CompsonsInTES

This powerful story juxtaposes the Compsons' privileged world with the vulnerabilities of Nancy's life as a black woman. The family name never appears, but readers of The Sound and the Fury will recognize the Compsons, all of whom - parents and three children - reappear except Benjy, and who display the same personal characteristics and interpersonal dynamics, though now as seen through the eyes of nine-year-old Quentin, who narrates Nancy's story from fifteen years later but still as it happened to him as a child. (This distance creates a problem that cannot be resolved, because according to the novel Quentin dies before turning twenty.)