The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury is Faulkner's third novel and was published in 1929. It is included in many high school and university curricula, and routinely makes “Best Novels” lists.

The novel details the fall of the Compson family. It is broken into four sections; the first is narrated by Benjy Compson, the second is narrated by his brother Quentin Compson, the third is narrated by Jason Compson, and the fourth is narrated in the third person.

The Compson Appendix was written for The Portable Faulkner, which was published in 1946 by The Viking Press. It gives further insight into the characters of The Sound and the Fury and briefly details what happened to each of them after the events of the novel, though some characters such as Versh are not mentioned. Because Faulkner tended to not reread his novels having written them, the Appendix has a few curious inconsistencies with the novel; for a discussion of one of these inconsistencies, please see Miss Quentin's page.

Polk, Noel. “Trying Not to Say: A Primer on the Language of The Sound and the Fury.” New Essays on The Sound and the Fury. Ed. Noel Polk. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 139-75.

Kartiganer, Donald M. The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner's Novels. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1979.

Bleikasten, André. The Most Splendid Failure: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976.

Ross, Stephen M., and Noel Polk. Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1996.