The Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

Benjamin came out of the bible, Caddy said.

“Do you want to poison him with that cheap store cake.”

Your name is Benjy, Caddy said.

Get up, Mau—— I mean Benjy,

then you can tell him.”

“A five year old child.

Nicknames are vulgar. Only common people use them. Benjamin.” she said.

Caddy and Jason were fighting in the mirror.

red.

bluegum

granpaw changed nigger’s name,

She stopped again, against the wall,

Then she put her arm across her face

Looking for them aint going to do no good. They’re gone.

Quentin’s window

She wadded the drawers and scrubbed Caddy behind with them.

shadow of the sash

the watch. It was Grandfather’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.

You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t

hear.

Little Sister Death,

itching. It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.

She ran right out of the mirror,

Calling Shreve my husband.

In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women.

It’s not when you realise that nothing can help you—religion, pride, anything—it’s when you realise that you dont need any aid.

One minute she was standing in the door

and twisted the hands off and put them in the tray. The watch ticked on.

I stopped inside the door, watching the shadow move. It moved almost perceptibly,

creeping back inside the door, driving the shadow back into the door. Only

Is it a wedding or a wake?”

Deacon.

“There now. Just look at what your grandpa did to that poor old nigger.” “Yes,” I said. “Now he can spend day after day marching in parades. If it hadn’t been for my grandfather, he’d have to work like whitefolks.”

But I never knew even a working nigger that you could find when you wanted him, let alone one that lived off the fat of the land.

The place was full of ticking, like crickets in September grass,

“Would you mind telling me if any of those watches in the window are right?”

“Dont tell me,” I said, “please sir. Just tell me if any of them are right.”

Are any of them right?” “No. But they haven’t been regulated and set yet.

I put it in my pocket. I couldn’t hear it now, above all the others.

and each with the same assertive and contradictory assurance that mine had, without any hands at all. Contradicting one another. I could hear mine, ticking away inside my pocket, even though nobody could see it, even though it could tell nothing if anyone could.

Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

The part ran up into the bald spot, like a drained marsh in December.

I used to think that a Southerner had to be always conscious of niggers. I thought that Northerners would expect him to.

before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone. That was when I realised that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior; a sort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among.

unimpatient. The train swung around the curve, the engine puffing with short, heavy blasts, and they passed smoothly from sight that way, with that quality about them of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity:

One minute she was standing in the door.

Can he smell that new name they give him? Can he smell bad luck?

with three gulls hovering above the stern like toys on invisible wires.

my shadow leaning flat upon the water, so easily had I tricked it that would not quit me.