Lesson Plans: Grades 9-12  Lesson 5: Faulkner's The Sound and
the Fury: April Eighth, 1928: Narrating from an 'Ordered Place'?
The Lesson   Portrait of William Faulkner by Carl Van Vechten.
Portrait of William Faulkner by Carl Van Vechten.  Credit:
Courtesy of American Memory at the Library of Congress.  The
Sound and the Fury perhaps best gains clarity and meaning in its
final chapter, which uniquely is narrated in the third person,
omniscient narrative style. The final chapter, often referred to
as the "Dilsey chapter" maintains a present, linear narrative
that begins to shed light on the events of the preceding three
chapters.  Although Benjy frames the novel, it is Dilsey who
says in this chapter, "'I seed de beginning, en now I sees de
endin.'" The Dilsey chapter literally brings with it the
"endin'" of the "tale told by an idiot" and the "endin'" of the
Compson family as it once was (i.e., an aristocratic Southern
family). Prompting students to analyze the Dilsey chapter, this
lesson helps students t