Academic Paper...The Sound and the Fury....please comment
Insert Witty Title Here
Of the three Compson children who narrate a chapter in the book The Sound and the Fury I find that Benjy is the most reliable narrator. Though his chapter is extremely confusing the first and second times one reads them, after reading the whole book, I found that his section is the most unvarnished with emotion. Quentin and Jason’s chapters are clouded over with emotion that I believe gets in the way of the true story.
Benjy, the thirty three year old mentally handicapped Compson son, relates what he sees. He has no sense of cause and effect or any other higher functioning that normal people would have. He does, however, understand what people say to him. This is shown by his reaction to many comments that are made throughout the book. “’I’ll run
away and never come back.’ Caddy said. I began to cry. Caddy turned around and said ‘Hush’ So I hushed” (Faulkner 19). Benjy seems to understand what is going on, or at the very least what should upset him and he reacts accordingly. Although he grows through the motions of emotion, he does understand emotions and this is what makes him the most reliable narrator. His narration is not filled with emotion that clouds the story as Quentin and Jason’s sections are.
Quentin’s chapter is filled with depressed anxiety that clouds the principle affairs of the book. His chapter is necessary to explaining why he is absent from the later time and
why Caddy’s daughter is named after him. It seems to me, however, the main concern of The Sound and the Fury is Caddy’s loss of innocence and the effect it has on the Compson family and its servants. Quentin’s death certainly seems to be a result, but his narration of Caddy’s fall is overpowered with emotion.
There was something terrible in me sometimes at night I could see it grinning at me
through their faces its gone now and I’m sick / Caddy / Don’t touch me just
promise / If you’re sick you can’t / Yes I can after that it’ll be all right it
wont matter don’t let them send him to Jackson promise. (112)
The reader only sees clips of his interaction with Caddy after she becomes pregnant and these clips do little to explain what actually transpired.
Jason’s section is copiously crammed full of his anger toward everything and everyone that reminds him of his sister Caddy. “Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say” (180). With
the exception of Dilsey and her family, Jason is left alone to care for his hypochondriac of a mother, Benjy, and his niece Quentin. “Then when she sent Quentin home for me to feed too I says I guess that’s right too, instead of me having to go way up north for a job they sent the job down here to me and then Mother begun to cry…” (196). Jason is extremely focused on his present situation and his future so the reader is inundated with Jason’s view on Caddy’s fall as he looks back on it. His narration does not include his
reaction to Caddy’s fall as it was taking place.
Benjy’s account of Caddy’s loss of innocence is clear. Even though he may not understand everything going on, the reader sees everything as he does. “He went and pushed Caddy up into the tree to the first limb. We watched the muddy bottom of her drawers. Then we couldn’t see her. We could hear the tree thrashing” (59). I believe Faulkner used Benjy’s chapter to give an emotionless, albeit confusing, narration of Caddy’s fall and the foreshadowing to it. Benjy did not understand why Caddy left, but he presented
the information clearly for the reader to figure out.