The Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

Niggers say a drowned man’s shadow was watching for him in the water all the time.

because I at least revealed a blundering sense of noblesse oblige by getting myself born below Mason and Dixon,

as if the hull were winking itself along him along.

Did you ever have a sister? No but they’re all bitches. Did you ever have a sister? One minute she was. Bitches. Not bitch one minute she stood in the door

Why wont you bring him to the house, Caddy? Why must you do like nigger women do in the pasture the ditches the dark woods

and I leaned on the railing, watching my shadow, how I had tricked it.

soiled

She wouldn’t look at me

When I can see my shadow again if not careful that I tricked into the water shall tread again upon my impervious shadow.

I will not have my daughter spied on by you or Quentin or anybody no matter what you think she has done At least you agree there is reason for having her watched

I walked upon the belly of my shadow. I could extend my hand beyond it.

Women are like that they dont acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do bed-clothing in slumber fertilising the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or no

I dont mind telling you because you and me’s the same folks, come long and short.”

“You know I’m not. Did any Southerner ever play a joke on you?” “You’re right. They’re fine folks. But you cant live with them.”

brides. Lying on the ground under the window bellowing He took one look at her and knew.

All dressed up and mooning around like the prologue to a suttee.

there is no halfway ground that a woman is either a lady or not

Women do have always his voice above the gabble voice that breathed an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.

I will wait until the day for the one about the sawmill husband came to the kitchen door with a shotgun

Then they told me the bone would have to be broken again

told me the bone would have to be broken again

broken leg is all it is it wont be anything I’ll just have to stay in the house a little longer

And we’d sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October,

Have there been very many Caddy I dont know too many

And Father said it’s because you are a virgin: dont you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature. It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So is virginity and I said you dont know. You cant know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.

They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.

suddenly the acrimony, the conflict, was gone from their voices,

they too partaking of that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of silent superiority.

I showed them my watch. They examined it gravely.

I walked upon my shadow, tramping it into the dappled shade of trees again.

It crossed the hill, then descended winding, carrying the eye, the mind on ahead

The shadows on the road were as still as if they had been put there with a stencil, with slanting pencils of sunlight.

and the train dying away, as though it were running through another month or another summer somewhere,

Sunlight slid patchily across his walking shoulders, glinting along the pole like yellow ants.

spidery wheels chattering thin and dry, moving uphill beneath a rippling shawl of leaves.

the hooves neatly rapid like the motions of a lady doing embroidery,

Father will be dead in a year they say if he doesn’t stop drinking and he wont stop he cant stop since I since last summer and then they’ll send Benjy to Jackson

cant cry I cant even cry one minute she was standing in the door the next minute he was pulling at her dress and bellowing his voice hammered back and forth between the walls in waves and she shrinking against the wall getting smaller and smaller with her white face her eyes like thumbs dug into it until he pushed her out of the room his voice hammering back and forth as though its own momentum would not let it stop as though there were no place for it in silence bellowing

Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips

Red

red

The wall went into shadow, and then my shadow, I had tricked it again. I had forgot about the river curving along the road.

blood

red

did you love them Caddy did you love them When they touched me I died

muddy

I couldn’t see anything except my own face and a woman across the aisle with a hat sitting right on top of her head, with a broken feather in

I could see the twilight again, that quality of light as if time really had stopped for a while,

red

Father was teaching us that all men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away the sawdust flowing from what wound in what side that not for me died not.