The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s … Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
“I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire. . . . 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 of 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.” —from The Sound and the Fury
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William Faulkner never fails to astound me. His prose is complex and beautiful and his observations of people and their language and behavior is truly unequaled. To me, all of his books deserve to be read again and again.
The Sound and the Fury is told in four parts. The first three by three brothers of vastly different personalities and the …
If you haven’t read Faulkner, I would suggest this novel as the starting point.
An all-time-favorite. The first section, narrated by the “idiot” Benjy, is confusing unless you get a sense of the timeline and, perhaps more importantly, realize that he has no sense of time, that he freely associates events with anything and everything that has happened during his 33 years. But his section creates an outline for what follows in …
The Sound and the Fury tells the story of the decline of the Southern aristocracy through the microcosm of the Compsons, a once wealthy and noble family who have fallen into financial and moral decline. The book is told from the perspective of the three Compson sons and their black servant, Dilsey, but the real centre of the novel is the only …
Good story. Faulkner is a little hard to read
One of the worst books I’ve ever read. I had to read it for a college class. If I had not bought the Cliff Notes, I never would have finished it as the first section is told from the POV of a mentally challenged boy. It’s stream of consciousness writing, so you can imagine what that was like! There are MANY southern writers who are MUCH better …
Yuk
Hard to get but worth it.
Faulkner, nothing more needs be said…
Can’t wrap my brain around Faulkner’s.
A brilliant and compelling psychological study in character with gorgeous passages vividly describing time and place, smells, and emotions. Powerful evocative dialog effusing anger, fear, anxiety, and jealousy painting the scenes in tragedy worthy of any Shakespeare play. Complex multiple point of view chapters with intense stream of consciousness …
While not an easy read, when one is finally finished reading this book, it all comes together. Hang in there. First two sections are quite confusing.