The Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

  She waited and watched them cross the yard toward a clump of cedar trees near the fence. Then she went on to her cabin.

  “Now, dont you git started,” Luster said. “I had enough trouble wid you today.” There was a hammock made of barrel staves slatted into woven wires. Luster lay down in the swing, but Ben went on vaguely and purposelessly. He began to whimper again. “Hush, now,” Luster said. “I fixin to whup you.” He lay back in the swing. Ben had stopped moving, but Luster could hear him whimpering. “Is you gwine hush, er aint you?” Luster said. He got up and followed and came upon Ben squatting before a small mound of earth. At either end of it an empty bottle of blue glass that once contained poison was fixed in the ground. In one was a withered stalk of jimson weed. Ben squatted before it, moaning, a slow, inarticulate sound. Still moaning he sought vaguely about and found a twig and put it in the other bottle. “Whyn’t you hush?” Luster said. “You want me to give you somethin to sho nough moan about? Sposin I does dis.” He knelt and swept the bottle suddenly up and behind him. Ben ceased moaning. He squatted, looking at the small depression where the bottle had sat, then as he drew his lungs full Luster brought the bottle back into view. “Hush!” he hissed. “Dont you dast to beller! Dont you. Dar hit is. See? Here. You fixin to start ef you stays here. Come on, les go see ef dey started knockin ball yit.” He took Ben’s arm and drew him up and they went to the fence and stood side by side there, peering between the matted honeysuckle not yet in bloom.

  “Dar,” Luster said. “Dar come some. See um?”

  They watched the foursome play onto the green and out, and move to the tee and drive. Ben watched, whimpering, slobbering. When the foursome went on he followed along the fence, bobbing and moaning. One said,

  “Here, caddie. Bring the bag.”

  “Hush, Benjy,” Luster said, but Ben went on at his shambling trot, clinging to the fence, wailing in his hoarse, hopeless voice. The man played and went on, Ben keeping pace with him until the fence turned at right angles, and he clung to the fence, patching the people move on and away.

  “Will you hush now?” Luster said. “Will you hush now?” He shook Ben’s arm. Ben clung to the fence, wailing steadily and hoarsely. “Aint you gwine stop?” Luster said. “Or is you?” Ben gazed through the fence. “All right, den,” Luster said. “You want somethin to beller about?” He looked over his shoulder, toward the house. Then he whispered: “Caddy! Beller now. Caddy! Caddy! Caddy!”

  A moment later, in the slow intervals of Ben’s voice, Luster heard Dilsey calling. He took Ben by the arm and they crossed the yard toward her.

  “I tole you he warn’t gwine stay quiet,” Luster said.

  “You vilyun!” Dilsey said. “Whut you done to him?”

  “I aint done nothin. I tole you when dem folks start playin, he git started up.”

  “You come on here,” Dilsey said. “Hush, Benjy. Hush, now.” But he wouldn’t hush. They crossed the yard quickly and went to the cabin and entered. “Run git dat shoe,” Dilsey said. “Dont you sturb Miss Cahline, now. Ef she say anything, tell her I got him. Go on, now; you kin sho do dat right, I reckon.” Luster went out. Dilsey led Ben to the bed and drew him down beside her and she held him, rocking back and forth, wiping his drooling mouth upon the hem of her skirt. “Hush, now,” she said, stroking his head. “Hush. Dilsey got you.” But he bellowed slowly, abjectly, without tears; the grave hopeless sound of all voiceless misery under the sun. Luster returned, carrying a white satin slipper. It was yellow now, and cracked, and soiled, and when they gave it into Ben’s hand he hushed for a while. But he still whimpered, and soon he lifted his voice again.

  “You reckon you kin find T. P.?” Dilsey said.

  “He say yistiddy he gwine out to St John’s today. Say he be back at fo.”

  Dilsey rocked back and forth, stroking Ben’s head.

  “Dis long time, O Jesus,” she said. “Dis long time.”

  “I kin drive dat surrey, mammy,” Luster said.

  “You kill bofe y’all,” Dilsey said. “You do hit fer devilment. I knows you got plenty sense to. But I cant trust you. Hush, now,” she said. “Hush. Hush.”

  “Nome I wont,” Luster said. “I drives wid T. P.” Dilsey rocked back and forth, holding Ben. “Miss Cahline say ef you cant quiet him, she gwine git up en come down en do hit.”

  “Hush, honey,” Dilsey said, stroking Ben’s head. “Luster, honey,” she said. “Will you think about yo ole mammy en drive dat surrey right?”

  “Yessum,” Luster said. “I drive hit jes like T. P.”

  Dilsey stroked Ben’s head, rocking back and forth. “I does de bes I kin,” she said. “Lawd knows dat. Go git it, den,” she said, rising. Luster scuttled out. Ben held the slipper, crying. “Hush, now. Luster gone to git de surrey en take you to de graveyard. We aint gwine risk gittin yo cap,” she said. She went to a closet contrived of a calico curtain hung across a corner of the room and got the felt hat she had worn. “We’s down to worse’n dis, ef folks jes knowed,” she said. “You’s de Lawd’s chile, anyway. En I be His’n too, fo long, praise Jesus. Here.” She put the hat on his head and buttoned his coat. He wailed steadily. She took the slipper from him and put it away and they went out. Luster came up, with an ancient white horse in a battered and lopsided surrey.

  “You gwine be careful, Luster?” she said.

  “Yessum,” Luster said. She helped Ben into the back seat. He had ceased crying, but now he began to whimper again.

  “Hit’s his flower,” Luster said. “Wait, I’ll git him one.”

  “You set right dar,” Dilsey said. She went and took the cheekstrap. “Now, hurry en git him one.” Luster ran around the house, toward the garden. He came back with a single narcissus.

  “Dat un broke,” Dilsey said. “Whyn’t you git him a good un?”

  “Hit de onliest one I could find,” Luster said. “Y’all took all of um Friday to dec’rate de church. Wait, I’ll fix hit.” So while Dilsey held the horse Luster put a splint on the flower stalk with a twig and two bits of string and gave it to Ben. Then he mounted and took the reins. Dilsey still held the bridle.

  “You knows de way now?” she said. “Up de street, round de square, to de graveyard, den straight back home.”

  “Yessum,” Luster said. “Hum up, Queenie.”

  “You gwine be careful, now?”

  “Yessum.” Dilsey released the bridle.

  “Hum up, Queenie,” Luster said.

  “Here,” Dilsey said. “You han me dat whup.”

  “Aw, mammy,” Luster said.

  “Give hit here,” Dilsey said, approaching the wheel. Luster gave it to her reluctantly.

  “I wont never git Queenie started now.”

  “Never you mind about dat,” Dilsey said. “Queenie know mo bout whar she gwine dan you does. All you got to do es set dar en hold dem reins. You knows de way, now?”

  “Yessum. Same way T. P. goes ev’y Sunday.”

  “Den you do de same thing dis Sunday.”

  “Cose I is. Aint I drove fer T. P. mo’n a hund’ed times?”

  “Den do hit again,” Dilsey said. “G’awn, now. En ef you hurts Benjy, nigger boy, I dont know whut I do. You bound fer de chain gang, but I’ll send you dar fo even chain gang ready fer you.”

  “Yessum,” Luster said. “Hum up, Queenie.”

  He flapped the lines on Queenie’s broad back and the surrey lurched into motion.

  “You, Luster!” Dilsey said.

  “Hum up, dar!” Luster said. He flapped the lines again. With subterranean rumblings Queenie jogged slowly down the drive and turned into the street, where Luster exhorted her into a gait resembling a prolonged and suspended fall in a forward direction.

  Ben quit whimpering. He sat in the middle of the seat, holding the repaired flower upright in his fist, his eyes serene and ineffable. Directly before him Luster’s bullet head turned backward continually until the house passed from view, then he pulled to the side of the street and while Ben watc
hed him he descended and broke a switch from a hedge. Queenie lowered her head and fell to cropping the grass until Luster mounted and hauled her head up and harried her into motion again, then he squared his elbows and with the switch and the reins held high he assumed a swaggering attitude out of all proportion to the sedate clopping of Queenie’s hooves and the organlike basso of her internal accompaniment. Motors passed them, and pedestrians; once a group of half grown negroes:

  “Dar Luster. Whar you gwine, Luster? To de boneyard?”

  “Hi,” Luster said. “Aint de same boneyard y’all headed fer. Hum up, elefump.”

  They approached the square, where the Confederate soldier gazed with empty eyes beneath his marble hand in wind and weather. Luster took still another notch in himself and gave the impervious Queenie a cut with the switch, casting his glance about the square. “Dar Mr Jason car,” he said, then he spied another group of negroes. “Les show dem niggers how quality does, Benjy,” he said. “Whut you say?” He looked back. Ben sat, holding the flower in his fist, his gaze empty and untroubled. Luster hit Queenie again and swung her to the left at the monument.

  For an instant Ben sat in an utter hiatus. Then he bellowed. Bellow on bellow, his voice mounted, with scarce interval for breath. There was more than astonishment in it, it was horror; shock; agony eyeless, tongueless; just sound, and Luster’s eyes backrolling for a white instant. “Gret God,” he said. “Hush! Hush! Gret God!” He whirled again and struck Queenie with the switch. It broke and he cast it away and with Ben’s voice mounting toward its unbelievable crescendo Luster caught up the end of the reins and leaned forward as Jason came jumping across the square and onto the step.

  With a backhanded blow he hurled Luster aside and caught the reins and sawed Queenie about and doubled the reins back and slashed her across the hips. He cut her again and again, into a plunging gallop, while Ben’s hoarse agony roared about them, and swung her about to the right of the monument. Then he struck Luster over the head with his fist.

  “Dont you know any better than to take him to the left?” he said. He reached back and struck Ben, breaking the flower stalk again. “Shut up!” he said. “Shut up!” He jerked Queenie back and jumped down. “Get to hell on home with him. If you ever cross that gate with him again, I’ll kill you!”

  “Yes, suh!” Luster said. He took the reins and hit Queenie with the end of them. “Git up! Git up, dar! Benjy, fer God’s sake!”

  Ben’s voice roared, and roared. Queenie moved again, her feet began to clop-clop steadily again, and at once Ben hushed. Luster looked quickly back over his shoulder, then he drove on. The broken flower drooped over Ben’s fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place.

  New York, N.Y.

  October 1928

  Editor’s Note

  This new edition of The Sound and the Fury is based upon a comparison of Faulkner’s holograph manuscript, the carbon typescript (both documents in the Faulkner Collection of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia), and the 1929 Cape & Smith first edition. Every effort has been made to produce a text which conforms to Faulkner’s “final intentions” for the novel; unfortunately, the relationships among the extant manuscript and the printed materials, and the little we know about the circumstances of editing, proofreading, and publication make it impossible to reconstruct in all cases exactly what those “final intentions” were. That is, there are numerous differences between the carbon typescript and the first edition; but since neither the setting copy (the typescript actually sent to the editor and compositor) nor any set of galleys has been preserved, there is no way to determine with certainty whether any single variant is the result of Faulkner’s changes on typescript or galleys, of an editor’s intervention at any point in the publishing process, or of a compositor’s errors in setting type. In general, this edition reproduces the text of the carbon typescript unless there was compelling reason to accept any reading from the 1929 edition. Faulkner’s holograph manuscript has been consulted regularly to help solve textual problems.

  There is not enough space here to provide a complete textual apparatus for this novel. The tables appended are intended merely to record, for the interested reader, a highly selective sampling of some of the more significant variations among the present text, the carbon typescript, and the first edition. Table A records differences between the present text and the 1929 first edition; Table B, differences between this text and the carbon typescript. Both tables are keyed to page and line numbers of the present text. The reading to the left of the bracket is the reading of the new edition; in Table A, the reading to the right of the bracket is that of the 1929 text; in Table B, of the carbon typescript.

  TABLE A

  Differences between the present text and the 1929 Cape & Smith first edition:

  1. Are you. Are you.] Are you.

  2. Open] “Open

  3. Versh.] Versh.”

  4. Spread] “Spread

  5. floor.] floor.”

  6. Now] “Now

  7. feet.] feet.”

  8. stooped] stopped

  9. You] “You

  10. Quentin.] Quentin.”

  11. Didn’t] “Didn’t

  12. on. ] on.”

  13. Didn’t he didn’t he] Didn’t he

  14. said] said, Quentin,

  15. folded] wrapped

  16. students. They’ll think you go to Harvard.] students.

  17. “Maybe you want a tailor’s goose,” the clerk said. “They] The clerk said, “These

  18. still. My bowels moved for thee.] still.

  19. Jason] Jason a position in the bank.

  20. and Versh] Versh said

  21. [No ¶ indentations in the new text; each ¶ begins flush left.]

  22. home.] home in Mississippi.

  23. healing] heading

  24. unitarial] Unitarian

  25. [No ¶ indentation here; each ¶ begins flush left.]

  26. to the house [The new edition restores this line to the text; omitted in the first edition.]

  27. Harvard] Harvard like Quentin

  28. ground] ground like Father

  29. dope.] coca cola.

  30. Father’s] Father’s funeral

  31. your name. You’d be better off if you were down there] you

  32. shot] coca cola

  33. both of them] Caddy and Quentin

  34. kin do dat] gwine preach today

  35. shaling] shading

  TABLE B

  Differences between the present text and the carbon typescript:

  36. What] Versh, what

  37. for, Versh.”] for.”

  38. Jason] Mr Jason

  39. him.” She set the cake on the table.] him.”

  40. He leaned down and puffed his face. The candles went away.] He blew out the candles

  41. window.] window, thinking that if she had just been a boy she’d have invented windows you could raise easily instead of fine names for the cars.

  42. and through my coat touched the letters I had written.] and touched the letters through my coat.

  43. his black hand, in the sun.] the sun, in his dark hand.

  44. boy.”] boy. Whatever it is, Marcus Lafayette I had forgotten about that. He told me once that his name used to be Marcus something else, but when they moved away and he went to school and became an American, he says, his name got changed to Marcus Lafayette, in honor of France and America, he said Listenbee will value it for the giver’s sake and sight unseen, I thanks you.”

  45. and Versh] Versh

  Faulkner began writing The Sound and the Fury early in 1928, using at first the title Twilight. In the fall he completed a typescript, dated “New York, N.Y. / October 1928,” and apparently kept the carbon copy while sending the ribbon copy to Harrison Smith, the editor at Harcourt, Brace who had recommended publication of Flags in the Dust
to Alfred Harcourt. Harcourt rejected the novel, but permitted Smith to take it with him when he left the company to join Jonathan Cape in a new publishing venture, and in February 1929 Faulkner signed a contract for its publication with Cape and Smith. In the summer of 1929 Faulkner received galley proofs of the first section of The Sound and the Fury and discovered that Ben Wasson, who was then an editor at Cape and Smith, had instructed the printer to ignore Faulkner’s extensive use of italics and instead to indicate shifts in time by inserting line breaks between sections. Faulkner wrote to Wasson, instructing him to restore the italics and letting him know that he had marked additional passages in the galleys for italicization. Because none of the proofs for The Sound and the Fury are known to have survived, it cannot be determined how closely Wasson followed Faulkner’s instructions. The Sound and the Fury was published by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith on October 7, 1929. In 1984 Random House published a “New, Corrected Edition” of The Sound and Fury, prepared by Noel Polk. The corrected edition reproduces the text of the carbon typsescript dated October 1928 except in cases where there is a compelling reason to accept a reading from the 1929 first edition. The Library of America’s edition of The Sound and the Fury, published as part of Novels 1926–1929 and the basis of the present volume, incorporated a dozen additional minor corrections. American English continues to fluctuate; for example, a word may be spelled more than one way, even in the same work. Commas are sometimes used expressively to suggest the movements of the voice, and capitals are sometimes meant to give significance to a word beyond those it might have in its uncapitalized form. Since standardization would remove such effects, this volume preserves the spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and wording of the text as established by Noel Polk, which strives to be as faithful to Faulkner’s usage as surviving evidence permits.

  The following notes were prepared by Joseph Blotner and are reprinted with permission from Novels 1926–1929 (2006) in the edition of Faulkner’s collected works published by The Library of America. Numbers refer to page and line of the present volume (the line count includes chapter headings). No note is made for material included in the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. For further information on these three works, consult the appropriate portions of Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1974); Joseph Blotner, Faulkner, A Biography, One- Volume Edition (New York: Random House, 1984); Selected Letters of William Faulkner (New York: Random House, 1977), edited by Joseph Blotner; Calvin S. Brown, A Glossary of Faulkner’s South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); and Noel Polk, An Editorial Handbook for William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985).