The sound and the furry

[zohreh yasar]

I have read this book,but,I could get almost nothing.I ask every body who has read it and knows William Faulkner very well to help me.Please let me know some quick and good suggestions for undrestanding this story and getting the point.

[Jay]

Sparknotes.com (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/soundfury/)

[PeterL]

I understand your problem. If you search on google for "Sound and the Fury synopsis" you will get many results. Also search for reviews and analusis of it. There is a great deal of material about The Sound and the Fury available on line.

[mono]

As Jay suggested, Spark Notes seem about the highest quality notes one can find on the Internet. Others you might try:
CliffsNotes.com (http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-125.html)
PinkMonkey.com (http://pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSoundFury02.asp)
Good luck!

[Scheherazade]

I have read this book,but,I could get almost nothing.I ask every body who has read it and knows William Faulkner very well to help me.Please let me know some quick and good suggestions for undrestanding this story and getting the point.Even though he seems a little busy these days, Basil might be able to help you; he has read many of Faulkner's works, I believe!

[Sancho]

Basil and I both enjoy William Faulkner’s writing; we are both southerners and we are both inexplicitly drawn to Faulkner’s work and we both live in the - “New South.” To a large extent, The Sound and The Fury is a story of loss, and a small part of the story of the loss is the loss of the “Old South” to the “New South.”

The Sound and the Fury is a notoriously difficult text, and for me, it was one of the most rewarding pieces of literature I’ve ever read. I had absolutely no idea what was going on for most of the book and it wasn’t until the final pages that the whole thing, sort of, made sense to me. This of course, was by Faulkner’s design. After I’d laid it aside, I kept thinking about it for months, and the more I thought about it the more connections I found. It was uncanny. Heck, I’m still thinking about it now, years later.

Just so that you know that you’re not going crazy, an outline may be helpful. The novel has four distinct parts: Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey. The first three are brothers in the Compton family and Dilsey is a matronly older black woman who works domestically for the Comptons. The title clues us into what is happening in the first chapter: “Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” - (Macbeth). That’s what makes the first part so interesting; it is told from the point of view and in the first person, of a highly autistic person. Benjy is incapable of speech and evidently has no sense of past or present. The chapter jumps around in several decades with reckless abandon and has absolutely zero transition. It’s an inside-out view of a badly damaged mind.

The next chapter is also told in the first person but by Quentin, the Compton family’s prodigy. Quentin is a freshman-year student at Harvard and in contrast to the Benjy chapter, the Quentin chapter spans only one day - the last day of Quentin’s life. I’ll let you figure out the rest.

If you make it to the third chapter, you can breathe easy because you’ve finally reached something that is somewhat understandable. Even though Jason is a world-class bigot and a scoundrel and a low-life scum-bag, you may find yourself laughing despite yourself. I did. I think that I was just relieved to be out of a damaged or a suicidal mind. Jason may be a representation of the “Old South.”

Finally we meet the only sane person in the whole book, Dilsey. Faulkner chooses to tell Dilsey’s part in the third person and it’s an interesting technique. Which is to say, was it a technique, or was Faulkner incapable of writing in the first person from the perspective of a, “Mammy”? Here again, I’ll let you figure it out.

There is an awful lot of stuff packed into this novel and if I were to read it again tomorrow I’m sure that I’d see it in a totally different light, but I suppose that’s what makes it – literature.

Happy reading.

[zwita]

hi
it is very simple just read it agaain and again then you will understand it very well,also read the riticism

[Quark]

The Sound and the Furry sounds like some Disney remake of the Faulkner novel with anthropomorphized animals playing the parts. Quentin would be voiced by Robin Williams and turned into a sassy squirrel. Caddy could be something like a raccoon. The whole suicide thing would have to be changed into some goofy quest which would bring all the characters together in a sentimental, heartwarming ending. And, despite the replacement of one of the greatest works of literature with a mindless comedy, I think I'd still watch it.

[barbara0207]

The Sound and the Furry sounds like some Disney remake of the Faulkner novel with anthropomorphized animals playing the parts. Quentin would be voiced by Robin Williams and turned into a sassy squirrel. Caddy could be something like a raccoon. The whole suicide thing would have to be changed into some goofy quest which would bring all the characters together in a sentimental, heartwarming ending. And, despite the replacement of one of the greatest works of literature with a mindless comedy, I think I'd still watch it.

:lol: That's what I thought. So who said spelling is not important?