He can make connections between the past and the present that others might not be able to, and his impairment frees him from the other Compsons’ preoccupation with the renown of their name in the past.Īs a result of being stuck in time, Quentin is unable and unwilling to let go of his memories of the past. Benjy doesn’t understand the time and cannot tell the difference between the past and the present. The Concept of Time in The Sound and the Furyįaulkner argues that people can engage with time in a variety of ways and that it is not a consistent or objectively understood concept. Compson, continually serves as a reminder of the illustrious heritage that Quentin’s family values so highly. The watch, which previously belonged to Mr. With or without the watch, Quentin is unable to shake his obsession over time. Compson gave Quentin a watch in the hopes that it would help him feel less obliged to focus so much attention on keeping track of the time. Caddy, who is still a virgin, removes the perfume, metaphorically washing away her sin.Īnother symbolic element in ‘The Sound and the Fury’ is the wristwatch of Quentin. When Benjy first notices that Caddy is wearing perfume, he becomes furious. She smears her underwear, which foreshadows Caddy’s eventual promiscuity, though. Caddy seems to be the picture of innocence and purity, playing in the stream as a child. Throughout the book, water represents purification and cleansing, especially about Caddy. He makes confused readers piece together Benjy’s muddled thoughts and feelings to find the significance hidden there before moving on to the main plot. Faulkner’s deliberate decision illustrates his belief that perfect communication is never attainable. The fact that Benjy is a man with a severe mental handicap who is mute makes using this technique in the first chapter of ‘The Sound and the Fury’ particularly difficult. Additionally, it could be difficult to tell who characters are speaking or what events are being recounted. To mimic the actual flow of thoughts through the mind, the approach creates potentially perplexing alterations in time and space, such as abruptly leaping from the past to the present or from one location to another. The technique of “stream of consciousness” places the reader inside the narrator’s head, where ideas and language come to them naturally.

The novel’s four different narrators and the stream-of-consciousness literary technique Faulkner uses in the first two sections contribute significantly to its complexity. ‘The Sound and the Fury’ has long been regarded as being extremely difficult to read and comprehend. The form of ‘The Sound and the Fury’ is unmistakably Modernist Faulkner makes use of a variety of literary Modernist tropes, such as the use of erratic narrators, interior monologues, and unorthodox syntax.

Sound and the fury novel