When The Sound and the Fury first appeared, the most frequent criticism was that the four sections were arbitrarily and capriciously distorted. A number of critics and readers were confused by Faulkner's decision to begin the novel with the Benjy section. Many critics felt that this section of the novel, narrated through the mind of a thirty-three-year-old boy-man, presented an insurmountable obstacle to the reader. Some critics thought that the novel should begin with the final section; others suggested that Jason's section should come first.
Some of these objections are still offered. It is indeed a difficult task to get through the Benjy section without throwing up one's hands in despair. The opening section of this novel is so different from anything else that has been written that readers can hardly be prepared for the difficulty facing them. And perhaps some other order would have been more effective on the first reading. But a novel can never be judged by a first reading. It is on subsequent readings of this novel that we realize Faulkner presented the story in its most effective order.
Faulkner once said (see Faulkner in the University, p. 1) that the novel "began with the picture of the little girl's muddy drawers, climbing that tree to look in the parlor window with her brothers that didn't have the courage to climb the tree waiting to see what she saw. And I tried first to tell it with one brother, and that wasn't enough. That was Section One. I tried with another brother, and that wasn't enough. That was Section Two. I tried with the third brother, because Caddy was still to me too beautiful and too moving to reduce her to telling what was going on, that it would be more passionate to see her through somebody's else's eyes, I thought. And that failed, and I tried myself — the fourth section — to tell what happened, and I still failed." By failure, Faulkner means that he tried to achieve something much greater — that he aimed higher than he could achieve. But the significant thing is that Faulkner did achieve, or create, one of the world's greatest novels.
