Quotes from The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner. It’s worth struggling through the first chapter to get into the novel and then revel in it. The book has many marvellous phrases and observations and is funny and sharp. The daughter is not allowed contact with her daughter, who lives with her grandmother and follows her mother into promiscuity. The other son is an idiot, whereas the adventurous daughter is abandoned by her husband for her promiscuity. The oldest son, the clever one they sold land to send to Harvard, kills himself. The neurotic mother takes to her bed and indulges one thieving, self-centred son. But the only good and caring character in the book is Dilsey, the aging black servant. Faulkner writes a lot about blacks (using the “n word” I don’t dare write) and captures-to my ear at least-the rhythms of black speech, but he doesn’t anywhere say explicitly that Southern life is wrong. Ostensibly it’s the story of the downfall of a once aristocratic Southern family in Jackson Mississippi, but I wonder how much it’s about the decline of the South itself after its defeat in the Civil War and its attempt to maintain a clearly unjust society with blacks as second class citizens. The book was ranked fourth of a 100 modernist 20 th century novels, and I can see why. The timing is complex: chapter one is April 7 th 1928, chapter three April 6 th, chapter four April 8 th, and chapter two June 2 nd 1910.

Each of the four chapters is told from the perspective of different characters in different voices. The reading becomes easier, and the spell captures you. The Sound and Fury is not an easy read, particularly the first chapter, but do not be discouraged. The speech comes when Macbeth learns that his wife is dead, and in my memory Schofield exclaims it, speaking it as if it a judgement on all our lives but all the actors I have listened to today on Youtube-Ian Mckellen, Patrick Stewart, John Gielgud, and Anthony Sher-say the speech quietly, filled with grief for the dead wife. I write “vividly,” but a memory can be vivid and wrong. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player The speech from Macbeth is one of my favourite of Shakespeare’s speeches, and I remember vividly hearing Paul Schofield speak it at the National Theatre.Ĭreeps in this petty pace from day to dayĪnd all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The speech is, however, apt not only because the novel is filled with death, the Southern family is falling apart at a “petty pace from day to day,” most of the characters are “poor players,” but also because the first chapter is told through the mind of Benjy, a 33-year-old idiot.

Did William Faulkner have Shakespeare’s great speech in mind as he started The Sound and the Fury or did he come to it later? Wikipedia tells me he came to it later.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner