The Sound and the Fury (1929)
5 Stars out of 5
William Faulkner
326 pages (paperback)
“… when Father gave it (Grandfather’s watch) to me he
said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly
apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience
which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his
father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might
forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to
conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought.
The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an
illusion of philosophers and fools.”
Jason Compson III to Quentin Compson III (“The
Sound and the Fury)
There are few novels more beautiful or more difficult to
read than William Faulkner’s 1929 masterpiece, “The Sound and the Fury”.
Borrowing the “stream of Consciousness” narrative form first introduced by
James Joyce in 1922’s “Ulysses”, Faulkner will try the patience of almost every
reader on their first foray into “The Sound and the Fury”. The book is split
into four parts, each one narrated by a different member of the Compson family.
The first part by the youngest, a mentally disabled child (Benjy) of the
patriarch, Jason Compson, will flit from 1898 to 1910 to 1928 and back again
practically with each new sentence; certainly with little pattern to time
change. The second part will by the eldest child of Jason III, Quentin Compson
III. Quentin despite being the oldest and the best educated of the Compson clan
will just as Benjy jump from present to past to present in his thoughts and
narration. The closing sections by Jason IV (the third child of Jason) in part
3 and an omniscient 3rd person narrator for part 4 will be far more
clear and linear, but just as surely far less insightful than the first two
sections. These four narrators will seem to tell the Compson family story, with
an apparent focus on the second child, Caddy (the only daughter). But as with
all great works of art, the “The Sound and the Fury” is much more than merely
its surface. This is a deep and thought provoking story that will stay in your
imagination for years.
To help ground you, I will sketch the skeleton of the
Compson family and their story. They are a formerly wealthy and influential
family living in Jefferson Mississippi. The father is a cynical and world-weary
man that simply cannot be bothered to care anymore about anything. His name is
Jason Compson III. His incredibly self-centered and shallow wife is Caroline
Compson nee Bascomb. When she is not complaining about one of her children
acting out as if they were a Compson rather than a Bascomb, she is whining
bitterly about how difficult her life (privileged as it is) has become. Her
sole consolation in this world is her third child, the equally self-centered
but far more bitter Jason IV. Her first child is Quentin III. He is
accomplished, thoughtful and thoroughly damaged emotionally by the cynicism of
his father. Quentin III’s only focus is his younger sister, the number two
child, Candace or Caddy. Caddy like Quentin is an empathic soul, though her
focus is on the fourth child the brain damaged Benjamin aka Benjy aka Maury.
Benjy loves Caddy to a fault, understands virtually nothing. He is described at
age 33 as having been 3 years old for 30 years. All of the children are nursed
and cared for by an African-American nanny by the name of Dilsey – and beware,
this book is filled to the brim with Southern word usage, including their most
infamous, the N-word.
The best section of the book is the opening section narrated
by Benjy. He was named Maury at birth for Caroline’s brother. But when it
became clear that little Maury was brain-damaged, Caroline renamed him Benjamin;
all in her lifelong efforts to “save” the Bascomb family reputation. Caroline makes
it clear in later sections (and to some degree in this first section) that she
would have been far happier to never have had Benjy. In stark contrast to
Caroline is Caddy’s maternal care and love for Benjy, and his for her. Poor
Benjy lives in a severely circumscribed world. He moves through “his” pasture
as his personal version of the world. He is amazed and entranced in later years
(after the pasture is sold to an adjacent golf club) as golfers or young women walk
by. If he should find a golf ball, his day is made. However, it is the young
women that walk by coupled with his complete lack of understanding about how to
interact with anyone other than Caddy that is his downfall. He will reach out
to one young girl, and will end up getting “gelded” to prevent any further such
actions by him. One might have thought Caroline would have defended him to
prevent such a sterilization, but one would be grossly inaccurate in such an
assumption.
However, it is not only the content (as good as it is) that makes
Benjy’s narration so noteworthy. Rather there is a kind of rhythm to his
section that seems almost musical. For example, Faulkner adopts a specific type
of style for each section of the book for the dialogs he records. In Benjy’s
story, it passes something like the following: ….Father said, and then ….Caddy
said; and this type of phrasing followed always by the character’s name and the
word “said”. It becomes a kind of musical counterpoint to the dialog.
Regardless of whatever is actually said, the reader can become fixated or even
annoyed by the endless examples of “….XXX said”. But if you step back a little
and think of it as a song with intentional repetitions, it brings a new meaning
to the purpose of the words in Benjy’s recitation. It is not just that the
words carry their intrinsic meanings, but they act somewhat like a drummer in a
pop song as they set a beat to the story.
In surely intentional
contrast, Benjy’s narration is followed by Quentin III’s. Quentin’s speech has
a poetic element of its own, but rather than one written for grade school kids,
his is written for English literature post-graduate students. Quentin is far
more troubled than Benjy. He lives in awe and disgust of his father. Jason III
is a morally apathetic creature waiting to die. He will infuse his son Quentin III
with a very mixed bag of ideals and philosophies; and they will in concert with
Caddy’s behavior take Quentin down a path to an early and ultimately pointless
death. Quentin’s thoughts and speech during the narrative are far more difficult
to follow than Benjy’s. With Benjy, Faulkner provides “signposts” as to which
Benjy is speaking: the 3 year old with Versh (part of the African-American
staff’s family), the 12 year old Benjy with T.P. (again from the staff’s
family), and finally with Dilsey’s grandson Luster when Benjy is 33. The reader
must pay attention, but stream of consciousness or no, pairing Benjy with one
of the staff allows the reader to properly gage the time frame. But with Quentin,
no such sign posts exist. He obsesses over Caddy’s pregnancy and her pending
marriage to a cad, Herbert the banker. He will shift mental gears to the
present as he tries to help a young girl find her way home, to his worries
about Harvard or some cynical bon mot from his father. These latter thoughts
caught up as they are with Caddy’s situation will drive Quentin to utter
distraction (and maybe the reader as well, as he or she tries to follow Quentin’s
story).
The final two sections, the first by a true product of the
union between a cynical father and a supremely self-centered mother (i.e. Jason
IV) and the section largely about Dilsey’s point of view (though not with her
voice) seem to serve no other purpose than to fill the gaps left by Benjy’s and
Quentin’s narratives. And there are gaps to be filled. The four parts put together
along with an epilog published by Faulkner of the Compson family genealogy
create an image of a family (or perhaps of a culture, if we think symbolically)
that has fallen from grace; far from grace. This is a book that can be enjoyed
for the rich variety of characters that Faulkner so elegantly sketches for the
reader, or perhaps for the completeness of his recitation of the various vernaculars
and values from the Old South in early 20th century America. Either
approach to this book will lead to some enlightenment and enjoyment on the part
of the reader. But I would suggest that the reader think to some degree in
terms of symbols. Is Caddy’s loss of virginity a symbol for the loss of
innocence (at least from a Southern point of view) that the South felt after
losing the Civil War? Or does the ” fall from power and influence” that the
Compson family experiences over the three generation detailed in this book express
a harsher view of the South and its history? Consider how those generations change: from
wealthy and cynical Jason III to idealistic and depressed Quentin III to indifferent
Quentin IV (Caddy’s daughter). Summarizing these characters with one or two
modifiers does not do them justice, but it helps to build a road for the family’s
change in fortunes – albeit a road to perdition.
This book appears as number 6 on the Modern Library 100 Best
English-Language Novels of the 20th Century. It is a hard read and
after the first time through it (just like number 1, Joyce’s “Ulysses”), you
might well ask yourself, why is it in the Top 100? It is hard; there is no
doubt about that. But I suggest, read it a second time. I think you will find
as I did, that is worth the effort. I think that you like me, conclude it
definitely is one of the English-Language’s Top 10 books.
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