Throughout part 2 of TSAF, Quentin obsesses over time, trying to make sense of his father’s words, “Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life” (85). His first interpretation is literal and he breaks his watch – only to find that he is unable to physically stop time from ticking forward. Interestingly, Quentin doesn’t need a watch to tell the time as he has learned to tell time by the sun, looking at where shadows fall on the ground. When he tries to ignore the time, he literally turns away from the window because based on where the shadow of the sash falls he would unwittingly know the time. He has almost completely internalized it and marks every moment by it. In a way, Quentin feels time, he has become time. Once we realize where his day will lead, his father’s words take on new meaning. Does time represent Quentin, and the clock is life beating him down? Is this why he is planning suicide? So that he (time) may “come to life” when the clock (life) stops?

A moment at the jeweler’s shop provides Quentin with a new revelation “There were about a dozen watches in the window, a dozen different hours and each with the same assertive and contradictory assurance that mine had, without any hands at all. Contradicting one another. I could hear mine, ticking away inside my pocket, even though nobody could see it, even though it could tell nothing if anyone could” (85).  All along, Quentin has been thinking that time is universal, but really time is individual. Every person has his own clock/life and they are rarely in sync. Instead, people just make noise over each other, contradicting each other. The removal of the watch hands foreshadows Quentin’s ceasing his physical life. Will this stop the gears from clicking forward? Is Quentin sill a force, even if he cannot be seen or heard?

I think that Quentin is questioning this, as is evidenced by his contradiction of sound and silence. Silence, to Quentin, is as much of a force as sound is. “’Do you like fishing better than swimming?’ I said. The sound of the bees diminished, sustained yet, as though instead of sinking into silence, silence merely increased between us, as water rises” (123).  And again, “When you opened the door a bell tinkled, but just once, high and clear and small in the neat obscurity above the door, as though it were gauged and tempered to make that single clear small sound so as not to wear the bell out nor to require the expenditure of too much silence in restoring it when the door opened upon the recent warm scent of baking” (125). Silence becomes something that moves, it rises and expands. Silence takes up space. How should we interpret this?

Sound, being actual frequency waves, is easier to picture as a tangible force. Quentin feels sound as an active force many times, such as “…his voice hammering back and forth” (124). But silence hits harder. “The bird whistled again, invisible, a sound meaningless and profound, inflexionless, ceasing as though cut off with the blow of a knife” (136). This violence of silence persists as a motif throughout Quentin’s chapter. Faulkner develops this through his stream of consciousness writing. There is no such thing as pure silence for Faulkner’s characters and his reader. Silence is a barrage of memories and fantasy; random words and remembered phrases. There is fury in silence.

This helps us make the connection between Faulkner’s title and its inspiration, a speech by Macbeth.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The 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 tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing                            (Macbeth, Act 5, Sc 5)

Quentin knows that you cannot stop the creeping “to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,” as time will always continue to click ahead. But there is a “recorded time.” In modern times, this is marked by watches and clocks and the sun. If we read “recorded time” as time in a person’s life, then each person would have a “last syllable” – a last living moment. Quentin is slowly marching toward this. He literally walks on his shadow throughout the passage. “The chimes began as I stepped on my shadow” (96). And he is haunted by all of his yesterdays, those thoughts that fill the spaces left by absent sound – that silent fury.