William Faulkner was a mess. A brilliant, whiskey-soaked, Southern Gothic mess. When he sat down to write The Sound and the Fury, he wasn’t trying to top the bestseller lists or make things easy for high school English students seventy years later. He was trying to catch lightning in a bottle. He was trying to tell a story about a family falling apart—the Compsons—and he realized that a normal, linear narrative just wouldn't cut it. To explain a tragedy that spans decades, you have to feel the time slipping through your fingers.
Most people pick up this book and quit after ten pages. Honestly, I don't blame them. The first section is narrated by Benjy Compson, a 33-year-old man with a severe intellectual disability who doesn't understand the concept of "now." To Benjy, a smell or a specific word can teleport him from 1928 back to 1900 in the middle of a sentence. It’s chaotic. It’s loud. It’s full of The Sound and the Fury, just like the Shakespeare quote it’s named after.
But if you stick with it? It’s arguably the greatest American novel ever written.
The Macabre History of the Compson Family
The book isn't just about a "sad family." It’s about the total collapse of the Old South, distilled into four specific days. Faulkner gives us the perspective of three brothers—Benjy, Quentin, and Jason—and then a final, more objective look at their sister Caddy through the eyes of their Black cook, Dilsey.
Caddy is the heart of the book, but we never get her voice. Isn't that wild? The most important person in the story is only seen through the warped lenses of her brothers.
- Benjy loves her like a mother figure.
- Quentin is obsessed with her "purity" to a point that is, frankly, deeply disturbing and incestuous.
- Jason hates her because he thinks she ruined his chances at a successful life.
It’s a brutal look at how people project their own insecurities onto the women in their lives. Faulkner isn't being subtle here. He’s showing how the weight of the past—the "fury" of a dying social order—crushes the present.
Why Benjy’s Section is Actually a Masterpiece of Empathy
Let's talk about the italics. If you open a copy of The Sound and the Fury, you’ll see blocks of text that suddenly shift into italics. That’s your only map. Faulkner uses italics to signal a time jump. One second, Benjy is walking near a fence in 1928; the next, he’s a child in 1898 watching his grandmother’s funeral.
📖 Related: Big Brother 27 Morgan: What Really Happened Behind the Scenes
It feels like a puzzle.
Critics at the time, like those writing for The New York Times in 1929, were baffled. They called it "difficult" and "arcane." But Faulkner’s genius was in portraying a mind that functions purely on sensory memory. Benjy doesn't have a filter for grief. When he smells "trees," he’s happy because Caddy used to smell like trees. When she leaves, the smell becomes a haunting reminder of what he lost. It’s visceral. It’s the kind of writing that makes your own skin crawl because you’re forced to experience the world without the safety net of logic.
Quentin Compson and the Burden of Time
Then we get to Quentin. If Benjy is "too much" feeling, Quentin is "too much" thinking. His section takes place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the day he decides to take his own life. He spends the whole day obsessing over his watch. He even breaks the glass and pulls off the hands, but the ticking just keeps going.
"Man the sum of his misfortunes," Faulkner writes. "One day you'd think misfortune would get tired, but then time is your misfortune."
Quentin represents the "Lost Cause" of the South. He’s obsessed with honor and virginity and old-school chivalry in a world that has moved on. He can't handle the fact that his sister Caddy has her own agency. He wants to stop time. He wants to freeze her in a moment where they were both "pure." Because he can't do that, he chooses to exit time altogether. It’s heavy stuff. It’s also incredibly complex because Faulkner writes Quentin’s internal monologue as a stream-of-consciousness blur. No punctuation. No breaks. Just the raw, bleeding thoughts of a man at the end of his rope.
The Jason Problem
If you need a villain, look no further than Jason Compson III. He’s the third narrator. Unlike the poetic madness of his brothers, Jason is terrifyingly sane. He’s a petty, bitter, racist, and sexist man who works at a hardware store and steals money from his niece.
👉 See also: The Lil Wayne Tracklist for Tha Carter 3: What Most People Get Wrong
His section is easy to read. That’s the trap.
Faulkner makes Jason’s prose clear and fast-paced to reflect his cold, transactional view of the world. He’s the "modern" man who has replaced the old South’s obsession with "honor" with a new obsession with "money." Honestly, he’s one of the most loathsome characters in literature, yet you can’t look away. You see how the family’s decline has curdled into this specific type of American malice.
Deciphering the Narrative Layers
People often ask if there’s a "right" way to read this book. There isn't. You’re supposed to feel lost. You’re supposed to feel the heat of the Mississippi sun and the dampness of the grass.
Faulkner actually wanted to print the Benjy section in different colored inks to represent the different years. The technology wasn't there in 1929—it was too expensive—so he settled for the italics. In 2012, the Folio Society finally published a "Limited Edition" that used 14 different colors of ink. It’s beautiful, but some purists argue it makes it too easy. Part of the power of The Sound and the Fury is the work you have to put in. You have to earn the story.
Dilsey: The Moral Compass
The final section is the only one written in the third person. It focuses on Dilsey, the Black woman who has spent her life holding the Compson family together while they fell apart.
She sees everything.
✨ Don't miss: Songs by Tyler Childers: What Most People Get Wrong
"I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin," she says.
While the Compsons are obsessed with their own legacies and their own "fury," Dilsey is the only one who actually lives in the present. She has a quiet, enduring strength that the white characters completely lack. Faulkner uses her to show that while the Compson family line is ending in tragedy and suicide, life—real, gritty, enduring life—continues in the people they chose to overlook.
Making Sense of the Chaos
If you’re planning to tackle this book, don't try to understand every word on the first pass. You won't. Nobody does. Even Faulkner experts like Cleanth Brooks or André Bleikasten spent their entire careers debating what certain passages meant.
The trick is to read it like a piece of music. You don't ask what a C-sharp "means" in a symphony; you feel the tension it creates. The same goes for Faulkner’s prose. The repetition of names (there are two Quentins and two Jasons, which is annoying on purpose) is meant to show how families get trapped in cycles they can't break.
The Sound and the Fury is a ghost story. Not with actual ghosts, but with the memories of people who are still alive but functionally dead to each other.
How to Actually Finish the Book
- Skip the Appendix first. Faulkner wrote an "Appendix" years later for a different edition. Some people say read it first to understand the plot. Don't do that. It spoils the emotional impact. Read the book, get confused, finish it, and then read the Appendix to see what you missed.
- Audiobooks are your friend. Listening to the Benjy and Quentin sections can actually help. You can hear the shifts in tone and the rhythmic quality of the Southern dialect.
- Watch the dates. Each section is dated. April 7, 1928. June 2, 1910. April 6, 1928. April 8, 1928. Notice they aren't in order. The "present" of the book is Easter weekend, 1928. Everything else is a flashback.
- Embrace the confusion. If you feel like you’re drowning, you’re doing it right. Faulkner wanted you to feel the disorientation of a world where the old rules don't apply anymore.
Why We Still Care in 2026
We live in a world of 15-second clips and instant gratification. Faulkner is the antidote to that. He demands your full attention. He reminds us that human beings are not simple. We are messy, inconsistent, and haunted by things that happened twenty years ago.
The Compsons are a warning. They are a family that stopped looking forward because they were too busy staring at the shadows of their ancestors. When you strip away the complex literary techniques, The Sound and the Fury is just a story about how hard it is to love people who are determined to destroy themselves.
It’s heartbreaking. It’s loud. It’s furious. And it’s one of the few books that actually changes the way you think about time.
Actionable Steps for New Readers
- Download a Guide: Use a resource like SparkNotes or the University of Virginia's "Digital Yoknapatawpha" project as you read. It maps out the characters so you don't get the Quentins mixed up.
- Annotate the Italics: Use a pencil. When you hit an italicized section, jot down a quick note about what year you think it is. Usually, if it involves a character named "Damuddy," it's 1898. If it involves "Luster," it's 1928.
- Contextualize the South: Briefly research the post-Civil War "Reconstruction" era. Understanding the economic shift from plantations to "modern" commerce explains why Jason is so angry and why the Compsons are selling off their land (the "Compson Mile") to pay for university tuitions they eventually waste.
- Read the ending twice: The final scene with the horse carriage is a perfect metaphor for the whole book. If things don't go in the "ordered" direction, the world falls apart. Pay attention to which way the carriage turns.