To Fight Or To Destroy

William Faulkner was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.The Sound and the Fury, is his first true masterpiece, and many consider it to be his finest work. It was also Faulkner's own favorite novel. First published in 1929, it is recognized as one of the most successfully innovative and experimental American novels of its time. The title of The Sound and the Fury originated from Macbeth's soliloquy in act 5,scene 5 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth:"Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury". The novel depicts the tragedy of the downfall of the once aristocratic Compson family. Since The Sound and the Fury was published, numerous experts and scholars have taken many different ways to study it, such as the innovative writing skills---the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, the feminism perspective, sociological perspective based on race and class, the psychoanalytic perspective and so on.This thesis attempts to apply Nietzsche's tragic spirit to understand Faulkner's most famous work, The Sound and the Fury, namely its setting, theme and characters. Nietzsche advocates the Dionysian spirit and the will to power, which provide a power to inspire people to transcend reality and to develop human life, thinking, and culture to a higher stage. This study is expected to help people establish a kind of positive and inspiring attitude towards life, and to provide a meaning for life so as to fight against nihilism and pessimism in the fast-changing modern world, especially in times of social transformation. This is also the hope Faulkner sets on human beings when he created The Sound and the Fury,as well as his many other works, that is, "man will not only endure, he will prevail",which was expressed in his Nobel Prize speech.