The impression that time flows in the middle of the night is constant when one reads The sound and the fury, by William Faulkner, especially in the two initial chapters. The first chapter presents the point of view of a cognitively disabled man, Benjy Compson, who has no notion of time and narrates the story mixing present and past in a simultaneous flow, giving the reader the impression of walking through darkness. The second chapter is narrated by Quentin Compson, a character who is haunted by his past and lives in a pessimist state that borders nihilism. Based on Henri Bergson's concept of simultaneity and on Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of nihilism, we discuss the matter of time in Faulkner.
The sound and the fury; Time; Narrative; Simultaneity; Nihilism
