Rereading The Sound and the Fury magnified my appreciation of it tenfold. Now that I understood the basic plot, I could focus more on the characters, language, and structure of the novel. This experience encapsulates why I love to reread books, especially ones as complex and intense as those that Faulkner writes.

Tolstoy also said that the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. Instead, he regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel….War and Peace.

1. Relatively short length || At around 250 pages, As I Lay Dying is more manageable than some of Faulkner’s other texts. The pace moves quickly due to the short chapters and numerous narrators, meaning that it feels even shorter. If book length intimidates you, then this might be a good place to start with Faulkner.

After moving north to study at Harvard College, he eventually commits suicide by drowning himself in the Charles River.

adjective. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary style of William Faulkner.

The Sound and the Fury is considered a rather difficult read. It’s written in four parts that overlap, interweave, and jump around in time. The story is told by different narrators who are not entirely reliable. Lastly, many people (I was once one of them) find stream of consciousness writing difficult to follow.

: loud and angry words that attract a lot of attention but do nothing useful The town meeting created lots of sound and fury, but no resolution.

Biography: A new arrival in Jefferson in the summer of 1909, Dalton Ames is the first man Caddy Compson has sex with, and may be the father of Caddy’s daughter. Caddy tells Quentin that Ames has “been in the army had killed men” (148) and “crossed all the oceans all around the world” (150).

Damuddy is the grandmother of the Compson children. Whether maternal or paternal is not specified, but Mrs. Compson’s reaction to her death and Damuddy’s association with Jason – until Damuddy got “sick,” for example, Jason apparently slept in her bed with her (26) – suggest she is a Bascomb rather than a Compson.

Dilsey is the only source of stability in the Compson household. She is very patient and selfless—she cooks, cleans, and takes care of the Compson children in Mrs. Compson’s absence, while raising her own children and grandchildren at the same time.

The setting of The Sound and the Fury is Mississippi in the early 1900s, when slavery was still a recent memory, and the Compson family has black live-in servants who are basically slaves in all but technicality. Slavery ended with the Civil War in the 1860s, but African-Americans remained as second-class citizens.