Noise and commotion

Author: Faulkner
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: The Sound and the Fury is Faulkner's mature work, as well as the novel he spend most effort on and personally enjoys the most. The story tells the family tragedy of the Compson family, a declining Southern aristocratic family. Old Compson is idle and fond of drinking, while his wife is selfish, cold, and always complaining. The eldest son Quentin desperately clings to the so-called Southern old traditions, and out of guilt over his sister Caddy's promiscuity, which he believes dishonors the Southern lady's reputation, he even commits suicide by drowning. The second son Jason is cold and greedy, while the third son Benjy is a idiot, with the mental capacity of a three-year-old at the age of thirty-three. The entire novel unfolds through the inner monologues of these three sons, centered around Caddy's fall, and finally supplemented by the "limited perspective" of the black maid Dilsey in the first three parts, concluding the whole story. The novel extensively employs the multiple perspective narrative method and stream-of-consciousness technique, making it a classic masterpiece of stream-of-consciousness novels and the entire modernist literature.