The Plot of the Sound and the Fury
THE SOUND AND THE FURY: THE PLOT
In one sense, The Sound and the Fury takes place during Easter weekend, 1928. A carnival comes to Jefferson, Mississippi, where the Compson family lives. Mrs. Compson, a selfish, complaining woman, lies in bed all day while the black housekeeper, Dilsey, cooks and cleans. Mrs. Compson is a widow with two sons. Jason, who works in a hardware store, supports the family. The younger son, Benjamin, usually called Benjy, is an idiot. At thirty-three, he still has the mind of a child. Benjy is looked after by Luster, Dilsey's teenaged grandson. The household has one other member--Quentin, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Jason's older sister Candace, nicknamed Caddy. Caddy's husband left her when he realized that the infant she had just given birth to couldn't possibly be his. So Caddy sent the baby home for her mother and Dilsey to raise. Quentin is named for the Compson family's oldest son, who killed himself eighteen years earlier while he was a student at Harvard.
Not much occurs from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. The most important event is that a show comes to town. Luster takes Benjy to the golf course to look for lost quarters so that he can buy a ticket. Jason has extra tickets but burns them in the stove in front of Luster rather than give them to him. Jason is constantly criticizing Quentin. On Saturday night, Quentin slides down the drainpipe and runs away with a man from the show. Before she leaves, she steals Jason's savings. When Jason realizes on Sunday that both his niece and his money are gone, he chases futilely after them. What makes Jason angriest of all is that he can't tell anyone, not even the police, how much money Quentin actually took. The $3000 that Jason does report was his life's savings. But he'd also had $4000 that he'd stolen from Quentin. All along, when Caddy had sent money for Quentin's support, Jason had pretended that his mother tore up the checks, whereas, in reality, he had only given her forged ones to destroy. Secretly, he had cashed the real checks and hidden the money in his room, where Quentin found it. Since he wasn't supposed to have this $4000, he couldn't let on that it was gone. On his return home, Jason runs into Luster and Benjy. Luster has taken Benjy for a carriage ride...