin)
- April 6, 1928 (Jason)
- April 8, 1928 (Dilsey/Third Person)
- Look for the "Caddy" moments. Since she’s the heart of the book but doesn't have a voice, your job as a reader is to piece her together. Who was she? Why did she leave? Why did her brothers obsess over her?
The Actionable Insight: Applying Faulkner to Your Life
Wait, how is a depressing book from 1929 actionable? Simple. The Sound and the Fury is a masterclass in perspective. It teaches us that two people can look at the exact same event and see two completely different realities.
Next time you’re in a conflict—whether it’s at work or with a partner—stop and realize that you are currently a "narrator" in your own version of the story. You have biases. You have a "Benjy" side that is reacting to old trauma, a "Quentin" side that is obsessed with how things should be, and maybe a "Jason" side that is being a bit too cynical.
True maturity, and the message Dilsey offers, is the ability to step outside of your own "sound and fury" and see the bigger picture. It’s about endurance. The Compsons fell because they couldn't stop looking backward. Dilsey stayed standing because she looked forward, even when the view was bleak.
If you want to understand the American South, modern literature, or just the messy way human memory works, you have to read this book. It’s hard. It’s frustrating. It’s kind of a nightmare. But it’s also one of the most beautiful things ever put to paper.
Next Steps for Readers:
- Pick up the Norton Critical Edition. The footnotes are literal lifesavers.
- Watch a lecture. Yale University has an open course by Professor Amy Hungerford on YouTube that breaks down the Compson family tree in a way that actually makes sense.
- Read "As I Lay Dying" next. It’s Faulkner’s other masterpiece, slightly shorter, and uses multiple narrators in a way that’s a bit more "user-friendly" than the Benjy section.