The Sound And The Fury Structure
Ben Boyd English 11H
In his novel, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner employs a unique
structural assembly to relay a compelling and complex plot to his readers. Faulkner often uses incoherent and irrational phrases to bring the reader into the minds of the characters. With a believable plot, convincing characterization and important literary devices, William Faulkner is able to bring into perspective a new structural form of writing which influences the significance of the content within the novel. Faulkner does not use the typical writing style of most other authors, whereas to include the basic plot outline (including rising action and a climax), but instead pieces the story together providing small portions of the Compson Family history at a time. The majority of the readers of The Sound and the Fury are quick to note the scrambled botch of ideas and statements that the reader is faced with in the first section of the novel. The second narration is slightly more logical but again contains vague concepts. However, once the reader has become familiar with Faulkner's technique, a more in depth look can be taken into the relationships between the characters of the Compson family. The parallelism of the complex structure and other literary attributes throughout all of the sections of The Sound and the Fury are developed by looking at the relationships between the contrasting points of view as well as main characters, and the varying levels of consciousness of Benjy and Quentin.
The structure of The Sound and the Fury leaves much to be desired. First of all, the time sequence is chaotic and only leads to confusion. The first section is told from the point of view of a thirty three year old mentally disabled man, Benjy Compson, who can tell no difference between the past or present. The Benjy section is very difficult to understand because the slightest incident can trigger a memory from him and completely replace what is...
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