The Sound and the Fury

'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner chronicles the fall of the Compson family in Jefferson, Mississippi in the 20th Century.

‘The Sound and the Fury’ details the descent of the once-great Compson family. The story explores the passage of time, human values, and nostalgia for the Old South.

Key Facts about The Sound and the Fury

  • Book Title: The Sound and the Fury
  • Author: William Faulkner
  • Type Of Work: Fiction
  • Genre: Modernism
  • Language: English
  • Time And Place Written: 1928; Oxford, Mississippi
  • Date Of First Publication: 1929
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith
  • Point Of View: Benjy, Quentin, and Jason narrate in the first person as participants.
  • Climax: The stealing of Jason’s money by Miss Quentin and her elopement with the man wearing the red tie
  • Setting: Jefferson, Mississippi, and Cambridge, Massachusetts (Harvard University)
  • Tense: Present and Past
  • Protagonist: Dilsey, the Compson children

William Faulkner and The Sound and the Fury

In ‘The Sound and the Fury’, the once-aristocratic Compson family of northern Mississippi’s Yoknapatawpha County is depicted dramatically as it experiences a downward spiral. The history is divided into four portions, with each section being recounted by one of the three Compson brothers: Benjamin, Quentin, and Jason.

Before publishing his debut work, William Faulkner started by composing poems. Many of his works are set in the fictitious Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi.

Even though Faulkner battled alcoholism his whole life, he was nevertheless able to publish 19 novels as well as numerous other short pieces and screenplays. He is now regarded as one of the most significant modern American authors after receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. At the age of 64, he passed away from a heart attack.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Digital Art
The Sound and the Fury Digital Art

Book Related to The Sound and the Fury

The books related to ‘The Sound and the Fury’ utilize unorthodox modernist approaches to storytelling.

  • ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel García Márquez tells the tale of the Buendía family’s rise and fall, as well as the growth and decline of their fictional community of Macondo. Readers learn about the seven generations of the cursed lineage as they live, love, and pass away in their town through a sequence of flashbacks, scenes, and backstories.
  • ‘Absalom, Absalom!’ by William Faulkner narrates the events that take place in northern Mississippi’s Yoknapatawpha County, close to the fictional town of Jefferson. The story centres around the persona and deeds of Thomas Sutpen, a young man from what will one day be West Virginia with a burning desire to be respectable and never to be ostracized or treated with contempt by others who have more money than him, such as other plantation (and slave) owners.
  • ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce is a masterpiece of contemporary writing, loosely inspired by the Odyssey, follows common Dubliners in 1904. Joyce takes Celtic lyricism and obscenity to glorious extremes while capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his pals Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a fascinating cast of supporting characters.
  • ‘Blood Meridian’ by Cormac McCarthy is an epic book that successfully subverts the tropes of the Western novel and the Wild West legend to tell the story of the brutality and depravity that accompanied America’s westward expansion. It follows the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessee native who stumbles into a nightmare world where Indians are being killed and the market for their scalps is thriving. It is based on actual events that happened on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s.
  • ‘Pale Fire’ by Vladimir Nabokov introduces the poem ‘Pale Fire’ by Charles Kinbote, a former instructor at Wordsmith College. From the fictitious town of Cedarn in the fictitious American state of Utana, he writes. The poet John Shade and Kinbote were formerly neighbors in “New Wye, Appalachia, U.S.A.,” but Shade passed away a few months before the preface was written. Kinbote claims to have spoken with Shade’s murderer in prison. He talks of his friendship with Shade, yet it doesn’t seem like Shade felt the same way. Before reading the poem, Kinbote encourages readers to first read his in-depth discussion. The brilliant literary puzzle that is Nabokov’s darkly humorous and lavishly innovative masterpiece is a thrilling whodunit, a tale of competitiveness and shaky handwriting.

The Lasting Impact of The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner’s modernist tale has had a profound impact on subsequent writers of the American extraction like Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, and Harper Lee. Gabriel García Márquez directly credited ‘The Sound and the Fury’ as a major source of inspiration.

The Sound and the Fury Review ⭐

‘In The Sound and the Fury’, William Faulkner utilizes a stream-of-consciousness writing style to tell the story of the Compsons.