So probably unlike most students in this class, I have only just begun reading "The Sound and the Fury." A couple things that have really stood out to me in basically the first ten pages of the novel is that although Benjy would be considered M.R. (mentally retarded), he seems to have a deeper purpose for the novel (and this is just an assumption). Benjy is totally dependent upon Caddy, yet has this premonition about bad things that happen. To me, Benjy is foreshadowing in the representation of a character. Usually we see foreshadowing through the story line, and how the author uses diction. Faulkner uses Benjy's ability to hint at future events in the novel.
While the Benjy section has been a difficult read, it has also been eye-opening with how easy it is to picture the things Benjy sees, hears, feels, thinks, and smells. The descriptive use of stream of consciousness makes the book visualy enough for the reader to picture exactly what is going on. Though Benjy’s thought process is not entirely coherent, or in a timeline-like fashion, his memories are very specific, but described in the manner in which a young child would describe similar situations. The stream of consciousness definitely shows Benjy’s view of the world he lives in and how it is very different from how a normal person perceives the world, or how a person with ADD, or OCD (though not diagnosed as diseases in Faulkner’s time) might see the world.
I agree with you, the stream of consciousness method does seem to work well with visualization in The Sound and the Fury. I also like how you said Benjy memories were very specific to certain situations.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to look for: keeping in mind that Benjy seems to have almost perfect recall of incidents going back to when he was around 3 or 4 (Damuddy's death), what cognitive skills does he LACK? i.e. he can't talk, doesn't seem to have object permanence or much of a sense of cause-effect, often seems to lack self-awareness, and YET, there are a couple of places where he knows that he's trying to speak, and once when he creates a simile . . .
ReplyDeleteAnd, once you figure out how to date each snippet of memory, Benjy's section functions as exposition to the rest of the story.