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2. Order and Chaos in TSAF

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A notable element in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is that of order and chaos as perceived in each part by their narrators. We see with each narration how these characters make sense of the world around them. In the case of the Compson brothers, their individual sense of order and chaos ultimately fails them. Yet, out of all the four parts that constitute TSAF, the only person who seemingly endures throughout the novel is Dilsey. Dilsey’s sense of order is the only one which is not deterred by the downfalls around her.  

Benjy’s sense of order and chaos is perhaps quite evident through his physical sensations. Due to his psychological limitations, Benjy’s expressions are limited to that of whimpering and wailing. Most of the time that we see him crying, it reflects his view of chaotic imbalance and it is often the result of something being awry or out of his perception of order. Perhaps an important part which most clearly indicates Benjy’s ideas of order and disorder is in Dilsey’s part, where Luster takes him on a Surrey ride. Dilsey wants to ensure that he’ll take Benjy on his usual route, “Up de street, round de square, to  de graveyard, den straight back home” (318). But the very second that Luster turns left instead of the usual way we see his horrifying reaction, “Then he bellowed. Bellow on bellow, his voice mounted, with scarce interval for breath. There was more astonishment in it, it was horror; shock; agony eyeless, tongueless; just sound” (320). However, the instant that Luster returns to the usual course, “…at once Ben hushed” (320-321). His silence attributed to, “…post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place” (321) This strong scene is highly reflective of his notions of order and chaos, anything that deviates from his physical sensations or the patterns surrounding his memories is chaos to him. This fails him, because he is incapable of moving past his past. In the end his demeanor is that of agony and utter numbness, “…his eyes were empty” (321). 

Quentin’s sense of order and disorder relies on his idea of proper Southerness. The Southern code of conduct is order to him. It is also something he cannot let go of or escape, the end result being his death. This is mainly reflected in his obsession with time and his deep desire to restore Caddy’s virginity. Like the instance where he pictures himself as Dalton Ames’ mother, for the sole purpose of preventing him from ever existing at all to prevent Caddy from losing her virginity to him. He even goes so far as to say, “I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames” (79). This false admittance of incest is quite interesting, as if this occurance would absolve Caddy of her intolerable promiscuity. Linked to the notion of pure bloodedness, or perhaps it’s attached to the end of his section where he imagines both of them dead together in hellfire. There are also many instances in which he finds himself in physical altercations with other men such as Gerald Bland and Herbert Head to defend women and their honor. Despite his efforts he fails each time to make order of disorder, and the unbearability of it all leads to his suicide. 

Jason’s entire world revolves around his selfishness, he cares for no one but himself and his version of order is bound to personal gain and manipulation of others. His attitude is reflected when he states, “I dont owe anything to anybody that has no more consideration for me” (241). He cynically manipulates the people around him, creating an elaborate plan to cheat his niece out of money, in doing so he is content and enabled to play the stocks (he also brought his car in this manner as well). This monetary gain makes him feel empowered and in control, despite his constant self pity. In the last part of the novel, we see Jason angrily unravel and his world turned to chaos when his niece steals his money. His attitude and demeanor noted as being, “…the violent cumulation of his self justification and his outrage” (303). He also loses his sense of order when he is unable to manipulate the sheriff into doing his bidding. In the end he doesn’t recover the money and he goes back home filled with anger.

   Dilsey’s character is one who rolls with the punches day to day. No matter the time frame or the narrator, her values and attitude remain unchanged throughout the novel even with the Compson family’s demise. Her sense of order is seen in the homely duties she performs, the way that she treats family, Compson and her own, even her narration is indicative. While Benjy’s and Quentin’s narration are steeped in the past and the present, and Jason’s mainly in the present with some bitterness from the past, Dilsey’s is strictly honed onto the present. Her motherly conduct is seen when she holds Benjy to calm him down, “Dilsey led Ben to the bed and drew him down beside her and she held him, rocking back and forth” (316).  She also defends Benjy while attending Sunday service, “Tell um de good Lawd dont keer whether he bright er not. Dont nobody but white trash keer dat” (290). Being that Dilsey’s perspective is the last in the novel, it leaves the reader with a sense of relief, with its linear narration, especially after the tumultuous depressing narrations of the first three parts. Whether we read Benjy’s, Quentin’s, or Jason’s parts the only stability found in the entire novel is Dilsey in which there is no chaos, only order and motherly love. 

The Relationship Between Benjy and Caddy

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Throughout the April 7th chapter of The Sound and the Fury, there are many moments where we can see the relationship between Benjy and his older sister, Caddy. The close bond that these two characters have is made even more pronounced when one compares the way Benjy acts around Caddy to the way he acts around almost everyone else, save for Dilsey. Caddy and Dilsey are the only people throughout the first chapter of the book that can ever really get Benjy to quiet down. Everyone else tries to, but most times they are unsuccessful and have to end up getting either Caddy or Dilsey.

An example of how Benjy calms down around Caddy can be seen in the scene when Caddy and Quentin are splashing about in the water and Caddy ends up saying that she’ll “run away and never come back” (19). When she says this, Benjy starts to Cry and immediately settles down when Caddy turns to him and tells him to hush. In fact, even the wording used to say Benjy stopped crying is telling of the fact that Benjy listens more to Caddy than anyone else: “Caddy turned around and said ‘Hush’  So I hushed” (19). To me, the wording of this sentence is basically Benjy saying because Caddy told him to hush, he did. He didn’t even hesitate to do as she said, but immediately listened to his older sister.

Another moment where we see Benjy quieting down because of Caddy is a few pages later where they’re eating, and Benjy hears his mother crying and then begins crying himself. In this example, however, Benjy actually doesn’t immediately stop crying when Caddy tells him to. It’s only when Dilsey closes the door and he can no longer hear his mother crying that he stops crying when Caddy tells him to. However, it must also be noted that when Caddy tells him hush for the second time after they can no longer hear their mother crying, his response in quieting down and continuing to eat is immediate. “’Hush, now.’ Caddy said. I hushed and ate” (25). Again, there is no hesitation on Benjy’s part to quiet down when Caddy tells him to, and the only reason he didn’t comply the first time was because he could hear their mother crying. Being just a baby or child during this section, hearing his mother (presumably someone that he felt love and attachment to, even if she wasn’t necessarily all warm and fuzzy with him) crying upset him and probably made him anxious, or possibly scared or worried for their mother.

Lack of Love Demonstration

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In the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, we can see the lack of love demonstration towards Benjy by the majority of the characters, except Caddy. She is the only one who shows her love and dedication to Benjy. This love is reciprocal because Benjy also likes to be near Caddy and feels well and safe when she is around and this is why he starts to remember him when he is up the fence with Luster. For example, throughout chapter one, Benjy is constantly describing how Caddy smells, “Caddy smells like trees . . .” (Faulkner, 6). This shows us that he enjoys her company because she reminds him of things that he likes such as trees, leaves. She represents a person that is important to him and therefore, he does not want her to leave his side as it shows when she goes away and he starts crying until she comes back to him. It is like a dependence that he has on Caddy because she is the person with whom he feels protected and happy. We can see as she holds his hands to go out of the house and she is always trying to understand what he is needing to say. 

Furthermore, Caddy lets Benjy know that he can always count on her, “Caddy knelt and put her arms around me and her cold bright face against mine. She smelled like trees. “You’re not a poor baby. Are you. Are you. You’ve got your Caddy. Haven’t you got your Caddy”” (Faulkner, 9). What Caddy says to Benjy in these lines is in response to how his mother referred to him before they left the house. She called him “poor baby” and Caddy affirms that he is not a poor baby, but it is so interesting because it is like she is saying that he is not a poor baby because he has got her. Thus, she also thinks that Benjy has a dependence on her and that she must always be there to take care of him. 

Nonetheless, there are characters that are the opposite of Caddy regarding her affection for Benjy. Benjy is remembering Caddy when she came home the day before Christmas. His mother seems to overprotect him in order for Benjy to not get sick when Caddy wants to take him outside. Readers might think that she is actually caring for his health, but if we deeply think, all she cares about is her Christmas party. This reflects when she says, “”Are you going to take that baby out without his overshoes.” Mother said. “Do you want to make him sick, with the house full of company”” (Faulkner, 8). Benjy getting sick on this day means that he will “ruin” the party for her because she will have to take care of him and therefore, the party will have to be canceled. These lines do not exemplify a mother’s concern about her child, but a woman who worries more about her son “ruining” her party than her actual son. 

Benjy lives with a dysfunctional family formed by two parents that do not properly take care of their children. Carolyn Porter states, “Faulkner ‘‘works up to’’ this moment, exploring the failure of the Compson parents to provide the love and care they should, and thereby leaving Dilsey and Caddy with the responsibilities of both fathering and mothering” (Porter, 47). Caddy is Benjy’s sister, but has to play the role of a mother because the special attention that Benjy requires is not provided by his actual mother. Hence, this is what leads Benjy to have this great love for Caddy because she is the only one who worries about him and dedicates her time to make him happy when he was a child. 

As we know, Benjy cannot talk, therefore, when he tries to communicate or he is feeling uncomfortable, he moans. This is something that annoys Luster because he does not understand what Benjy is trying to say. As it states, “Cant you shut up that moaning and slobbering, Luster said. Aint you shamed of yourself, making all this racket” (Faulkner, 9). In the present time of this success, Benjy must be moaning because he remembering Caddy and the moments that he used to have with her. However, Luster does not know this; he does not understand Benjy and he does not try to communicate with him and know what is happening to him. Instead, Luster insults him, not knowing that it is not Benjy’s fault to not speak up. 

“falling down the hill”

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A tangent: When he was ten years old, my father and another local boy stole a bottle of brown liquor from his father, and secreted themselves to a hill above the creek bed some yards behind his house. It was winter and they were not dressed for the cold. They passed the bottle back and forth, their extremities warming sip by sip, until their little minds began to go fuzzy and—having discovered the security provided to him by gravity to be more tenuous than he’d always assumed—my father found himself falling down the hill and into the creek. The other boy ran off to get help, though being all of ten years old and newly-drunk, it was some time before anyone came to rescue my father. He was lucky neither to drown nor freeze to death.

            I’m sure my father had a whole host of reasons for telling me this story—over and over, beginning when I was very small—but the reasons it kept intruding on me as I read the opening section of The Sound and the Fury (attributed to Benjy Compson) are twofold: I’ve come to understand this moment to be the central incident—trauma if you insist—in my father’s adolescence, a memory as lens through which he sees all that came before and would come after; the notion of falling—tumbling really—as both an apt physical description of drunkenness and an uncanny way to put into words the visceral sensation of loss.

—

            Carolyn Porter, in the section of her biography on Faulkner devoted to The Sound and the Fury, recounts that the author “once described his method as a novelist by saying ‘there’s always a moment in experience –a thought—an incident—that’s there. Then all I do is work up to that moment.’” (William Faulkner, p.46) As Cooper Marshall’s Yoknapedia entry on Caddy highlights, there is some consensus that the ‘moment’ in The Sound and the Fury—for Faulkner anyway—is Caddy in the pear tree, siblings and  servants below looking up at her soiled undergarments as she tries to discern exactly what type of gathering is going on inside. Porter, for her part, seems content to take Faulkner’s assertion of the moment’s centrality at face value, allowing that the author was so attached to the image that “until the end of his life, he clearly never tired of repeating the story of its composition.” (WF, p.51) While I cannot refute the ways in which the whole of the novel may turn on this foundational incident—I confess to only having read Benjy’s and Quentin’s sections!—it is not the passage on which I believe Benjy’s section to hinge.

            Instead I am drawn to what we come to realize is Caddy’s wedding night—“Caddy, with flowers in her hair and a long veil like shining wind” (TSAF, p.39)—when T.P. sneaks off to the cellar with Benjy in tow, and the two get drunk on some sort of carbonated alcohol, which T.P. insists, absurdly, on calling or pretending is “Sassprilluh” (TSAF, p.21). Quentin happens upon the two and begins to beat on T.P. for this trespass (if not for some other, more personal reasons … ). Benjy’s recollection of the incident is one of the few in his section where the “vivid but puzzling sensorium”, as Porter describes Faulkner’s approach to Benjy’s narrative, does the work for the reader, allowing us access to his physical sensations in the moment, rather than around it:

            I wasn’t crying, but I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t crying, but the ground wasn’t still, and then I was crying. The ground kept clopping up and the cows ran up the hill…the cows ran down the hill…then the barn wasn’t there and we had to wait until it came back. (TSAF, pp.20-21)

This is one of the earliest instances of Faulkner using the dizzying, kinetic narrative style of Benjy’s section to elucidate what Benjy is experiencing in the moment, without asking the reader to do the additional work of analysis where Benjy cannot (i.e. why does he cling so to Caddy’s arborous scent?). Benjy watches the cows go up and down the hill and we too feel dizzy. He feels the ground moving beneath him and he reels. The world spins, and as his recollections lurch forward, we spin too.

Porter describes the dual mechanisms of stasis/motion in the Benjy section as “…[moving] in jerks, [stalling] at certain sights and sounds, [resuming] speed in response to others.” (WF, p.42 ) The first such synaptic leap occurs in the early pages of the novel when the confluence in signifiers of being stuck on a fence and hearing the golfers cry ‘caddie’ proves to be too much for Benjy, drawing him out of the present back to his sister (“Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through” [TSAF, p.4]). The first narrative shift, underscored with active motion, and as such we are back to Caddy, who Porter describes as “missing”, but who one could argue, for Benjy, by 1928, is gone.

Whether missing or gone, Caddy’s pronounced absence is why Benjy’s whirling, drunken evening seems to me to be the moment around which his narrative curls: it’s the first moment we’re privy to, in which there is real threat of Caddy’s not returning through the gate, putting Benjy at risk of losing his ballast, of falling forever. Reading on from this moment – which is immediately followed by a section of more physical stillness, but narrative motion, recalling the lead-up to the infamous pear tree—we’re given a key to understand everything that comes before and after in terms of Benjy’s attachment to his sister, who, as Porter puts it, is his “only connection in or to the world”.

While Benjy’s section of the novel may serve as a cubist introduction to the Compson narrative on the whole, and while it may indeed be Caddy in the pear tree that haunts and tempts the siblings – and Faulkner—most, the gut-rush of elation and anguish Benjy describes as the world spins around him seems as potent a marker as any for what we understand to be his ultimate loss.

Annotated Bibliography

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My essay will attempt to understand the connection between trauma and memory in The Sound and The Fury. More specifically the link between how a trauma psychologically impacts our memory and sense of time. I will also examine how the structure of the book emphasizes the narrative of understanding the past and present via memory. I am looking to understand how Benjy’s comprehension of the present frames his memory of the past. For Quentin, I am looking to analyze his obsession with time, and how his memories of the past have led him to determine the fate of his present self (i.e. his suicide). What I am looking to achieve is to somehow integrate both the psychological aspect of memory and the way in which the narrative is structured between Benjy and Quentin in their relationship to the “loss” of  Caddy. 

Brown, May Cameron. “The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury.” American Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 1980, pp. 544–553. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2924957.

Brown’s essay examines the Quentin chapter through the lens of time or the fixation with time. Brown alludes to the significance time plays in Quentin’s chapter considering he is planning his death. Essentially, this essay also examines how this sense of time is constantly being constructed and reconstructed through memories of the past and present. For Quentin, Brown argues how past events relating to Caddy cause Quentin to reshape the present only to realize that he’s made the same mistake twice; that he cannot save Caddy or protect her honor. I want to use Brown’s argument on how certain imagery and fixation on time, structures Quentin’s story.

Forter, Greg. “Freud, Faulkner, Caruth: Trauma and the Politics of Literary Form.” Narrative, vol. 15, no. 3, 2007, pp. 259–285. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30219258.

This article examines Freud’s psychoanalysis and its effect on trauma. From my understanding, Forter discusses the way in which historical moments are shaped and reshaped by those living through a trauma. Therefore, the mind/consciousness undergoes a “process” that would organize the trauma into coherency and this is done through the retelling of memories, which would allow for an individual to move between past and present simultaneously. Forter attempts to understand “systematic traumatizations.” Although Forter uses LIA and AA as example texts, I plan to repurpose his understanding of Freud’s psychoanalysis on systematic trauma in relation to TSAF.

Howard, Leon. “The Composition of The Sound And The Fury.” The Missouri Review 5.2 (1981): 109-38. Web.

Leon Howard’s critical essay examines the structural component of The Sound and The Fury. He discusses how Faulkner essentially created a narrative out of chaos, and this is represented through the stream of consciousness of Benjy’s idiocy and Quentin’s scattered consciousness. Each of their narrative  are centered around their relationship to Caddy. Howard ultimately investigates Faulkner’s creative process in order to understand how this unorthodox style of storytelling is arranged to construct a coherent timeline.

McGann, Mary E. “‘The Waste Land’ and ‘The Sound and the Fury’: To Apprehend the Human Process Moving in Time.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1976, pp. 13–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20077547.

Mary McGann examines the work of TSAF as a structural integration of both time and death. She asserts that the structure of the novel forces the reader to interpret the novel as an anomaly they must decode. That the structure plays an integral part of the overall narrative. What she claims is that the structure of the novel and the point of view of each character, lends itself into the complexities of the human mind. Importantly, she focuses on how time shifts are essential to the meaning of the story. As well as, how time in the novel functions as an emotional aspect, rather than chronological, which is similar to the  argument I am presenting.

Porter, Carolyn. William Faulkner (Lives and Legacies). N.p.: Oxford UP, 2007. 39-54. Print.

Carolyn Porter examines how Faulkner experimented with point of view in The Sound and The Fury, constructing the story as a puzzle. Porter explains how Faulkner had “no plan” at all for the novel and had originally wanted to open the book with Quentin’s chapter, but instead the opening of the book is told via Benjy’s perspective, which sums up the complexity of the novel as a whole. I plan on using Porter’s argument through the lens of how Benjy’s chapter is formulated and how his recollection of the past is triggered by moments from the present. What makes Benjy’s chapter so extraordinary and unique is that he is a character that suffers with a disability. He is unable to express his emotions verbally, so Porter examines how Benjy’s “stream of consciousness” is not linear but jagged. Benjy’s narrative mimics his thought process which is complex and paradoxical. It provides an alternative lens to understanding  the past and present.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Digital Chalkboard.” Jean-Paul Sartre: “On ‘The Sound and the Fury’: Time in the Work of Faulkner” :: Resources :: Digital Chalkboard. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 May 2017.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s opinion of TSAF is a negative one. He deconstructs the structural component of the novel only to claim that it reveals no real story. He claims that the story does not “unfold.” What Sartre tries to convey is the absence of time (i.e – Quentin breaking the watch and Benjy’s inability to comprehend time; past or present). In essence, what he argues is arrested development. The characters Benjy and Quentin are not functioning within the past or present, they are merely suspended in past events. I plan on using this article as a possible counter-argument for how time/memory is essential to understanding past/present.

Final Project Proposal

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My final project will focus on TSAF. When reading TSAF I was most interested in the way in which the story was told, but more specifically how memory is constructed and reconstructed over and over again, mainly by Benjy. His chapter was the most interesting because Benjy is considered a “retard” and he is unable to verbally express his emotions over the loss of Caddy. I had spoken about this in my first blog entry on how even though Benjy is unable to verbally express himself, the only way he is able to cope is through memory. Therefore, memory and time become skewed. This idea of time and memory is then seen in Quentin’s chapter. I want to somehow tie in the psychological aspects of how time and memory affect the way we perceive and cope with loss, but in this instance it would focus on Benjy, Quentin, and maybe Jason. I have been having a hard time finding articles, but I was thinking of perusing through JSTOR, Project Muse, data bases outside the field of English, and Google Scholar.
I don’t know if this would be better as a long wiki or a research paper.

Similarities between the Compson and the Bundren Family

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As I Lay Dying has many analogous ideas and themes to The Sound and The Fury. Many of the contrasting ideas and themes are metaphoric representations of the protagonist through different objects, time unable to move forward, and similar character roles each family member play. In As I Lay Dying there are various accounts of human- animal interconnections that relate Addie to a fish and a horse. Similar to The Sound and the Fury, Caddie is symbolized to Benjy as fire, a caddie in golf, and a slipper. Faulkner uses these projections to symbolize that Caddie and Addie are always internally present within their family despite Addie’s death and Caddie’s lack of presence.  On pages 53, 67, and 84, Vardaman’s narrative focuses on the dead fish to embody Addie’s existence. Vardaman’s paranoia arises as he becomes unable to articulate and differentiate Addie’s existence from the fish’s existence and concludes someone killed Addie while she has been dead in her bed for ten days (54). Through Vardaman’s narrative, Addie is able to remain present in society only if the fish is devoured by each family member thus each family member will embody a part of Addie’s spirit (66-67), an example of animal magnetism;  “A magnetic charm or appeal” (Merriam Webster) towards the perseverance of Addie’s existence.   Furthermore, instead of an embodiment as a fish, Jewel perceives his mother as a horse. On pages 135-136, Jewel purchases a horse with his own money saved from “cleaning up forty acres of new ground Quick laid out last spring,” he also tells Anse the horse will never eat anything that belongs to him which shows Jewel’s separation in the family as well as his affection for the horse. By comparing his mother to a horse, we come to the realization Jewel isn’t cruel or mean hearted as Cora perceives him to be (21), instead he’s misperceived.

“Without stopping it overends and rears again, pauses, then crashes slowly forward and through the curtain. This time Jewel is riding upon it, clinging to it, until it crashes down and flings him forward and clear and Mack leaps forward into a thin smell of scorching meat and slaps at the widening crimson-edged holes that bloom like flowers in his undershirt” (222).

The movement of the river rushing the casket downstream compares to a wild horse attempting to thrust Jewel off it. From the beginning of the novel it is clear Jewel treats his horse with tough love, caring for it through derogatory movements (13), but for Jewel to risk his life to safe the casket would emphasis his care for his mother is a mere reflection for his care of his horse. Thus, for Jewel to state his mother is a horse only further indicates his feelings towards his mother is more personable and more profound which leads to the question if Jewel is not able to perceive his mother as a horse would he have rescued his mother from the river?

Time unable to progress forward is made clear from each family member’s inability to cope with Addie’s death. After Addie’s death each family member develops onset of problems: existence for Darl, sexuality for Dewey Dell, and the parallels of reality for Vardaman and Jewel. This exemplifies Addie’s death only hinders each family member’s ability to progress in life.  On page 146, “It is as though the space between us were time; an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between,” implicitly draws upon the burden of Addie’s death as an entropic effect not only on her children but on time as well. The idea that separation of Addie and her children is not a spatial factor but a temporal factor implies Addie’s death disrupted the continuous rhythm of time moving forward, instead, time is now hindered and doubling backwards into the past. A disastrous foreshadowing for the Bundren family once Addie died. This is very much contrasts to Quentin’s narrative in The Sound and the Fury; his constant battle to irrevocably attempt to escape time and his past leads him to commit suicide since the progression of time and the memories from the past are inescapable.

Lastly, from Addie’s narrative it is clear Jewel is the “black sheep” of the family due to an erroneous affair Addie has with Whitfield. Addie favors Jewel and firmly believes Jewel will be her salvation saving her from water and fire (168), similarly to Mrs. Compson with Jason in The Sound and the Fury, she believes Jason will rescue her from the downfall of the family’s name as she constantly reminds him he is a Bascomb and not a Compson. Dewey Dell relates to Caddy as they both are impregnated out of wedlock and is at a threshold between womanhood, Benjy and Darl would relate to one another due to their observant personas but Darl is able to comprehend what he sees, every character but Anse would relate to Quentin due to them repressing time and their inability to cope with their past, and finally, Anse and Mr. Compson are both not present/ active father figures in the story since Mr. Compson’s most indicative role in The Sound and The Fury is to leave Quentin at a threshold between time and the meaning of life in comparison to Anse who sells Jewel’s horse

Benjy

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In beginning The Sound and the Fury from Benjy’s perspective, Faulkner challenges his readers’ instinctual perceptions both of the story’s physical setting, but also regarding the atmosphere of the characters’ personal interactions. With this approach Faulkner prevents readers from projecting narrative conventions upon the story while also highlighting the subjectivism of experience, a valuable notion to keep in mind while engaging with such a socially stratified society. Indeed, if we are to gain anything from Benjy’s section, we must submit to his way of relating to his world. After all, Benjy’s way of understanding his surroundings is marked by an extremely unique hierarchy of senses. For example, most people deem their sense of sight as primary to their understanding of reality. For Benjy, neither reality nor sight are clear or trustworthy.

Benjy doesn’t associate so much with distinct images as he does with the relative brightness of an object, or the shadows they cast. He describes how shapes fall and spin, and start and stop moving (arbitrarily, as it would seem to Benjy). And yet, he is not at a total cognitive loss: “When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled” (41). Here, Benjy recognizes the dependent factors intrinsic to the glittering phenomenon that occurs when he changes his physical position in relation to the box of stars. Moreover, whether or not he reserves obedience for those he trusts, he does have a basic understanding of the concept: “Caddy turned around and said ‘Hush’ So I hushed” (19).

Benjy’s gravitation towards Caddy may be explained by her effort to accommodate his unique perspective. While most of the other characters mock or patronize him, Caddy truly attempts to construct a system of communication between them, even though verbally it remains one-sided. At the branch, on a day that it is frozen over, Benjy perceives Caddy to be breaking off a piece of the water. To his knowledge, perhaps, water is simply a clear substance. Caddy explains the difference: “Ice. That means how cold it is” (13). She also touches the piece of ice to Benjy’s face, so that he may feel, too, the difference.

Most of the other characters either mock or dismiss Benjy’s experience. His own mother, for example, denies his limited capacity to connect facts and make logical deductions. When Benjy becomes fixated on waiting by the gate after Caddy marries and moves away, T.P. explains to Benjy’s mother that “[he] think if he down to the gate, Miss Caddy come back” (51). His mother’s narrow-mindedness results in her denial of the situation altogether: “Nonsense,” she responds (51). She is right, it is non-sensical to believe that Caddy will come through the gate just because she has come through the gate in the past. But her denial of his experience is counter-productive and limiting to her own understanding.

A family Led on Seperate Roads

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Quentin and Jason Compson both have very different ideologies towards their past and present lifestyles. Quentin obsesses with time and indulges in past failures as his narration is hindered by retrospective memories of his father and sister, Caddy. In contrast, Jason Compson reflects on his past experiences as a method to bring reassurance and to motivate him for future success. Both narrators approach their past in very contrasting ways, Quentin in a crippling manner while Jason in an empowering manner, but ultimately they are unable to escape their past.

Raised closely by different parents, Quentin by his father and Jason by his mother, Quentin’s obsession with time represents his desires to escape his father’s ideals of time and sexuality but gain his acceptance. But as his mind constantly fluctuates between the past and the present it becomes obvious, he obsesses with his father’s ideals while Caddy is used as a scapegoat to deviate from his father’s principles and for Quentin to gain his own identity. From the start of the chapter, Quentin’s father warns him to separate himself from time but contradicts himself and hands Quentin a watch.

Quentin’s father tells him, “to forget time… try not to conquer it because no battle is ever won. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair” (76).  As Quentin tries to separate himself from the past, the constant ticking of clocks and watches haunts Quentin indicating its not Quentin’s sense of time that is crippled but it’s the memory of his father that Quentin can’t forego and separate from. Many memories that arise, are often focused in on Caddy but they are all reflected off of conversations between Quentin and his father. “I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames” (TSAF 79). Quentin calls upon incest relations with Caddy as a way to propose the idea, Caddy’s child does have a known father and Caddy is not ruining the reputation of the Compson name through her promiscuous actions. However, on page 78, the conversation between Quentin and his father states, “In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to a women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women….Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said that what that’s sad too.” In this passage, the idea of losing virginity as a male serves as a passage from becoming “a boy to a man.” Quentin who is still a virgin, is looked down upon, and grasps at the concept of, if he mentions to his father he had sexual relations with his sister, he will gain his father’s approval as well as save the rest of the reputation that is left of the Compson name, that has not been destroyed by Caddy’s pregnancy out of wedlock.

Another moment that brings Quentin to arrest at the thought of his father’s memory is when Quentin is accused of spying on Caddy, “The street lamps would go down the hill then rise toward town I walked upon the belly of the shadow. I could extend my hand beyond it. feeling father behind me beyond the rasping darkness of summer and August the street lamps Father and I protect women from one another from themselves our women Women are like that they don’t acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil…”(TSAF 96-97). Faulkner incorporates this passage to implicate several things. Mr. Compson, Quentin’s father is the primitive source that haunts Quentin. While his sense of time and Caddy represents the disorder that builds within Quentin as he tries to gain his father’s acceptance but gain his own identity.

Lastly, the Italian immigrant girl depicts Quentin’s last attempt to separate himself from his father. He calls her his sister and does not try to take advantage of her as he is able to lose his virginity to her making his father proud he is no longer a virgin. Instead, he tries to lead her to her home. The Italian girl may be representative of purity and as Caddy untouched. He views her as his last attempt to separate himself from his father; allowing himself to bring her home without memories of his father clouding his judgment. Though memories of Caddy and Natalie arise during this moment, this represents a struggle he has with his morals versus expectations he has as a man (134).

Jason obsesses with money and social status like his mother and unlike Benjy and Quentin he does not respect women. He views himself superior over all others, authoritative, sees himself as a person who should command respect and attention, and is extremely cynical of everyone’s actions. In contrast to the views Benjy and Quentin had for their mother, Jason’s narration views Mrs. Compson as a very emotional and caring mother whose actions are controlled him Jason. Mrs. Compson constantly repeats the words “flesh and blood” as she pleads Jason to allow Caddy to return for Quentin, “I’d gladly take her back, sins and all, because she is my flesh and blood. It’s for Quentin’s sake.” Jason’s relation to time is blended with jealousy of Quentin’s Harvard education but also biased as each memory he has is propelled through blame and misery while he is a spectator. Jason is constantly comparing himself to Quentin’s Harvard education by stating the education is completely unnecessary as he is doing fine without it (196,197, 206, 235,). However, he also mentions Quentin is the reason for the downfall of the family due to selling property to pay for his education (206) and him having to be a father figure for the family. In this narration, Jason does not have flashbacks of Caddy instead his memories are targeted at Quentin and moments of his superiority. He views black people as inferior to him and him having to install a method to control and put fear into them so they know their role in society (207).  Jason’s relations to economics are very derogatory as he is fueled with hatred towards Jews and black people (234). He constantly remarks on their laziness and incompetency but on the contrary he is dependent on them (186), dependent on Dilsey to make him his meals, and the Jewish people who run the market.  Jason is not only racist but he is also sexist. On page 247, he states he does not need any more women in his life as she may “turn out to be a hophead”- a drug addict. Basically, women are virtually of no use to society.  His authoritative persona brings about his insecurity. He does not allow Caddy to return home probably because he’s afraid she will be favored, (on page 220 he forces his mother to burn the check) as well as the constant reminder of Quentin’s Harvard education he carefully attempts to show was a pointless education (235).