“An Indescribable Sound” in William Faulkner’s \u3cem\u3eThe Sound and the Fury\u3c/em\u3e

The Sound and the Fury is a noisy book. Through the audible, the barely audible, and the silence, William Faulkner supports his narrative design with sound beyond dialog to inform and inflect the destabilizing narrative voices. This essay explores Faulkner\u27s use of the sound and noise of the novel as another narrative voice. Faulkner\u27s rich use of sound as a recurring motif, almost a persona or narrator itself, functions not merely to animate the action, the characters, and the title; it also speaks in the hush and the freighted stiffly sibilant whispers of those who dare not speak, or are trying to say, while simultaneously running as a voiceless current beneath the disjunctive narrative. The range and quality of sound wavers throughout, from the musical to the indescribable, as the past and present repeatedly segue forward and back to this soundtrack. Like the otherworldly racket of Macbeth, the noise of the novel plays beneath the surface, begging to be heard. Much scholarship has been devoted to exploring Faulkner\u27s The Sound and the Fury, yet the text continues to reveal layers of meaning and resonance to yet another generation. This study seeks to interrogate the nature, function, and musicality of the sound, noise, and silence of the text as adumbrated in the rhetoric of Reverend Shegog\u27s Easter sermon, Luster\u27s valiant attempts to play on the saw the inaudible tune, the ubiquitous bells, and Dilsey\u27s determination through it all to sing. This study hopes to enter into the conversation on Faulkner\u27s enduring work by listening to what the text is trying to say