Comment on the significance
of the title The Sound and the Fury.
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act-V, Sc-V)
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act-V, Sc-V)
William Faulkner took his title for the novel The Sound
and the Fury from Macbeth’s nihilistic speech about life’s futility mentioned
above; and the fate of the Compson family would seem to fulfill the pessimistic
note. These lines can also be taken as a clue to the meaning of the structure
of the novel.
Certainly Faulkner plays with the idea that life is nothing but a shadow. The
implication that life is a shadow is used by Faulkner to suggest that the
actions performed by modern man are only shadows of the greater actions
performed by men of the past- that modern man is only a shadow of a being,
imperfectly formed and inadequate to cope with the problems of modern life. Man
is forced to commit suicide as does
Quentin, and in performing this destructive act, he sees his shadow rising up
from the water beneath him. If man does not take his own life , then he is
either a materialist like Jason who values nothing except money , or else he is
an idiot like Benjy who can only see shadows of life.
The Sound and The Fury began as a simple idea for a short
story : a group of young children are sent out of the house to play on the
evening of their grand mother’s death. To enforce the contrast between the
children’s innocence and the harshness of adult life Faulkner decided to
narrate his story from a child’s point of view. He did not develop this
situation by incorporating it into a simple linear plot; he circled round and
round it, looking at it from different points of view, allowing new depth and
meaning to be revealed with each new perspective. First, Benjy communicates with his memories, then
Quentin, and concentrates on Dilsey’s actions.
