The Sound and the Fury: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism

William Faulkner once described The Sound and the Fury, his fourth novel, as “a real son-of-a-bitch” and “the greatest I’ll ever write.” Set in Jefferson, Mississippi, the novel — a classic example of Southern gothic literature — traces the decaying values of the Southern society through the downfall of the aristocratic Compson family. The Sound and the Fury is structured into four distinct sections and perspectives: Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a mentally disabled 33-year-old man, narrates Part 1: April 7, 1928; Benjy’s older brother, Quentin, narrates Part 2: June 2, 1910; Jason, the youngest Compson brother, narrates April 6, 1928; and Part 4: April 8, 1928 (the day after Part 1) is narrated by a newly introduced third person omniscient point of view. Like James Joyce and other Modernist writers, Faulkner experimented with various narrative techniques, including narrator shifts, frequent times shifts, unconventional punctuation and sentence structure, and — perhaps most predominantly — stream-of-consciousness. Revealing the inner thoughts of the characters to the reader, the narration of The Sound and the Fury is attentive to the events surrounding each character in the present, but also frequently returns to their memories of the past. In doing so, the four parts of the novel relate many of the same episodes, each from different points of view. While initial sales of The Sound and the Fury well less than impressive, the novel became commercially successful with the 1931 publication of Faulkner’s sixth novel, Sanctuary. Still, not one of Faulkner’s novels that followed ever generated as much critical response as The Sound and the Fury. The author was praised for this ability to effectively capture the intimate processes of the human mind in the novel and it played a role in William Faulkner's receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

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