I put the other flower in it.įiction typically follows some sort of consistent timeline Benjy’s narration does not. Then we got there, and then the shadows were gone. It’s near impossible to hook onto his thought process as we would a typical narrator’s. As the story goes on, however, we learn that he is much older and is actually mentally handicapped.įaulkner pieces together Benjy’s thoughts in an eerie, seemingly random fashion. The narrator, Benjy, appears to be a young child who is barely able to form complete thoughts. True to the novel’s title, the first chapter starts off with a fury of incomprehensible, internal dialogue. But I can confirm that if you are willing to hold off on any judgment through the first two chapters, a beautiful and epic tragedy will unravel that is well worth any frustrations. I couldn’t tell who the characters were or what was happening – cornerstones of any piece of conventional fiction. Without the author’s prestige, I would have thrown down this book in frustration.

Faulkner weaves in and out of a complex stream of consciousness without any clear indications of where the story is leading. The first two chapters of the novel, which make up almost half the length of the entire book, are disorienting. Now – after the death of their father and the continued abuse from their psychotic, hypochondriac mother – they must confront the tragedy that awaits them. Years before, they were the quintessential, white American family: wealthy, self-made, and deeply religious. The Sound and the Fury tells the story of an early 20th century, Southern family driving themselves into financial and moral ruin. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets. Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged.

The sound and the fury book