The Sound And The Fury Summary

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Chapter Two
The Sound and the Fury The Sound and the Fury occupies a central position in Faulkner’s oeuvre. There exists a distinct correlation between the full blossoming of Faulkner’s creativity, and the conceiving and executing of this complex novel about the decline of an aristocratic southern family. The story is narrated in four separate sections, bearing four dates: April 7, 1928, June 2, 1910, April 6, 1928, April 8, 1928 respectively. Each section focuses on a single narrator. First three sections are given to three Compson brothers: Benjy, Quentin and Jason. The fourth section is given to Dilsey, the black servant of the family. The four-fold division, forming part of the strategy of having four narrators is designed to throw light on the central problematic of the novel from multiple angles of vision. The contradictions, thrown up by the transition from the vanishing mores of the landed aristocracy to the emerging period values of cash nexus, impart specificity to the central problematic.
The broad pattern of critical response that The Sound and the Fury has evoked since its publication in 1929 reveals a marked involvement with the exploration of the metaphysics of time, the …show more content…

Unlike the spoken or written sign, it does not cut itself off from the desiring body of the person who traces or from the immediately perceived image of the other. It is of course still an image which is traced at the tip of the wand, but an image that is not completely separated from the person it represents; what the drawing draws is almost present in person in his shadow. The distance from the shadow or from the wand is almost nothing. She who traces, holding, handling, now the wand, is very close to being the other itself, close by a minute difference – visibility, spacing, death – is undoubtedly the origin of the sign and the breaking of immediacy. (234; italics

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