LECTURE TWO on The Sound and the Fury
Professor Thadious Davis
from Oprah’s online Book Club
July/August 2005
Part 1: April 7, 1928: A Tale Told by an Idiot
Between the title The Sound and the Fury—with its references to lines from Macbeth—and "April
Seventh, 1928," the opening section of the novel, Faulkner doesn't quite prepare us for the actual
"tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Beginning the novel with Benjy's consciousness can seem disorienting—but with a little patience,
Benjy's section becomes almost transparent in its direct and simple statements, its exact
duplication of vernacular speech. Benjy's mind provides little tiny snapshots, small pictures of
actions and events, and little snippets of dialogue or extended conversations. All of the speakers
are conveniently identified by name. He [Benjy] has no difficulty in telling us, somehow, who it is
he's reporting the speech of.
A bit more difficult, however, is deciphering the very different time periods and dating the key
incidents. But some obvious aids provide much needed assistance. The first of those is a change
in typeface. The change in typeface goes from Roman print (regular print) to italicized print. It is very
easy to see visually—[the reader is] able to recognize almost immediately that something different
has happened.
They [changes from regular to italicized print] usually signal something that is very important: the
movement between present and past. The movement from the time in the present—when Luster
Gibson is Benjy's caretaker—and multiple times in the past, when either Versh Gibson or T. P.
Gibson would have been Benjy's caretaker.
So we have these subtle ways of identifying when Benjy is speaking about a particular time period.
Versh is the companion when Benjy is a small boy. And then when Benjy is an adolescent, T. P. is
the caretaker or the caregiver. When Benjy is a grown man, then Luster is the caretaker or
caregiver.
Part 2: Benjy's Viewpoint
The first section of the novel opens in medias res, or "in the middle of things" that are not
immediately apparent, because the perspective from which Faulkner represents the actions and
the events is Benjy's. Benjy's perspective is limited, although 33 years old (his birthday is April 7,
1928), the narrative present is very difficult to immediately grasp from Benjy's perspective—but it is
accessible.
"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming
toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower
tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the
table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away
from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked
through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass" (p. 3).
From these early opening sentences, Benjy's literal mindedness is apparent. From his angle of
vision, the game of golf on the other side of the fence is literally one of hitting. One person hits, and
then another person hits. All the while, Luster is hunting in the grass. These actions, to him, are
equal. They all mean about the same thing.
He associates sounds and names and words in the present with those from the past. But
moreover, because Caddy as a little girl has made a great effort to teach Benjy by repeating words
and their meanings and by giving actions emphasis through repetition, Benjy has a specific cache
of words and objects that are meaningful to him. So these words and objects are kind of like
stockpiles—connections to Caddy in his storehouse of familiar comforts and functions—almost
what we might call charms against the cold house and the lack of affection remaining in his family
in 1928.
In initially representing Benjy's process of free associative thought, Faulkner uses the change of
typeface, from Roman to italics, and then he signals with that a change in the time periods: "We
went along the fence and came to a garden fence where our shadows were. My shadow was
higher than Luster's on the fence. We came to the broken place and went through it. 'Wait a minute.'
Luster said. 'You snagged on that nail again. Can't you never crawl through here without snagging
on that nail.'" And then there's a shift to italics. "Caddie uncaught me and we crawled through. Uncle
Maury said to not let anybody see us, so we better stoop over, Caddy said. Stoop over, Benjy. Like
this, see. We stooped over and crossed the garden, where the flowers rasped and rattled against us.
The ground was hard. We climbed the fence, where the pigs were grunting and snuffling. I expect
they're sorry cause one of them got killed today, Caddy said. The ground was hard, churned and
knotted" (p. 4).
What happens in that opening section is that snagging on the nail with Luster in 1928 (when Benjy
is 33) triggers the memory of the same action when he was a small boy going through the fence
with Caddy. One of the italicized segments signals the different time periods in the shifting from
Luster as companion to Caddy. Then the narrative continues, usually in an earlier time period, and
then it will end with italicized statements that will seem to continue along in regular Roman-faced
type. So, "Pay attention to the type," is the advice that I always give.
"Keep your hands in your pockets, Caddy said. Or they'll get froze. You don't want your hands froze
on Christmas, do you." All italicized. And then the next section is not italicized: "'It's too cold out
there.' Versh said. "You don't want to go outdoors.'" Versh and Caddy are functioning within the
same time period, because Luster is the caretaker in the present moment in 1928.
So there will be tips and signals, even when Faulkner will use a shift in the typeface in one section,
and then not have the shift in the typeface in the next section. There will be internal clues that you
will be able to easily follow—and we all need those clues because the narrative is dense and it is
packed.
Part 3: Benjy and Caddy
The details begin to accumulate, and what they will reveal is that Benjy's relationship to Caddy is
immediate and it is direct. And his memories of his early life will be bound up in his experiences
with Caddy and what they did—Caddy as the kind teacher, somehow touching him, somehow
encouraging him to learn as much as he possibly could, empathizing with him in an ethics of care
and nurturance.
Benjy's memories mainly center on Caddy and they contain the central scenes recurring
throughout the novel. Although it would be wonderful to go through all of those scenes, it's a little
repetitive. And so, instead of doing that, I'll simply mention a few of the ones that are most
important.
The first one is from 1898, when Benjy is only 3 years old, and the children play in the branch
where Caddy wets her dress and muddies her underpants after fighting with Quentin, and later
climbs the tree to see into the parlor and discover Damuddy dead.
[The year] 1900 is also an important [period], when Benjy's name changes from Maury, and when
he watches fire in the library with Caddy, who is 9 then. In that [latter] moment, Caddy begins to use
fire as a way of comforting Benjy and as a way of making him understand the difference between
being noisy and being quiet. She also uses in that moment a cushion to calm him. So in 1900,
when his name is changed from Maury to Benjamin, what happens basically is that Benjy is very
upset and Caddy discovers ways of calming him and having him understand what is going on in
his world.
One of the other moments that's really important comes later, in 1906, when Caddy uses perfume
at 14. That moment is a moment when Benjy understands that Caddy is changing. And he's upset
and he cries—his world is changing with her. But Caddy is willing to forgo growing up in order to
satisfy the needs and the demands of her brother—and so she washes the perfume off and gives it
away.
The other point around the same period that's important to keep in mind is when Caddy loses her
virginity. She loses it to a man named Dalton Ames, and in that loss of virginity, Benjy comes to
recognize also a difference in Caddy—a smell, perhaps, he can identify. And so Benjy is somehow
very much tied to Caddy's maturation processes.
The last of the pieces of the section that I think would be most important to pay attention to
probably would be Caddy's wedding, because it is an incident, an event, that will figure through
Quentin's section, and also very much in Jason's section as well. Any of these scenes you'll be
able to identify on the basis of the character Caddy at the center, and Benjy's response to Caddy
primarily.
The list of scenes could only begin to address the affective level of Benjy's memory, and the power
of his relationship with Caddy. But interestingly, the partial list does reveal something that's very
important that Faulkner did, and it is that he included absolutely all of the elements of the story in
Benjy's section. So if we worked our way through an extended list of all of the incidents dating them
as best as we could—by the ages of the children, by signals within the time frame—what we would
see is that there is a complete story within Benjy's section; all of the pieces are there.
But unfortunately, Faulkner didn't tell it in the Benjy section in the way that he thought was the most
satisfactory—and so he continued on.
Part 4: Trying to Say
There are situations in which we've all found ourselves—those moments when we are simply lost
for words—when we can't get our mouths to sound out our thoughts, we can't somehow begin to
interact with what's going on in our brains, when we experience a kind of flood of emotions for
which there's no clear avenue of articulation. Fortunately, for most of us, such moments are not the
norm. They're not normal; they're the exceptions. For the most part, we manage to express our
thoughts and our feelings on a daily basis and in crisis situations, even.
But for some of us, speech is limited to very few words—or even, for some of us—to no words at
all. William Faulkner took on, in the opening section of The Sound and the Fury, this very problem of
not being able to speak the words matching thought and emotion. The language of "April Seventh,
1928" represents Benjy's thoughts and his emotions and his memories in short sentences using
mainly nouns and verbs, with simple constructions carrying equal weight and very little
subordination of ideas.
Sense imagery is prevalent. Sight: the fence, the gate, the cushion, fire, trees, slipper, mirror,
quarter, ball, pasture, flowers. Smell is prevalent: trees, perfume—and Benjy smells darkness.
Symbols in Benjy's section then include fire and mirror, both reflect something of the particular
images associated with Caddy and trigger his associations with time past. The fire soothes him
with its bright smooth shapes, and Caddy often places him before the fire so that he won't cry. The
mirror in the library provides a frame of reference very often for Benjy, in which he sees the
reflection of what's going on in the room around him—but only is it possible for him to see what is
visible within the mirror itself. And so Faulkner plays kind of a word game with what is in the mirror
and what disappears from the mirror as a way of indicating Benjy's limited frame of reference and
his limited focus.
Benjy's crying, his howling and his bellowing all mark his lack of speech facility. He can make
sounds that only Caddy tries to interpret for meaning. Many scenes illustrate how Benjy's crying is
his attempt to talk. But those scenes in which he is crying force Caddy to interrupt and to delay her
maturation and her move from childhood to young adulthood to womanhood. That move for her is a
part of the natural normal process of growing up. But for Benjy, Caddy must remain childlike. She
must remain smelling like trees, or else his world will be set at a different angle. See, for example,
in the novel, a number of instances when Benjy begins to cry because Caddy is wearing perfume
repeated over and over again, or when Caddy makes out with the boy Charlie on the swing.
Now, curiously, Benjy—much more so than Quentin—is able to forestall Caddy's actually
becoming an adult, and he is able because of his dependence on Caddy, but also because of
Caddy's loving, kind, generous nature. In a sense, Caddy will wash her mouth out with soap. Caddy
will not kiss the boy Charlie again; she won't go back out with him. All of these things Caddy is
willing to do for Benjy.
Though he cannot contain Caddy within childhood, and he can't contain her within his particular
kind of childhood world, what he does is to force her to continue to smell like trees, to somehow
simulate her childhood self. And he can, in a sense, impact her behavior—though only temporarily.
Part 5: Lost and Longing
The overwhelming emotion on April 7, 1928, is a sense of loss. The motif of loss comes into play
immediately with the open segment—Luster's searching in the grass along the fence for a lost
quarter so that he can attend a traveling show. The lost quarter gives way to the lost sister Caddy,
and the hunt becomes a search for Caddy through the various recesses of Benjy's memory.
Retrieving memories of his childhood with caddies physically present can only emphasize her
absence, and the void in Benjy's adult life.
Loss and absence circle through the section in an almost palpable way. Benjy's losses are
innumerable. We can name just a few, however. He's lost his first name, Maury, and had it replaced
with Benjy because of his mother's desire to distance him and his disability from her family, the
Bascombs, and her brother Maury, for whom Benjy had initially been named.
Benjy has also lost a significant group of people: his father Jason Compson, Roskus Gibson,
(Dilsey's husband and the general caretaker of the Compson place), Quentin (his older brother, the
suicide), and Dammudy (his grandmother), when he was three. All of these individuals are lost to
him by death.
His greatest loss, however, is always Caddy, who does not die, but who rather has been banished
from the family. Of all of the individuals in his life, Caddy is the one person who took the time to
enrich Benjy's life, enrich his existence and fill it in very meaningful ways—with warmth, with love,
with affection, as well as with material experiences and also with physical activities—they do things
together. She alone did not expect him to keep quiet and to remain invisible. In the present, for
instance, his youthful caretaker Luster constantly warns Benjy to "stop [his] bellering" and to "hush."
It should be noted, however, that although her [Dilsey's] daughter Frony is embarrassed to have
Benjy seen with Dilsey and the Gibson family at church on Easter Sunday, Dilsey has no qualms
about taking Benjy to the service and having him visible there as they move through the town. In this
simple act then, Dilsey is linked to Caddy in her attitude toward Benjy.
Longing is also clearly evident in Benjy's waiting as an adult at the gate for Caddy to return from
school, when, she's not only a grown woman, no longer in school, but she's also long absent from
the family. His running along the fence and chasing the schoolgirls, and badly frightening the
Burgess girl, is also an enactment of his longing for Caddy and his attempt to locate her once
again in the familiar activities and the familiar shapes. What he longs for is figured in Caddy's
touch, in the way in which she can comfort him through embraces—but also I think, importantly, in
her careful explanations of things, her efforts to treat him not as a "poor baby," as his mother,
Caroline Compson, often refers to him.
Human warmth, however, can't be replaced with a fire in the stove. Benjy longs for that which he
cannot retrieve, for that which gave both a shape and a meaning to his life. At the very end of the
section "April Seventh, 1928," there is a combination of the sensations and memory: "Caddy held
me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see
the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes,
like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep" (p. 75). The womb-like comfort
zone of sleep is associated with the reassuring presence of Caddy who had not merely looked
after Benjy, but had also explained events and things to him in a logic that he could actually
comprehend.