I first read the Sound and the Fury when I was nineteen and I was not ready. Consequently, I remembered almost nothing about it and understood even less. Revisiting it two decades later, I can say this time I remember a lot more and understand at least some of it, so that’s progress.
The story, if you can call it that, concerns the Compsons, a once-prosperous white Mississippi family that has been brought low by time and circumstance. Each of its four parts ostensibly takes place over a single day (Parts 1, 3, and 4 over Easter weekend in 1928, Part 2 in June of 1910), though the recollections and musings of the different narrators send them sprawling over a much wider range of time.
The first section is told by Benjy Compson, who is mentally disabled and speaks with a limited vocabulary. One would think this would simplify the prose, but Benjy’s section is if anything the hardest to follow. He has little to no grasp on what he sees, which means the reader has to infer events from puzzled descriptions, and he frequently confuses the past with the present.
The second part takes us back in time to Quentin Compson, and intelligent but disturbed figure who spends the day planning his suicide. Faulkner leverages a lot of stream of consciousness passages to portray his frazzled state, though Quentin at least understands his circumstances and describes things in a somewhat comprehensive manner.
Back in 1928, Jason Compson narrates the third part. Jason is a crude and unpleasant man who begrudges his family for their reliance on him. His plainspoken prose is the clearest in the book, though he too is an unreliable narrator in a sense, as his hard-done-by posturing and self-absorption cause him to paint his actions in an unrealistically flattering light.
The fourth section steps back from the characters altogether, relying instead on an impartial omniscient narrator. Here we finally get what seems like an honest picture of the characters.
There are some plot elements, but they are buried under Faulkner’s style and don’t seem terribly important. The book feels more like it is to be experienced than understood. Faulkner wrote it at a time where he thought he’d never be published again, and so threw himself headlong into obscurity almost out of spite. The result isn’t a joy to read, but Faulkner’s skill is tough to deny.