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The Sound And The Fury/Benjy Analysis

Born in late 1897, William Faulkner was a famous prolific writer who has been regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Faulkner came from an old southern family, growing up in Oxford, Mississippi. He joined the Canadian, and later the British Royal Air Force during World War I, and studied for a while at the University of Mississippi. He also temporarily worked for a New York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper. He is remembered for being both a Southern gentleman and an arrogant alcoholic, perhaps shedding light onto his volatile and unique writing styles. Faulkner had many novels published between the 1920s and the 1940s, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. Faulkner is best known for his use of "stream of consciousness" in his writing, a style used in the critically acclaimed Southern Gothic novel The Sound and The Fury. This novel is considered to be his first great work.
Released in 1929, The Sound and The Fury takes place in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha and is split into four sections, each part told by a different member of the once prominent southern Compson family. These chapters narrate many of the same events, though told from four different perspectives. The first is from Benjy, a mentally retarded thirty-three year old man who has the mental capabilities of a small child. He is an overly emotional person and cannot make sense of the events that unfold during his life. Benjy’s section is characterized by a very rudimentary style of writing, with his stream of consciousness dominating the majority of the storyline. He transitions constantly in time, talking about the past and the present in nonsensical terms. From his narrative, we learn about Caddy, his loving sister, who genuinely cared for him when he was younger and was eventually sent away for disgracing the family name. The second part is written from Quentin’s point of view, the eldest and smartest of the children, while he attends...