The Sound and the Fury Timeline

If the story had happened today, many of the characters would have been able to get help and they may have survived and led lives that weren't misery filled.

The literal settings of the Compson's household and Harvard show the wealth of society they lived in and what the esteemed and expected life was during the time. People were expected to have a happy family with nice Christmas parties, children that behaved and were "normal" with ambitions and dreams to live the same mundane life in the future. Mrs. Compson cared about her image and how she would appear at her parties, and this took a toll on her family life. She didn't have her priorities in order from the start and this showed in nearly every aspect of her life.

The Compson household was a wealthy estate run by Dilsey who keeps the household together for much longer than would seem possible under the constant antagonistic was of Mrs. Compson that send the family into turmoil without any support or foundation.

Harvard is where Quentin is when his mind seems to shatter under a lifetime of pressures. His mind's fragmentation is shown through his narrative style changing and his eventual suicide.

Quentin's watch originally stands as Mr. Compson intended, a reminder of time as something constant in this world. However, Quentin feels trapped by time and by his past, and even after his watch is broken time still goes on. Time is also a motif throughout the story. The way it is presented shows that even though time is constant, it is represented in many ways. The jumping around inside of a understanding of time that is broken and incomplete is Benjy's world, yet Benjy understands connections to his past and present more than anyone and is able to move on from them more readily. The way the story jumps between one day and the past and the next day and two days ago slowly gives a person the whole picture without going in chronological order which allows said person to focus on deeper things than plot and understand better the full extent of the family's demise.

Caddy's promiscuous behaviors are the spark that causes her family to disintegrate, even if they had been on that track for a long time beforehand. Benjy notices Caddy's smell often when she is young and not yet the scandalous girl of her later years. She smells of trees and Benjy likes this. She often plays in the trees and seems to be normal and of the world he is familiar with. Then her character changes and grows up and makes decisions (albeit bad ones). When she starts wearing perfume, it upsets Benjy because she is no longer someone she can understand. He knows she is gone even if he doesn't understand what she has done to be forced away from her family.

Each character makes order for themselves even though they live in a chaotic world. They try to control the things that are happening around them as much as possible because it is one of the only ways they can be in control of their lives that are constantly dictated by other people. Benjy has a routine and understands what is normal to him. If things change he gets upset because they go against the norm. Caddy tries to get attention when she never received any in the wrong ways, but it is her way of controlling her situation and what she does. Quentin lives by a set of rules and a code, but eventually kills himself when the chaotic world is too much for him. Jason bases everything around a selfish need to better himself. Dilsey is the only one who actually seems at peace in the whole book regardless of the chaotic world around her. She can balance many tasks and mindsets at once while holding the Compson family and her own together.

The Sound and the Fury Timeline

The Sound and the Fury

Caroline Compson

... is a disaster.

Luster as Benjy's Attendant

She is a major part of the degradation of her family and why everyone around her is so screwed up (harsh but true). She is shallow and doesn't actually care about the people in her life.

Damuddy

By Aubrey Clark

She pities the life she has and is very selfish. She is a hypochondriac and this prohibits her abilities to care for her children further.

Caddy, Quentin, Benjy, and Jason's grandmother who dies when they are all young.

Jason Compson III

She is not a true mother to any of her children.

The father and head of the house who eventually dies of alcoholism in 1912 (he was married to Caroline...)

Death of Roskus

Uncle Maury Bascomb

Continued...

Mrs. Compson's brother who lives off of everyone else's money. He is also general scum since he is having an affair with Mrs. Patterson.

Benjy is originally named after him, but his name is changed when they learn of Benjy's condition.

April 7, 1928

The Sound and the Fury is told in four parts by four different narrators.

• The first narrator, Benjy, is severely mentally retarded and everything that happens is fragmented due to the fact that he cannot tell the difference between what has happened in his past and what is currently happening. It is told in flashbacks and random sections.
• The second narrator is Quentin who is at Harvard at the time.
• The third narrator is Jason, but revolves around much of Miss Quentin's life.
• The fourth narrator is Dilsey, the cook who has practically raised the Compton children along with her own.

Versh as Benjy's Attendant

Mr. & Mrs. Patterson

Uncle Maury has an affair with Mrs. Patterson, one of the Compson's next door neighbors, until Mr. Patterson intercepts a love note Benjy was delivering.

The Compson Family

1890-1895

Luster is looking for his quarter because the circus is in town.

1910: Caddy's Wedding Eve April 24th & Wedding April 25th: T.P. and Benjy get drunk on "sasprilluh".

Benjy is at the gate. June 2nd "Caddy gone and left you"

T.P. as Benjy's Attendant

1905: Caddy uses perfume

Quentin

Candace (Caddy)

Jason IV

Maury (Benjy)

are born to:

Carolyn & Jason III

Benjy is 3, and Quentin, Jason, Caddy, and he are playing in the stream. Versh tells Caddy she will get whipped for her wet dress and so she takes it off and gets her underclothes dirty. Versh tells them they have company and Jason tattles on Caddy. Mr. Compton makes them eat silently in the kitchen and then they walk down to Versh's house. Benjy wants to play with the lightning bugs T.P. captured in a jar.

1906: Benjy sees Caddy kiss Charlie in the swing and she goes to wash her mouth out after.

Luster is watching Benjy on his 33rd birthday. He is looking for his lost quarter and decides to earn it back by fetching golf balls at the golf course. Luster helps Benjy through the fence, but Benjy's clothes get caught on a nail. Luster finds a golf ball and Benjy wants to play with it. Luster is standing with Benjy as he plays in the stream. Luster tells Benjy not to go to the swing because Miss Q is there with her boyfriend the man in the red tie. Benjy approaches teh swing and catches Miss Quentin kissing the man in the red tie. Quentin gets upset with Luster for letting Benjy come and runs back to her house. Luster finds an unused condom on the ground and tells the man in the red tie that Quentin has men come to visit her every night.

1910: Quentin commits suicide by jumping into the Charles River: Roskus talking about bad luck since two children "left".

1908: Benjy has to start sleeping alone. "You too big to sleep with folks"

1910-11: Caddy gives birth to Miss Quentin. Mr. Compson brings the child home.

Versh, T.P., & Luster

1898: Damuddy's Death

Benjy burns his hand on candles and Mrs. Compton gets upset at his fussing. Luster takes him to the library to calm him down.

Three of their black servants are Benjy's caretakers at different times.

Versh when Benjy is a small child, T.P. when Benjy is about 15 years old, and Luster when he is 33 years old.

Versh and T.P. are Dilsey's sons, and Luster is Dilsey's grandson who is only half of Benjy's age.

1909: Caddy loses virginity (Dalton Ames). Caddy runs to her room in shame and Benjy howls.

1910-1912: Benjy is castrated because he got out of the fence and scared some schoolgirls (grabbed the Burgess girl).

children at the branch, Caddy in the tree when she got her pants dirty

Quentin

Dilsey

Benjy Compton

Shreve MacKenzie

T.P. takes Benjy and Miss Quentin to T.P.'s house. Benjy steals her toy and cries when she gets upset. Caddy isn't to be mentioned because of her disgrace and promiscuity from her illegitimate child.

Benjy is the youngest child and is the narrator of the first section (April 7, 1928).

Quentin's canadian roommate at Harvard who is called Quentin's "husband" by Spoade.

Quentin has a conversation with his father where he claims to have committed incest with Caddy.

1912: Mr. Compson dies of alcoholism and life.

Trip to cemetery where Mr. Compton and Quentin are when T.P. drives the carriage with Mrs. Compson and Benjy

1900: Maury Compton's name is changed to Benjamin when his family learns of his mental state.

Dilsey is the woman who actually raises the Compson kids since Mrs. Compson is never there for them. She stubborn, pious, and stabilizing for the whole family and is the only reason they stayed together as long as they did. She is officially their cook, but does everything else too.

Quentin's section is more composed than Benjy's, but is still disjointed with flashbacks that can be hard to follow since they are only hinted at. As the chapter continues, it becomes more fragmented as his mind becomes more fragmented and he finally decides to commit suicide. The punctuation and capitalization disappears and becomes one run on story.

fire, mirror, rain, cushion, library

He is severely mentally retarded, and when this is discovered, his name is changed (1900).

sale of "Benjy's Pasture"

1928: Miss Quentin (17 and probably pregnant) runs away late one Saturday before Easter and steals $3000 Jason had been saving and hoarding in his closet since 1912 (from her mom).

Quentin leaves to start college at Harvard.

Spoade

Spoade is a jerk and a bully who makes fun of Quentin and once mocked his virginity and called Shreve Quentin's husband. He is a senior at Harvard.

Caddy tries to comfort Benjy and gets yelled at by Mrs. Compton for spoiling him.

Jason and Caddy fight because Jason maliciously cut up all of Benjy's paper dolls.

1902

When Luster is going to find a golf ball and Benjy gets stuck on the nail, it reminds him of 26 years earlier when he was seven and Caddy helped him off the nail.

Jason

Nearly all of his flashbacks regard Caddy's sexual tenancies and his reaction to it.

April 23rd ish, 1910: Meeting Herbert Head (Caddy's future husband)

He is the oldest, and is very intelligent, thoughtful, and sensitive.

Mrs. Compton and her brother fight in the house.

He walks a fine line between being protective of his sister Caddy, and loving her romantically. Nearly all of his thoughts seem to be of her.

Jason in 7 words: No one likes him. He's a jerk.

Frony

Quentin grew up in the oppression of his family and the intense pressure of Benjy's pasture being sold to pay for his education. Eventually he broke under the pressure, annd in his first year at Harvard, he commits suicide by drowning.

Dilsey's daughter and Luster's mother who works in the Compson kitchen.

Gerald Bland

Uncle Maury has an affair with Mrs. Patterson. Maury uses Benjy and Caddy to deliver his love letters to Mrs. Patterson. One day Benjy had to deliver it alone, but Mr. Patterson saw him and ran over and intercepted the letter before Mrs. Patterson could do anything about it. Uncle Maury gets a black eye.

Quentin fights with him because he reminds him of Dalton Ames.

Mrs. Bland

...is Gerald's proud and boastful mother.

He is the second youngest of the Compson children and narrates the third part of the story.

Mrs. Compson worries more about her Christmas party than Benjy's health.

Roskus

Symbols & Motifs

Dilsey's husband who suffers from rheumatism and eventually dies from it.

Deacon

Deacon is the man who Quentin gives his suicide note to.

(All of Dilsey's family work as servants for the Compson family.)

He is extremely mean just for the sake of being mean, is not mature, and is distrustful.

Quotes

Quentin's Watch & Time

Lorraine

Jason's prostitute who lives in Memphis

He may be the most mentally sound, but he is still a sadistic (maybe too harsh of a word) human.

How Caddy Smells

"I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools." (76)

Earl

Earl owns the farm-supply store Jason works in. He only puts up with him because of Mrs. Compson.

Uncle Job

A black man at Earl's store who works with Jason.

Finding Order within a Chaotic Life

"I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone... That was when I realized that a nigger is not a person so much as a behavior; a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among." (86)

Themes

the man with the red tie

This is the only name the reader ever knows, which emphasizes the fact that Miss Quentin didn't share her social life with any of her "family" and she may not have actually cared for any of the men she had relations with.

The dominant theme is childhood influences shape future worldviews.

Charlie

The readers never really learn anything about him, and any interaction with his character is minimal, but Miss Quentin supposedly elopes with him.

Charlie is one of Caddy's first boyfriends/crushes/suitors. He is the one Benjy catches kissing his sister on the swing.

Miss Quentin

"My sister had no. If I could say Mother. Mother." (95)

Caddy

This girl has a whole new set of problems. She is raised by the Compsons after Caddy gets divorced and becomes even more rebellious than Caddy ever was. She is very unhappy and spend every night with some sort of guy. She eventually steals the money Jason was keeping from her (that Caddy was sending to her) and runs away with an actor from a minstrel show.

Dalton Ames

A local boy who is said to be Miss Quentin's father.

Candace is the second child and quickly becomes a scandalous girl who "disgraces" her entire family by getting pregnant out of wedlock, and parrying and divorcing Herbert Head in 1910. She is close to Quentin and they always walk a strange line in their relationship. It seems that everyone around her walks a line of protectiveness and liking her.

Herbert Head

The wealthy banker who Caddy marries, but then gets divorced due to her pregnancy (that isn't his).

Everyone is influenced by what they experience. The histories a person has shape who they become and what standpoints they will have. This is evident in The Sound in the Fury through the degradation of the entire Compson family. The corrupted values they uphold fail as their minds do. They all search for their needs to be noticed in different ways, but since their mother was never there for them, they all fail. The novel also explores the failure of language as the mind fails and as life progresses. All of the narrators are unreliable in some way because all of them are dealing with much more than what is shown on the surface.

Overall

SETTING

The Sound and the Fury is set from 1898-1928.

This makes everything Caddy or Miss Quentin participated in even more promiscuous since they were from what society would deem a "good family".

The Sound and the Fury is a story that traces the destruction of the Compson's as they banish Caddy and everything else falls apart. It doesn't follow the normal plot structure because although time rules them all, Faulkner is trying to make a point of it's irrelevance.

The End

Back in those days, people didn't know what to do with mental illnesses or diseases. For this reason, many people with mental illnesses such as Benjy's were put into a jail (their version of an asylum), which is what Jason wanted to do. People wouldn't have understood the struggles Quentin was facing at the time because anything psychology related was still new.

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