William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury recounts the tragic descent of the remnants of a high-born southern family into utter ruin. The story is told through the streams of consciousness of three key characters and concluded in a lucid narrative voice.
The first stream of consciousness is that of a retarded man, so the first seventy or so pages are a bit hard to follow. The next stream comes from a student who is away at Harvard, and makes leaps between different experiences and feelings that are almost as abrupt as those in the first chapter. The third stream of consciousness is back in northern Louisiana, in the more consistent voice of a small-town store clerk. The last chapter of the book breaks into a rich, literary narrative voice, clear and sparkling compared to the muddied streams that preceded it.
As the book progresses, Faulkner gradually adds context to the multitude of fragmented details initially thrown at the reader. The final chapter pencils in the last fuzzy lines, and brings the story to its narrative conclusion. The essence of the book is not, however, a narrative progression, at least not in the way it is told. The key sequence of events in the book take place over three days, and the immediate causes and results of these events are truly trivial—they merely serve as a window into the deep web of their ultimate causes, inviting the reader to draw his breath in horror at the totality of the tragedy which consumes this family and, finally, peters out pettily.
The Sound and the Fury provides a window into life in the deep south in the late 1920’s, and some insights which may be relevant to small town life in general. The intimate view of the relationships between the white family and their black servants is especially memorable. A side story from the second chapter of a little lost Italian girl in rural Massachusetts is also memorable and worthy of mention.
Overall, I must say that though the confusion in the beginning of the book was a bit frustrating, the more I read the more I liked it, and the finished canvas which I can see after reading to the end is an impressive one.