William Faulkner

Excerpt from The Sound and the Fury - June 2nd 1910

When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again,hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. 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.

About

This is the first paragraph of the second chapter of The Sound and the Fury, rendered in the voice of Quentin Compson, who chronicles the last day of his life in a first person account that purposefully identifies itself with the drama, specifically with tragedy, more specifically with tragic soliloquies, and more specifically yet with a particular tragic soliloquy from Macbeth: She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. 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 (V, 5). Although the “tale told by an idiot” surely alludes to Benjy’s (Quentin’s afflicted brother, the fourth and youngest of the Compson children) autistic, mute soliloquy that composes the novel’s first chapter, and although he who is “full of sound and fury,” strutting and fretting, can only be Jason (the third of the four Compson children), the rancorous, spiteful soliloquizer of the third chapter, the first paragraph of Quentin’s soliloquy, cited above, also works closely with the tomorrow speech, in terms of shadow (shadow of the sash), time (tomorrow, creeps, petty pace,time, yesterdays, brief, hour, no more), fools (“folly and despair,” “philosophers and fools”), and nihilism (signifying nothing), the latter conviction voiced mainly by Father, as remembered (or authored; in any case, as mediated) by Quentin. Father’s equivocating cynicism, “No battle is ever won…not even fought” of course refers to the Civil War and the Lost Cause that burdens the world of S and F, but it also echoes the witches of Macbeth, they who famously equivocate, “When the battle’s lost AND (my emphasis) won.” N.B., Not only the tomorrow speech, but both subtle and overt echoes of Macbeth as a whole sound throughout S and F. Also of note in the first paragraph of chapter 2: Father’s “excruciating-ly” picks up on the the theme of Christic sacrifice (crucifixion) introduced by Benjy in chapter 1, and developed by Quentin in chapter 2. Father’s overly deliberate pronunciation of “excruciating-ly” (the Vintage edition supplies a dash before the “ly”), together with his slurring of “reductio ad absurdum” into “reducto absurdum” (Father is too erudite simply to bungle the Latin) is meant to suggest that he was drunk when he presented the watch to Quentin. At any rate, it is meant to suggest that as Quentin recalls it, or as Quentin wishfully or self-servingly authors it, Father was drunk when he presented the watch to Quentin as a token of his meaningless patrimony. That Faulkner means to present Quentin (as well as Jason and the third person narrator of chapter 4) as an unreliable narrator is emphatically confirmed by contrast to Benjy’s stunning first person narration. Benjy’s autistic inability to interpret, editorialize, author, or do anything but rewind silently, in his mind’s ear, unadulterated transcripts of past utterances and present streams, proffers, ingeniously, perhaps the only reliable narration in English language literature, a feat in which Faulkner takes justifiable pride.