The Sound and the Fury

Arguably one of the greatest novels written in modern times, William Faulkner’s masterpiece The Sound and the Fury is the story of the Compsons, a traditional upper-class family in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, who are on the brink of personal and financial ruin. Narrated in stream-of-consciousness, The Sound and the Fury introduces such memorable characters as the autistic Benjy, rebellious Caddy, obsessed Quentin, and wealth-seeking Jason, as well as their black servant Dilsey. In the telling of their own personal stories, each character reveals the events behind the decline of their family and the loss of their money, faith, respect, and each other.

Faulkner’s fourth novel, and sixth on the Modern Library’s list of 100 best English-Language novels of the twentieth century, The Sound and the Fury takes its name from a passage from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The novel did not become successful until the publication of The Sanctuary, Faulkner’s sixth novel, in 1931, but then achieved great critical success and contributed to the author’s 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Sound and Fury was adapted by James Franco for film in 2014 starring himself, Jon Hamm, Tim Blake Nelson, and Joey King.

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