The Sound and the Fury: Benjy (Homework Sept. 10th)

What is the source of tension in Benjy's section?
As I reread this section, i noticed that most of the tension I found as a reader was Benjy's inability to absorb and concentrate on keeping his thoughts chronological. His perception of time is mixed up to a point that its very confusing for the reader to follow what's going on. Another key source of tension for Benjy on a character level is what is his importance to the story if he is considered nothing but an "idoit". I found as I contiuned to read the book that Benjy was essentail to the story because his level of honesty about each of the characters gave an inside look into each of them that they themselves could not do. Benjy becomes the not bias narrator of the story in the beginning, which helps greatly as the plot thickens.


What is Benjy's relationship to time and events?
Benjy doesn't have a relationship to time and events like ordinary people do. For Benjy, time isn't a measure that has a specific right order, rather time is relitive to him. Benjy's thought process is unique in the sense that he thinks about one thing and then instead of thinking about what happens next, he connects his present thought to another moment in time that connects to the present thought regardless of whether its chronological or not. For the reader, this makes things complex but in teh grand scheme of things, I think its a sign that Benjy isn't as dumb as he's thought to be by others. Not to go on a huge random tangent..BUT when they atopsied Albert Einstien they found that he had more connecting neurons in his brain than the average person by a multiple of ten. Einstien didn't do so well in school, but he proved to be brillant with his contribituoins to the world. It was said that the way he learned was by connecting his current studies to something he already knew so that he would remember it more clearly. For example, if he was studying the the capitals as a child he wouldn't have meomorized that Hartford is the capital of Connecticut. Instead he might say Hartford sounds like Harvard College which is in Massachusetts which is next Connecticut, thus Hartford is the capital of Connecticut. Just has Benjy makes random connections to recall events, Einstein used to as well. While this all might seem weird to connect, perhaps benjy's connections that seem out of place, are really just his genius way of thinking. In that sense, maybe Benjy's relationship to time and events doesn't have to be like others, because like many other strangely unique people (Albert Einstein) it works for him!


How does Faulkner utilize: metonymy, antonomasia, metaphor, mimesis, and metaphysics in this section?
Faulkner uses these literary terms in many ways through-out the Benjy's section and in my opinion they help make Benjy's thoughts more clear. Though at times Benjy's train of thought seems to rabble or go off course, his senses are very prominat in his description of things. The part of his section that struck me the most was when Benjy would say "Caddie smelled like trees" of "Caddie smelled like leaves". At first I thought that was just a way of saying how she smelled...but as I came to realize later, it was in fact a way to describe Caddies promisous actions. This metaphor was reoccuring over the section and it developed Benjy's character as showing he knew what was going on though he didn't fully understand the implications of Caddie's actions.