It’s said that Christ was dead for three days before he was resurrected. Once he arose he shed any indication of the death that grappled him to the crucifix. Breathing life anew on a day in April which is Christianly referred to as Easter. The week leading up to it is commemorated as the Holy Week. April is the epitome of springtime, with the resurrection of nature from its previous decaying self. The blossoming of flowers, the vibrant colored leaves breathing life once again as Jesus did on his third day of being dead long ago. April 7th 1928: Benjy Compson’s 33rd birthday, also the day before Easter, yet throughout his piece there is no indication of life, joy, or purity. Only the non-linear windows of death, excruciating cries, and the loss of purity. The first part of The Sound and the Fury is encapsulated by the echo of springtime and signifying signs that serve to juxtapose the Compson family’s downward spiral. But most notably, its connection to the center of Benjy’s world: Caddy. 

Caddy herself is April, she is Benjy’s spring and will always be so. This may be why there’s a kind of simultaneity to Benjy’s thoughts and his memories. Caroline Porter sums this idea up quite nicely when she writes, “The opening section of the novel, in fact, is not a story at all, but a pastiche of moments as experienced by Benjy at various points in his life. There is no plot, no beginning or ending. Instead a dense array of images is established, centered around Benjy’s anguished loss of his sister” (Porter 40). We see in TSAF how within Benjy’s section, we can often trace his sensation of smell (in particular trees) and his touch as flowers which pop up everywhere intermitetly. Flowers and trees being emblems of springtime themselves. The association of the smell of trees is linked to Caddy physically being present and the flowers are often (but not always) connected to her absence. Both the smell of trees and flowers serve as a strong symbolic substitute for Caddy, the latter which helps calm him down when he’s “crying” or “moaning” when Caddy is no longer there. 

The earliest point where this can be seen is when Lester is flustered with Benjy’s crying and Falkner writes, “What are you moaning about, Luster said. You can watch them again when we get to the branch. Here. Here’s you a jimson weed. He gave me the flower” (TSAF 6). This flower is presumed to have calmed him down. The connection between Caddy and flowers is not something that is immediately discernible but there are instances that point to it. One of them being when Caddy and Benjy go to deliver Uncle Maury’s love letter together. Benjy notes, “She climbed the fence with the letter in her hand and went through the brown rattling flowers” (TSAF 13). In another memory where Benjy goes to deliver the letter without Caddy he observes, “Mr. Patterson was chopping in the green flowers…I began to cry” (TSAF 13). Two different instances, one with Caddy and the other without. The first flowers are associated with an auditory sensation while the second is associated with chopping.  

Periodically Benjy mentions how,“Caddy smelled like trees” (TSAF 6). Perhaps the most pivotal memory Benjy has is when Caddy climbs up a pear tree. “We watched the muddy bottom of her drawers. Then we couldn’t see her. We could hear the tree thrashing” (TSAF 39). This part not only foreshadows her impurity, but it also may symbolize the turning point through use of the word “thrashing.” A violent movement, or some sort of struggle, Benjy struggles excruciatingly after Caddy is gone. This is noted by Porter when she states, “…Benjy is in pain, continual and fundamentally irremediable pain” (Porter 44). 

Towards the midpoint of his section we see 33 year old Benjy, in a sad yearning gesture join two flowers in a bottle, “There was a flower in the bottle. I put the other flower in it…I tried to pick up the flowers. Luster picked them up, and they went away. I began to cry” (TSAF 54-55). His preoccupation with flowers serves to ease the suffering he’s in by the loss of the only person who loved him. Perhaps this gesture was his way of communicating his longing for his flower, his springtime, his April, his Caddy.