Despite his flaws, Jason is the most adaptable of the Compson men, able as he is to hold a job and support his family financially without resorting to suicide or alcoholism. One way to account for his success is to note the high degree of control he has over his own thoughts–a high degree at least when compared to that his brothers.

Jason’s thoughts are usually closely tied to speech. Frequently in his section, Jason’s thoughts return to real or imagined conversations, especially conversations with his mother. Often his thoughts are so fully speech-like that he is capable being witty in his own internal monologue: “She [Dilsey] was so old she couldn’t do any more than move hardly. But that’s all right: we need somebody in the kitchen to eat up the grub the young ones cant tote off.” (185) He frequently repeats to himself judgments and witticisms that he has apparently made in the past, as on p. 227: “You take a little two by four country storekeeper like I say it takes a man with just five hundred dollars to worry about it fifty thousand dollars’ worth.” (Emphasis mine.) An electronic search of the text reveals the string “like I say” occurs no fewer than 26 times in Jason’s section. He repeats these worn-down scraps of speech like mantras throughout the day. Jason makes these constant efforts to order his thoughts as rational, comprehensible speech, in order to keep them under conscious control, to shield himself from other unwanted thoughts–in particular, his repressed sexual desires.

It is not what Jason speaks to himself but rather what he refuses to speak that illustrates this repressed content most fully. Jason often dwells on resentment towards his sister’s sexual exploits, and yet the name “Caddy” occurs only three times in Jason’s section. (In contrast “Ben”/”Benjamin” appears 23 times, and “Quentin” 48.) While Benjy can’t hear the name “Caddy” without bellowing, Jason can barely bring himself to think the name. When recalling his father’s funeral Jason notices that he was experiencing emotion, and yet he refuses to name this feeling, whether it is grief, or a murderous Oedipal rage: “We stood there, looking at the grave, and then I got to thinking about when we were little and one thing and another and I got to feeling funny again, kind of mad or something.” (203) Perhaps Jason unconsciously believes that if he names the experience, even in his internal monologue, he thereby grants it existence.

In the last paragraph of his section, when Jason’s thoughts turn toward Benjy’s castration, he likewise avoids descriptive terms like “penis” and “castration,” but rather alludes to the act indirectly. At one point he thinks, “Well, like I say they never started soon enough with their cutting, and they quit too quick. I know at least two more that needed something like that, and one of them not over a mile away, either.” (263) The ambiguity of the passage perhaps reveals an unconscious wish that he himself be castrated, to be free from his unspeakable desires, in the same state that he imagines Benjy to be, with desires that “he couldn’t even remember . . . and couldn’t want any longer.” (253)

It is difficult to imagine either of the other Compson brothers deliberately avoiding the act of thinking about something. Certainly not Benjy! Quentin’s thoughts frequently turn to taboo subjects that Jason avoids, like incest and abortion, which he is unwilling or, more likely, unable to repress. Moreover, he is frequently swept away by his own thoughts–once to the extent that he attacks Gerald Bland without realizing it or remembering it. In comparison, Jason’s repressive tactics can be seen as positive and adaptive; and in a time and place devoid of psychotherapy, yoga, and mediation retreats, what options does Jason have besides repression?

Below I think about the experience of reading Benjy’s section and how the process of “piecing it together” corresponds to Benjy’s visions of a destabilized, restless physical world.

Benjy’s chapter, as we’ve discussed in class, is comprised of three intertwining threads, each corresponding to a different moment in our narrator’s life. One of the major challenges it presents the reader is determining where one thread ends and another begins. Faulkner helpfully (generously speaking) italicizes passages to mark such discrepancies, but even with such a concrete visual marker at our disposal, uncertainties arise: “Is this italicized passage transporting us to a different moment in time that’ll be developed in the following un-italicized text, or is it merely a fleeting memory? If it’s the latter, when is Benjy experiencing it – in the present (the opening thread) or the past?”

This precariousness is largely a product of Benjy’s narration, which in all three threads is circumscribed to the present-tense. Without direct reference to the past or future, the prose of Benjy’s inner speech lacks suspense, an anticipation for “what comes next,” a dependable tension and release to which we can align our expectations and reading rhythms. In response, we read attentively for passages that might clarify or reconfirm a thread’s time-setting or that establishes its relationship to a previous installment, temporally or thematically.

Faulkner demands that we simultaneously, as best we can, contemplate the “present,” the action arising before us, forever new and confounding; and the “past,” the moments we’ve previously read, all interrupted and unresolved; and how the two connect. Unfolding together in our consciousness, by way of Benjy’s, the present and remembered past converge into an eternal present. Standard linearity, wherein the past produces the present and subsequently disappears, is reimagined in favor of a sense of time in which the present and the remembered past are unresolved and therefore still very much alive.

The feeling of uncertainty that accompanies the jumps in time also permeates the scenes themselves. In keeping with the notion of all three threads converging into an ongoing present is Benjy’s narration. As mentioned above, Benjy relays every scene like it’s in the present, built exclusively from his immediate perceptions and lacking explicit contextualization (which requires reference to the past). Characters are introduced only when Benjy sees and hears them, and what we learn about them emerges almost exclusively through their speech and action (especially their interactions) in his presence. What’s missing from Benjy’s reportage are neat delineations of how the characters relate to each other and “who they are” in each moment in time.

Relationships between characters, temporal continuity, thematic echoes, foreshadowing, direct cause and effect – all are forms of connection that we search for within each scene and over the course of the section, connections we rely on to find our bearings. Because such connections are presented so gradually, so obliquely, we experience a world constantly in motion and transforming itself. A world without pure, static cohesion, where elements are forever drifting together and apart.

To me, this feeling that the section imparts on the reader in some ways corresponds to Benjy’s perception and thought process, particularly in relation to physics. Throughout the section, he describes seeing inanimate objects moving at will. These visions usually occur in moments of distress, such as in the scene at the barn where Quentin repeatedly kicks T. P. and Benjy loses his balance.

I wasn’t crying, but the ground wasn’t still, and then I was crying. The ground kept sloping up and the cows ran up the hill. . . . Quentin held my arm and we went toward the barn. Then the barn wasn’t there and we had to wait until it came back. I didn’t see it come back. It came behind us and Quentin set me down in the trough where the cows ate (20-21).

Elsewhere, Benjy describes objects changing seemingly on their own, such as in the section’s final scene:

The room went black, except the door. Then the door went black. . . . [The dark] went away, and Father looked at us. . . . Father went to the door and looked at us again. Then the dark came back, and he stood black in the door, and then the door turned black again (75).

In the first example, Benjy’s vision overpowers his sense of movement and his relationship to the space around him is thrown into confusion. In the second, he fails to recognize (albeit through no fault of his own) the cause of the room going dark, that Dilcy and his father are switching the light off and on. In both cases, a hierarchy informed by physical laws is either scrambled or split apart. Benjy’s surroundings, as he perceives them, can suddenly unmoor at one moment and restore themselves in the next. Which isn’t unlike the section’s own shifts in time and place, its oblique construction of character and setting, and the reader’s experience of both.

I’ve just read all the posts from the first deadline and wow: I’m really impressed with the rigor of your reading and writing on this very challenging text. Many of you are already writing at a very high level; all of you are putting out admirable effort both as reader and writers. I could have shouted out nearly any of the authors/posts, so high was the quality, but this time I’ll give special commendation to:

• William’s rather creative post, which started with a bit of misdirection (his father’s story about almost dying from whiskey and exposure) and ended with an argument that the “primal scene” of the novel (Freud’s term) is not the Caddy-with-dirty-drawers moment, but the moment when Caddy appears veiled at her wedding.
• Roberto’s post about the word “apotheosis” in the text. It’s one of Faulkner’s favorite words, and Roberto shows how it resonates broadly throughout TSAF, especially thorugh the way the dream of unity under the sign of God (or the Devil, for that matter) gives way to the shattering reality of dissociation and death.
• Deborah’s riff on smell in “Benjy,” which conjures up, for me at least, the way Faulkner links himself to Proust and other modernist writers interested in sensation and memory in this section of the novel.

None of these is perfect, whatever that would mean, and no one should look for a cookie cutter to use for these assignments. But all three share the quality of finding something specific in the text to hone in on, something that is “weird” enough to make us read the text in a new way.

Identities that are handed to a person through society are dependent on the continuation of that society. In Faulkner’s, The Sound and the Fury, these identities have tragic consequences. The collapse of the Old Southern way of life fractures the identity of each member of the Compson family, possibly most severely in Quentin. The contrast of Quentin’s mental state with Benjy’s inability to see past the shapes in front of his eyes is interesting, because although Benjy is disabled, he has more mental freedom than Quentin. Benjy is not bogged down by abstract concepts, like the ways of thinking and viewing the world that were imposed on Quentin.  Benjy’s lack of identity allows for mental freedom while Quentin’s identity is tied with order and control, as represented by the Old Southern moral code. Benjy lives within a more natural state, driven to do things by basic human instincts, which enables him to just observe change rather than try to control it. Quentin’s identity is spawned from artificial concepts that were created by the old south to prevent change and maintain their social hierarchy. So when things do change, he is mentally unprepared.

 Quentin is obsessed with abstract concepts. His brain was molded at a very early age to think and act a certain way. When those rules no longer exist, his world is shattered because that way of life is all he knows. Quentin demonstrates at an early age his full submission into his society’s rules, tying his identity to them. Benjy recalls Quentin’s obedience to rules, when they went swimming as little kids and Caddy broke a societal rule. Benjy states, “Then she didn’t have anything but her bodice and drawers, and Quentin slapped her and she slipped and fell down into the water” (18). Even as a kid Quentin felt he needed to be the one to follow rules and even enforce them himself. So when his father and sister demonstrate they don’t follow those rules or take them seriously he takes it personally, because it confirms to Quentin that his identity is in jeopardy. When Cady becomes pregnant without marrying first, he is irate. He even offers to cover for her and tell everyone it is his child, as a last ditch effort to control the situation and maintain the moral code. He asks his father about this idea, and his father admits to him that the old rules and moral code don’t really matter. But because Quentin’s identity is so intertwined with following the rules and moral codes of the old south, he no longer knows his place in this new society, or if he even belongs in it at all. Little by little he feels he has less and less control, ultimately culminating in his suicide.

Benjy is unable to understand societal rules and so even though he is limited by his mental disability, he maintains a sort of freedom in his mind and in the end comes out on the other end better than any other member of the Compson family. His mind is left untouched and free of societal mental restraint, because of his disability. The other family member’s minds are dominated by strict societal rules and a moral code that is steeped in tradition and stagnation. The Compson family assumes that Benjy is the only one who is helpless and incapable. But every family member remains forever stuck in the past, ruled by abstract concepts that no longer matter. They are mentally paralyzed as well, unable to move on from the destruction of their society and its rules. They are mentally unstable, because they lack the ability to exist in a world without society dictating who they are. For example Caroline is constantly talking about the past. She is still stuck in the past claiming, “My people are every bit as well born as yours. Just because Maury’s health is bad (44).” Although this social hierarchy of the South no longer matters, she still speaks as if it does. This shows her inability to move forward.

As the old southern way of living falls apart, so do their identities and they all cope in different ways. Caroline basically gives up on her life, Quentin can’t cope at all and commits suicide, Jason tries to exist in the new society and becomes a corrupt person, while Caddy acts out and rebels against the old moral code, feeling she has nothing to lose anyway. Even Benjy isn’t immune to the effects of the collapse of their society. He absorbs all of the sadness in and around the home and periodically cries, because it overwhelms him. However Benjy possesses  a mental freedom that the Compsons lack. The destruction of the Old south haunts the Compsons and in particular Quentin, through darkness and shadows. The darkness in which he ultimately succumbs to, and the same darkness and shadows Benjy fails to fully recognize. He can sense darkness and death, but he does not understand it. He states, “Then they all stopped and it was dark, and when I stopped to start again I could hear Mother, and feet walking fast away, and I could smell it”(34). He senses death by smell, but can not understand what it is, because he can only collect observations and is unable to piece them together. 

In Benjy’s opening section, the reader, who is suddenly immersed in a cascade of “sights and sounds and events,” learns not only how the thirty-three-year-old Compson brother understands the world around him, but also how he copes with the “anguished loss of his sister” whose return he still awaits (Porter 40-41).  Although he lacks the ability to distinguish between past and present or dream and reality, his capacity for interacting with the world through his senses is profound, probably developed as the result of his mental disability and his incapacity to speak.  This deficit allows him to perceive his surroundings on his own terms without the deceitful interference of others or of constructed language.  Unquestionably, this statement highlights how narrow the band of communication of the civilized adult world is, as nature and childhood are both left behind.

Benjy thrives in the outdoor environment and is in great discomfort indoors, where his family is found.  Brother and sister held hands and “ran through the bright rustling leaves” towards the house, showing the painful transition from the “bright cold” outside to the “dark cold” inside (7).  Outdoors is emotionally vibrant whereas indoors is emotionally stagnant, except for Caddie’s love and care for Benjy.  When Caddy offers to carry Benjy, their mother tells her “Well, I dont want him carried, then.  A five-year-old child.  No, no.  Not in my lap.  Let him stand up” (63).  Mother nature welcomes Benjy unconditionally, but his biological mother does not.  Humans reject, fear, taunt, threaten and torture him.  The incident with the “Burgess” girls, which ends up with Benjy’s castration, demonstrates the result of dread of him―the stranger (52).  In addition, Luster menaces Benjy with future in an asylum, assuring him that it is the place where he will end his days after Caroline’s passing.  “They going to send you to Jackson, where you belong,” says an annoyed caretaker as he “knock[s] the flowers over with his hand,” which demonstrates the lack of security, peace and comfort under the Compson’s roof (54).  Furthermore, a depressive atmosphere reigns indoors, which is embodied by the self-centered adult members of the Compson family who operate almost completely under the influence of alcohol.  There are multiple references to Uncle Maury “putting the bottle back in the sideboard” or “offering his sister a toddy” (5, 7).  But, how does Benjy handle this mistreatment?  By fully engaging with Mother Nature whose warming embrace, especially in the form of flowers, is ever present.

Although Benjy does not interpret the world on the basis of linear time, his experience of the world is more truthful even than Caddy’s.  When the siblings deliver the letter Maury wrote to his lover, Mrs. Patterson, each has a radically different interpretation of the situation.  “Mrs. Patterson came across the garden, running.  When I saw her eyes I began to cry,” says Benjy, using his ability to see people’s souls through their eyes.  In contrast, his sister’s interpretation of the secrecy of the errand is inaccurate, as it is based on a mistaken use of time.  In fact, Caddy unites two things that occur in different moments as if they had happened simultaneously.  “You know what I think it is.  I think it’s a surprise for Mother and Father and Mr. Patterson both,” a conclusion that is based on the fact that “Mr. Patterson sent you some candy” not recently, but “last summer” (13).  Faulkner’s inversion of the expected conclusion reached by these two characters seems to put into question who the real “looney” is” (53).  Is it Benjy or the reader?  In another example, later, an angry Mrs. Patterson, who screams at Benjy, “You idiot” gets her “dress caught on the fence” in a similar fashion to “the deef and dumb” (as Luster describes him) whose memory evokes two similar scenes, one with Luster and the other with Caddy, at the beginning of his narration (13, 49).  Caddy liberates her brother in the memory evoked by Benjy, but Mrs. Patterson remains trapped.  In Roskus’ words, Benjy “know[s] lot more than folks thinks” (31). 

 “The effect [of Benjy’s section] is a vivid but puzzling sensorium” that seems to be screaming at the reader: When did you lose the capacity of interacting with the world around you through your senses? (Porter 40).  “[C]hild or adult, Benjy inhabits a world that is “primitive” in an important way, because his world is one that historical man, as well as individual man, moves away from,” says James M. Mellard in his article entitled “Caliban as Prospero: Benjy and “The Sound and the Fury.”  For Faulkner, “nature [is] the underlying source of humanity, as the seed is of the plant” (Mellard 235).  In short, “Faulkner uses Benjy to “indicate how much baser the corruption of the civilized can be than the bestiality of the natural” (Mellard 243). 

Neither Benjy nor Quentin give us the readers full scale narrative in the conventional arch of beginning middle and end. The ‘middle’ in particular seems to be the hard part for Benjy where as with Quentin the ‘end’ seems to be it. By this I mean that though Benjy has a definitive sense of where he is in the moment he starts narrating (with Luster who is looking for his quarter) he does not understand the past as ‘the past’. To Benjy it is also happening in the present and though someone with a linear understanding of time could piece together the forward backwards motion that happens in Benjy’s mind Benjy himself does not understand it. Benjy has no concept of the future, he cannot comprehend years passing let alone understand that yesterday or 26 years ago is not today. This, in his section of the text, can be attributed to his mental disability however it also is reflective of the Compson Family as a whole. This becomes more apparent when Quentin’s section is analyzed.

Likewise Quentin has a fragmented understanding of time itself. Like Benjy he skips back and forth from the past to the present however unlike Benjy he understands that the past has already occurred. When Quentin travels to the past in his mind it is not because he cannot differentiate between past and present but because he does not want to. Quentin longs to correct previous wrongs, to be a savior to his ‘fallen’ sister, the Adam to her Eve instead of her succumbing to the Serpent Dalton Ames or others like him. Quentin chooses not to live in the present moment or plan for the future. Though he has the mental capacity to plan for the future and not dwell only on past experiences he subconsciously or consciously chooses to do so. He and Benjy are the same that way. Perhaps Quentin is unintentionally mirroring Benjy because he and Caddy are so close. Quentin therefore would like to replace Benjy in this thread of reasoning.

So far in the text it as apparent that both Compsons who’s narratives we as readers have been exposed to would like to live in the past whether they mistake it for the present or not. This clear theme through the Compson family is a metaphor for the south itself wishing to return to it’s Antebellum phase when rich families like the Compsons owned not only land but slaves, their reputations were clear of any blemish, their ladies acted like ladies. This toxic nostalgia, a longing for a past that was not as rosy as it is remembered as is the fall of the Compson family. Instead of addressing the future they can only address the past or the present and so they will continue their decline.