Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third Person (Omniscient)
The stories in this book have an omniscient third person point of view that goes from one character's mind to another's. The characters are always described in the third person, but how close we get to their thoughts depends on what Faulkner wants to show us. For the most part, though, the narration is close to some character's thoughts and doesn't really wander off on its own.
Faulkner spends an enormous amount of time inside the consciousness of some characters, Isaac McCaslin most of all. Some entire chapters take place inside Isaac's mind, whether he's thinking about his past or developing his personal philosophy. If as a narrator you're using a stream-of-consciousness technique (more on that coming up), then the omniscient style is where you live.
During the intense fight scene between Lucas Beauchamp and Zack Edmonds, Faulkner ramps up the intensity by switching rapidly between Lucas's and Zack's experience of the fight. We see the anger and fear on both sides in the moment.
With some characters, Faulkner seems to make a conscious decision to keep out of their heads—female characters in particular. They tend to be described without much reference to their inner world. Some critics feel that this wasn't such a conscious decision on the author's part, that Faulkner was clueless about women's emotional lives or didn't value them. Check out our "Women and Femininity" section for more.