The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury Summary | Plot Summary Summary

The Sound and the Fury is a novel in four parts, set in a fictional county in Mississippi and depicting the decline of a dysfunctional Southern family: alcoholic father Jason Compson, self-centered and self-pitying mother Caroline Bascomb Compson, and their four children.

Jason Compson is a caring father, while Caroline is too self-absorbed to have any time for her children. She sees her youngest son's affliction as a curse on the family, and when he is five years old changes his name from Maury to Benjamin, believing that this will cure him.

Her brother Maury is a poor businessman and a weak character that makes unsuccessful investments, usually with money he borrows from other people, including his sister, whom he panders to in order to be able to get money from her. He has an affair with a neighbor, and uses the children to send notes to her.

The youngest child, Benjy, is mute and severely mentally retarded, left mostly to the care of a succession of the family's black servants. He has no understanding of time, and his recollections move backwards and forwards between various periods of his life without any sequence. He spends much of his time watching the golf course through the fence of his garden.

As a young child, Benjy's world revolves around his sister Candace, known as Caddy, the only one of his siblings who is patient and loving towards him, and he spends his days waiting at the gate for her return from school. Caddy understands Benjy and promises him she will never leave him.

As Caddy matures, however, her promiscuity leads to her becoming pregnant. She marries a wealthy banker, who promises her brother Jason a job in his bank. When he finds out that he is not the father of Caddy's child he divorces her, bringing shame on her family and costing Jason his promised job. Caddy names her daughter Quentin, after her dead brother, and sends her to be raised by her mother and brother Jason. Caroline Compson forbids Caddy's name to be mentioned in the Compson household.

Quentin is a romantic and sensitive boy who idolizes Caddy, both desiring her and wanting to keep her pure. He is frequently involved ineffectually in fights defending his sister's honor and reputation. His father sells land to send Quentin to Harvard, but unable to accept Caddy's shame and with his illusions shattered by her, Quentin commits suicide.

The brother Jason is the only one of the children to whom their mother relates, in as far as she can think of anybody but herself. She thinks of him as a Compson, not a Bascomb. He is an unpleasant child who keeps himself apart from his siblings, and grows into a bitter, cruel and avaricious man, disappointed with life and venting his anger on his niece Quentin. He is employed in a local store because the storeowner feels sorry for his mother, and he steals the money Caddy sends for Quentin's upkeep. He has also stolen money from his mother.

Quentin, like her mother Caddy, is rebellious and promiscuous, and runs away with a man from a traveling circus, after breaking into Jason's room and stealing the money he keeps locked up there, most of which rightfully belongs to Quentin. Jason gives chase but fails to catch them.

The family's black servant Dilsey is the person who holds the family together, caring for the children and their difficult mother patiently and selflessly despite her increasing old age and infirmity, and accepting them all unconditionally and regardless of their faults, in the same way that she accepts the kitchen clock that only has one hand and strikes three times less than the real time. At an Easter church service where she takes Benjy with her, they are both moved by the sermon of a traveling preacher - even Benjy is entranced. Dilsey declares that she has "seen the beginning and the end."

The final scene of the book shows Benjy being driven in the carriage by Luster, to the cemetery where his father and Quentin are buried. Luster drives the wrong way around a monument, leaving Benjy terrified and screaming. Seeing what is happening, Jason turns the horse so that the carriage can pass the monument on the correct side and Benjy relaxes, clenching a broken flower in his fist, calm now that the carriage is going in the usual way.

This is a tale of hopelessness, unfolding through the narrations of the three Compson sons, and it is not until the story is well advanced that it begins to become coherent. Its power is in the way the story is told through the emotions of its principal characters. It needs reading more than once in order to be able to fully enjoy and understand it. There is no happy conclusion; in fact, it does not really have any ending at all.

Considering the bleakness of their domestic situation, the reader can understand why Quentin is driven to find love where she can, in the same way that her mother Caddy was, leading to the disastrous effects on the lives of her three brothers.