Faulkner begins The Sound and the Fury with a more complex chapter to set the tone for the rest of the book. It's not just this chapter that's "disorienting", granted, some chapters are going to be more confusing than others, but his writing style in general tends to air more on the side of confusion rather than ease. Especially when writing from Benjy's perspective. This is probably to provide a more in depth look at what Benjy's mind must be like; scattered, but factual and unbiased.
Benjy is unique in that he doesn't really have a specific role in the Compson family. His family members (with the exception of Caddy), all perceive him as a sort of burden on them. Specifically his mother, who seems to feel compelled to constantly refer to him as a "baby" and act as though her life is somehow worsened by Benjy's existence; she's embarrassed to call him her son. Nothing is expected of Benjy, and that is why he makes the perfect narrator. He presents things just as they are, he has no biased opinions, only innocence (at least, as far as we can see right now).
The only issues that may arise with Benjy being the narrator is lack of consistency in the ways that he tells the story. While he does present the Compson family in an unbiased, innocent light, he often daydreams and has flashbacks which makes for a painfully confusing reading experience. However his natural disposition for nostalgia provokes an interesting question; what happened? Plot-wise we know that something happened to Caddy, something so big that the event has split Benjy's consciousness right down the middle into two separate eras; while Caddy was with Benjy, and while Caddy wasn't around. This resembles the AD / BC timeline revolving around Jesus' life/death. The only problem being that we don't know what happened.
The Sound and the Fury is all one big puzzle, and as we read we gather bits and pieces and start to fit them together. However as we fit this puzzle together we realize that every piece we have been given fits one specific piece that we don't have yet; and that piece is Caddy's story.
Ethan, great job! This is very well written. I really like the way you spoke about Benjy's lack of consistency and his sense of nostalgia. It's true that we don't receive an accurate description of each scene from Benjy, but we do receive the not so pretty parts of the description. I also like your comparison to the AD/BC lifetime of Jesus! Keep up the good worth!
ReplyDeleteBenjy can also be seen as a Christ figure due to his age, but more importantly, he suffers because of circumstances he cannot control.
ReplyDeleteI thought you connected Jesus and Benjy very well. Also
ReplyDeleteLiked how you brought up a sense of nostalgia with benjy
ReplyDeletegood, but Benjy isn't split into two eras, it's many eras
ReplyDeleteYou deserve a gold star for the great job you did on this blog; I think it's effective how you took one aspect of the book and applied it to the broad sense of comprehension, for example, you took the character of Benjy and analyzed him in the bigger picture of how important of a role his narration plays. Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteHey Ethan, I agree that Faulkner did a great job capturing Benjy's state of mind; although it is confusing to readers, it definitely is unbiased and serves for a great beginning to the novel. Good job!
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