Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury...i have a question.

[ZombieHavoc]

OK, so I just started reading The Sound and the Fury today for the first time, and I'm about fifty pages in, and I am just completely puzzled by the narration. Is this what I'm supposed to be feeling? Does it ever begin to make more sense? I get that the perspective that I'm supposed to be seeing the story through is that of someone who is mentally handicapped. I just need to know that things are going to eventually click because right now it feels very disorienting to be reading events through Benjy's eyes.

[Karl J. Barnes]

OK, so I just started reading The Sound and the Fury today for the first time, and I'm about fifty pages in, and I am just completely puzzled by the narration. Is this what I'm supposed to be feeling? Does it ever begin to make more sense? I get that the perspective that I'm supposed to be seeing the story through is that of someone who is mentally handicapped. I just need to know that things are going to eventually click because right now it feels very disorienting to be reading events through Benjy's eyes.

Yes, it eventually starts to make sense and if I remember correctly, there are other characters perspectives that are plumbed.

[FroggieBKT]

Yeah, Benjy only narrates the first section. If you look closely enough at his section, patterns emerge that can help guide your read.

[Doodle Bob]

OK, so I just started reading The Sound and the Fury today for the first time, and I'm about fifty pages in, and I am just completely puzzled by the narration. Is this what I'm supposed to be feeling? Does it ever begin to make more sense? I get that the perspective that I'm supposed to be seeing the story through is that of someone who is mentally handicapped. I just need to know that things are going to eventually click because right now it feels very disorienting to be reading events through Benjy's eyes.

I would say that, if you are already 50 pages into it and you haven't got into the groove yet, then go back to the beginning and start re-reading. This is not prose that is meant to be skimmed through or even read quickly. Nonetheless, once you get the hang of how Benjy thinks and interprets the things he's seeing, you should be less puzzled.

[unkiedev]

No, it never makes sense and it should be burned at the stake! The only good thing Faulkner ever wrote was the screenplay for Bogart's "The Big Sleep."

-Only kidding. I had to read Sound and the Fury in high school...that first section is really hard, but worth getting through. I still think Benjy's brother Quentin's chapter is haunting and beautiful. Sound and the Fury is NOT the feel good book of the year.

I believe my teacher told us many of his other books are set in the same town. Crazy ole' Faulkner.:rolleyes:

[Paul McEnery]

-Only kidding. I had to read Sound and the Fury in high school...that first section is really hard, but worth getting through. I still think Benjy's brother Quentin's chapter is haunting and beautiful. Sound and the Fury is NOT the feel good book of the year.

Oh, I don't know. Made me feel warm and fuzzy.

Oh, and yeah, S&F totally rocks. The Benjy section is particularly wonderful, though if you're not used to that sort of thing, it takes a re-read to get the most out of it.

One of the tricks Faulkner likes to play is to leave small pieces of information out that only catch up with you a couple of pages later. It's something he does in The Unvanquished, too, which I just finished reading. And there are all sorts of gaps in the Benjy thing that make you have to work for it a bit, or go back over it to see what you missed the first time. But the extra thing with Benjy is that Benjy doesn't quite live in the linear time we do. Some of it is Benjy's weird mind that's more associative than narrative. But sometimes Benjy seems to know things that haven't happened yet, too.

[Tages]

OK, so I just started reading The Sound and the Fury today for the first time, and I'm about fifty pages in, and I am just completely puzzled by the narration. Is this what I'm supposed to be feeling? Does it ever begin to make more sense? I get that the perspective that I'm supposed to be seeing the story through is that of someone who is mentally handicapped. I just need to know that things are going to eventually click because right now it feels very disorienting to be reading events through Benjy's eyes.
Think of the whole book as a picture slowly coming into focus. The narration goes from a retarded man to a man suffering a nervous breakdown to a narcissist to finally third-person omniscient. Each chapter is easier to understand than the one preceding it.

That's horribly oversimplifying it, of course.

[DrewTheXenocide]

I'm currently in the middle of Jason's narrative, but I'm wondering: Is it wrong for me to totally love Jason? From what I've heard, I went into the book prepared to hate Jason and love the other kids. So far, Jason is probably my favorite character. Even though he;s a gigantic douche, I feel he's the one with the best reason as to why he is the way he is.

And some of the things he says are just too funny.