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Sound and Fury: The Tragic Story of the Compson Family in Faulkner's Masterpiece



Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to dayTo the last syllable of recorded time,And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.




Sound and Fury



For Nita, it was a slower process to understanding sound. "It took me a year and half," said Nita, "to make any sense of sound. Now I understand the sound of a bird, the water flushing. Lipreading is so much easier, with sounds coming in clearer and matching up easier with what is said on the lips."


In July 2004, the youngest child, C.J. obtained an implant at the age of 6. Both Timothy and C.J. attend a school with a program for deaf and hard of hearing children. All three children receive speech therapy in school as well as private speech therapy at home. "My kids are excited to hear new sounds," says Peter. "They are happy with their cochlear implants, and because they are happy, I have no regrets."


Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.


In his soliloquy, Macbeth implies that life is but a shadow of the past and that a modern man, like himself, is inadequately equipped and unable to achieve anything near the greatness of the past. Faulkner reinterprets this idea, implying that if man does not choose to take his own life, as Quentin does, the only alternatives are to become either a cynic and materialist like Jason, or an idiot like Benjy, unable to see life as anything more than a meaningless series of images, sounds, and memories.


Trump's tweets play best among his true believers, but his tone is often willfully divisive rather than conventionally presidential. His feed is an ever-changing mood ring, often full of sound and fury, signifying sound and fury. Which we probably need to know about the person in the Oval Office. And which he serves up.


The strange thing is that man who is conceived by accident and whose every breath is a fresh cast with dice already loaded against him will not face that final main . . . until someday in very disgust he risks everything on a single blind turn of a card no man ever does that under the first fury of despair or remorse or bereavement he does it only when he has realized that even the despair or remorse or bereavement is not particularly important to the dark diceman . . . (220-221).


Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time ...It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (Macbeth 124) 2ff7e9595c


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