Upon plunging into The Sound and the Fury and voluntarily riding on Faulkner’s rollercoaster of a narrative, the motif of time and the theme of mental health and mental disability captivate the essence of the story thus far. In Chapter One, Faulkner introduces the mentally disabled man of Benjy using prose that disjoint the various memories Benjy recalls. One moment, Benjy might be talking about a memory from Christmas and the next about sometime in the spring, introducing whole new groups of characters and out-of-context dialog. This disjointedness of the narrative demonstrates that for Benjy, time is almost waistless, a non-factor, or something that flows with his Being in the world. Most notably, Faulkner uses Benjy’s seemingly simple and random memories to foreshadow future events of characters whom might take the idea of time much more seriously.

“We must be quiet while Quentin’s studying.” Father said. “What are you doing Jason?” “Nothing.” Jason said. “Suppose you come over here to do it then.” Father said. Jason came out of the corner. “What are you chewing?” Father said. “He’s chewing paper again.” Caddy said. “Come here, Jason.” Father said. Jason threw into the fire. It hissed, uncurled, turning black. Then it was gray. Then it was gone. (72).

It is interesting how in the next chapter, Quentin is introduced as a Harvard student, which correlates to Benjy’s memory of him studying at the time when Jason was chewing paper. And it is equally interesting that Jason discards the paper into the fire, where it burns away into nothing, foreshadowing Quentin’s untimely death; his suicide.

If the time-line of this story was not already disjointed enough, Quentin’s section in Chapter Two further adds to complexity of these characters. The motif of time returns in the opening of the chapter when Quentin says  “I was in time again, hearing the [pocket] watch” (76). His fixation on time and his pocket-watch might suggest that he is struggling to understand time itself and his place in the world. In a sense, Quentin’s relationship to time reminds me Albert Camus’ The Stranger, in which the protagonist, Meursault, struggles to find purpose in his life, leaving him feel almost like a stranger in what he would describe as an increasingly “absurd” world. Quentin similarly seems to struggle with himself and the world, especially with his shocking revelations of incest and plans to end his own life.

While Benjy flows like water with the relationship with time, Quentin crashes like a wave as demonstrated throughout his narrative. He rants and raves about all of the wrong he has done to himself and his family, exclaiming how “…I [he] see now that I have not suffered enough I see now that I must pay for your (Jason) sins as well as mine…” (103). His repeated and intense ramblings about memories throughout his life cut in between paragraphs and sentences. The mental breakdown and gradual decline of Quentin’s mental health is full view of the reader, jerking almost violently through emotions and past experiences, only for his soul to rest when the his own internal pocket-watch finally stops ticking.   

Benjy’s process of perceiving and understanding existence is highly overlooked and labeled as insignificant idiocy when his perception of time and relationships through sensory imagery is extremely profound. While it doesn’t allow for readers to follow a typical linear time structure, it gives the audience “…a poetic and more sympathetic understanding of existence…” also mentioning specific examples of sensory perception from The Sound and the Fury: “I could smell the clothes flapping, and the smoke blowing across the branch” (Faulkner 14).

Faulkner, through his characters and personally, expresses his disbelief in the value of Benjy’s sentience, limiting his existence to his connoted confusing, chaotic, continuously burdensome behavior. As mentioned in Adler’s essay, to Faulkner, “Benjy is ‘someone capable only of knowing what happened but not why’” (Faulkner, “Paris Review” 1) (Adler). However, when Faulkner discusses and analyzes the most effective and influential means of artistic expression, he states that music better expresses what he attempts to explain “clumsily in words” (Adler). This excerpt reminded me of an interview I watched with New Zealand pop star Lorde, who described her experiences having synethesia and the ability to see images through music. In a sense, this is similar to what Faulkner is expressing, his own belief that music better expresses images he tries to express through words, and his own use of the word “clumsily” easily draws me back to descriptions of Benjy’s behavior. Thus, I think while Faulkner may not recognize the beauty in Benjy’s abnormal mode of perception and observation, the ability to take in moments in time so intensely and utilizing all of your senses, and to remember that and process future decisions based on those moments and experiences is remarkable. I liked Carolyn Porter’s mention of Benjy’s existence being “more poetic than narrative, and perhaps more pictorial than either, especially if we include cubist painting as a reference point” (Keith/Porter 40). While Lorde may utilize her synesthesia to create highly praised Grammy winning albums, Benjy’s unique mode of processing is consistently undermined and the meaning or significance of his existence as a sentient being ignored.

Works Cited:

Keith, LeeAnna, and Carolyn Porter. William Faulkner : Lives and Legacies, Oxford University Press USA – OSO, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=416050.
Created from huntercollege-ebooks on 2020-09-03 10:39:12.

Burton, Stacy. “Benjy, Narrativity, and the Coherence of Compson History.” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, 7.2 (1995) 207-228. JSTOR. 31 October

Faulkner, William. “Interview by Jean Stein.” The Paris Review. New York: 1956. Online.
//http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner//

Throughout Quentin’s section, he reveals an obsession with time, and with escaping from time. His first thought on awaking on the day of his suicide is “I was in time again,” as he ascertains the time from the position of shadows in his room (76). One of his first act of the day is to twist off the hands of his watch (80). One can view his suicide at the end of the day as his most drastic gesture toward escaping time. While this may be true, I believe that it is not so much the suicide itself, as it is the meticulous planning and absolute resolve that allow Quentin to both exist within time and simultaneously escape from time, at least temporarily.

And it is clear that Quentin has planned his suicide carefully. Previous to the day narrated in his section, Quentin has prepared letters, presumably suicide notes, to his father and to his friend Shreve (81). He prepares a second outfit knowing he will return to his apartment later to change (81). He buys the irons that he will use to weight himself down in the water well ahead of time, and leaves them at the bridge where he will jump into the river later in the day (116). We as readers are privy to Quentin’s many thoughts, but he apparently does not question his intention to kill himself at all, and when he does think direcly about the act, it is with a certain serenity: “And then I’ll not be. The peacefullest words. Peacefullest words.” (174)

According to Martin Heidegger, one of the fundamental problems of human existence in time is the fact that one never has access to the whole story: one can remember the past and be aware of the present, but future events are unknown. The one moment we have access to this totality is the moment we cease to have access to anything–our death. For as long as we are alive, our understanding of ourselves is incomplete. As Heidegger wrote, “This ‘not-yet’ ‘belongs’ to Dasein [human existence] as long as it is; this is how things stand phenomenally” (Heidegger 286). Quentin attempts to circumvent this shortcoming of existence within time by planing the rest of his short life out in meticulous detail, so he will know, or come close to knowing, the unknowable “not-yet,” at least for a day. Quentin frees himself from some of the negative aspects of time, while still existing in time, just as his watch stripped of its hands continues to tick in his pocket.

(The Heidegger reference is to the Macquerrie & Robinson translation of Being and Time; all other references are to the Vintage edition of The Sound and the Fury.)

Carolyn Porter begins her study on Faulkner with an appeasement that almost promises that a second read of The Sound and The Fury will merit many benefits: “Although it (TSAF) seems chaotic at first read, it is, in fact, an exquisitely composed and perfect work,” she says. This poses the question, is she right? Is TSAF actually traversable? Or is it just a dense and garbled bit of pretentious literature that strays from the conventional and well-embraced narrative schema? One can argue that the unrelenting, ubiquitous, and unwarned leaps through the respective narrators’ real-time and flashbacks causes disorientation and feeling of vertigo within the reader, and ultimately turns off the idea of even revisiting the novel. But, to me and Porter alike, we believe that Faulkner gives a bit more credit to the capacity of his readers. There is a map hidden within the structure that, after a second read, or a very careful first read, readers can exploit and take the helm at putting the tumultuous puzzle of the Compson family together. 

The opening section, commonly known as the “Benjy” section serves as a guideline, at least to me, to traversing the rest of the novel. Benjy doesn’t perceive time the way “normal” people do. Everything is happening to him in the present of April Seventh,1928. For him it is his habitual way of experiencing the world, but for us, this constant back and forth could be “dizzying” as Porter better says. This isn’t a cause for alarm, however, because Faulkner has some contingencies in place to help navigate. By naming the sections by their respective present, we are instantly given a center, or a focal point. 

Then, to really battle with the rippling change in time throughout the narrative, it is critical to focus on the secondary characters that take care of Benjy. “Listen at you, now.” Luster said. “Ain’t you something, thirty-three years old, going on that way.” (TSAF. 3) Luster says in his opening bit of dialogue while he and Benjy search for a quarter by a golf course (this golf course also gives us a hint of where we are in time). With this in mind, by placing the character of Luster and the title of this section in cohesion, Faulkner has given us the plan or piece of a blueprint, even though he openly has said that he had no plan at all, to navigate. We know that as long as Luster is in the scene taking care of Benjy, we are in the present, and when Benjy is being taken care of by the likes of T.P and Versh, we are most likely in the past. It is these hints and pieces that place us in specific points in time.

Another hurdle that could distract readers is the characters with the same names that are present within the novel. For example, there are two Quentin’s’, two Jason’s, and two Maury’s. The trick here is to pay close attention to the pronouns attached the names. With this adequate technique, Faulkner is not just all over the place but careful to keep his readers engaged and working to conquer this difficult text. When a “she” is attached to Quentin during the Benjy section, the novel is somewhere near the present in which the name Quentin belongs to Caddy’s illegitimate daughter, and when “he” is attached to Quentin, the pronoun refers to the eldest Compson. Maury could be referring to Benjy’s previous name or Uncle Maury which is simple enough because Uncle Maury is, most of the time, Uncle Maury. 

By exploiting the presences of these characters and roles, we as readers are able to narrow down a time frame and put together a linear and cohesive story in our minds somewhat resembling the well-known story structure, regardless of the difficult style of writing Faulkner embraces. Small details like this help readers keep track of the hazardous events being depicted all at once through Benjy’s jagged perspective, but the issue is that they’re hard to catch and throw us for a loop. This inverses stream of consciousness follows through to Quentins section as well which is, arguably, more difficult than the Benjy section, however, If we’ve been careful, we’ve had some practice on how to read this book with the Benjy section. Benjy’s section serves as, I like to say a “dump of information” which we as readers make sense of in the following sections of the novel.

With this in mind, I believe that Faulkner indeed had a plan, contrary to his own description of his writing process. These subtle hints introduced during the Benjy section of the novel pave the way for how to read the entire novel which fights against the linearity of time in order to create a disorienting but ultimately effective narrative about family, shame, social standings, disabilities, death, and love.

While Benji’s mind in The Sound and The Fury can seem disorienting, his visual associations function as a mnemonic device that once understood, pulls us into the novel much more viscerally than any plot driven narrative. First lets look at the definition of a mnemonic device. It is a technique a person can use to help them remember a long list of items or events, a memory aid. The oldest mnemonic device comes from Ancient Greece called the Method of Loci. The user is told to imagine a familiar place, usually their home. The user then, in their mind, fills the various rooms with the items they are trying to remember, associating the word to the location. This, while not intentionally, is how Benji views his life. 

The first key to understanding this section is to know that in his earlier years Benji is not allowed off the Compson estate. This can be assumed from the scene where Benji escapes. (TSATF p52) “How did he get out, father said. Did you leave the gate unlatched when you came in, Jason” This being said, Benji is very familiar with the Compson estate, and all of his memories are tied to locations there. Every cut off in his memory is strung together by another memory happening in the same location. This allows us to tie each point on the timeline to a location and collect several pieces of information. 

We start off with event #1 which starts in a golf course; this is every scene Luster is in. Since the golf course in the opining passage sparks a memory, we can infer it was once part of the Compson estate, and no longer is because it was sold off when the family was in financial destress. (TSATF p4) “Luster said. ‘You snagged on that nail again. Can’t you never crawl through here without snagging on that nail.”

The very next sentence (TSATF p4) “Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through” takes us to the first flashback of what we’ll denote event #2, Christmas day, as derived from (TSATF p4) “you don’t want your hands froze on Christmas, do you”. This is connected to the main arch through the fence which is in both timelines. This is also the day Caddy and Benji deliver the letter to Mrs Patterson. (TSATF p12) “You don’t want your hands froze on Christmas do you” and (TSATF p13) “She took the letter out of her pocket and put it in mine. ‘It’s a Christmas present.’”

The second flashback occurs at the fence as well. Event #3 is Benji waiting for Caddy at the gate a few days before Christmas, as seen in Caddy saying “Christmas is the day after tomorrow.” (TSAF page7) 

The fence is again mentioned the day Benji escapes and chases the girls as previously stated. 

As Luster and Benji in the main arch pass the carriage house, (TSAF p9) “we passed the carriage house”, flashback to event #4 occurs, the day TP takes Benji and his mother for a carriage ride. (TSAF p9) “‘Git in, now and set still until your maw come.’ Dilsey said. She shoved me into the carriage. T.P. held the reins”. We now see the present time line is Luster and Benji walking down memory lane, with the excuse of finding a quarter, as Benji has flashbacks of every place they pass. 

Occassionally, a slightly more complicated tactic happens, where a flashback is linked by the location in another flashback. Since these do not connect to the present at all, which is the easiest timeline to distinguish as it is the only one with Luster, it is sometimes difficult to see that these are two separate flashbacks. This is the case when event #5 occurs, Benji delivering a letter to Mrs. Patterson alone. This is triggered by remembering Mrs. Pattersons house when recalling event #2. These events are almost indistinguishable except for a few small clues. “‘You idiot’, Mrs. Patterson said, I told him never to send you alone again.” (TSATF p13) Beni is delivering a letter but unlike in event #2, he is without Caddy.

The next event #6 is covered the most, other than the present timeline. The day their grandmother dies. The location most associated with this is the tree Caddy climbs, but is introduced with the children playing in the branch, which Benji recalls when passing the branch in the present. (TSATF p17) “I hushed and got in the water and Roskus came and said to come to supper”. 

Event #7 is triggered by the barn, where T.P. and Benji got drunk at Caddy’s wedding and Quentin fought T.P. (TSATF p20) “The cows came jumping out of the barn.” “Quentin kicked T.P. again.” 

The next crucial location is the swing. In the present timeline “Miss Quentin and her beau (are)in the swing” (TSAF p46) which triggers a flashback to Caddy in the swing who wanted to “stay here and talk to Charlie a while”. (TSAF p47)

Locational memory allows us a vivid picture of the Compson manner and helps us interpret all the memories that fill the rooms, poetically strung together like a mental trail of bread crumbs as we follow Benji along his stroll in the present.