William Faulkner was one of the most influential writers of his time. He was a pioneer author and some even consider him to be the only true modernist fiction writer who composed in the 1930's. In that period he wrote many works that became famous, including novels such as: As I Lay Dying, Absolom, Absolom!, and The Sound and The Fury, and short stories like a "Rose For Emily". The Sound and The Fury, written in 1929, was his first book and is one of the most famous. The story is told in four sections, not really chapters, due to the length, that are different days. The whole book uses four different narrators, Benjy, Quentin, Jason and a third person narrator; Benjy is a retarded 33 year old who is referred to as a man-boy, Quentin is a student at Harvard University, Jason is a worker at a farm supply store. Through the days that are narrated in the perspective of those three men, who are brothers, along with the third person narrative that focuses on the maid Dilsey, we are told the story of their sister Caddy.
[...] The Sound and the Fury Review William Faulkner was one of the most influential writers of his time. He was a pioneer author and some even consider him to be the only true modernist fiction writer who composed in the 1930's. In that period he wrote many works that became famous, including novels such as: As I Lay Dying, Absolom, Absolom!, and The Sound and The Fury, and short stories like a “Rose For Emily”. The Sound and The Fury, written in 1929, was his first book and is one of the most famous. [...]
[...] Overall, Faulkner develops all the characters very well, the way shows Benjy's neediness and lack of comprehension through his narrative. It is difficult to get into all of them though, since there are many and all of them are useful. Everyone in the novel is believable. This is easier to accomplish in a novel than with a short story mostly for reasons of size but Faulkner is able to give great characterization to everyone extremely well. He does this by using almost every technique to characterize the players in his story; he uses action, appearance, dialogue and thought. [...]
[...] There is a sense of darkness and depression which is conveyed through the tone and that action. Things are not going all that well, and there is a sense of that throughout the novel but the way the tension between Miss Quentin and Jason is displayed in the last section is extremely important to the show the conditions of the characters, and how hard a situation it was for both of them. Along with time, place, story, characterization and point of view, we can also look at the way gender is depicted and how those living in the South struggled after the Civil War. [...]
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