The Sound and the Fury 7th April 1928

This first section of the book is narrated by Benjamin Compson, the mentally ill son of a wealthy Southern family, who has little to no concept of time. He is led around by a fourteen-year-old black servant called Luster, and though the day’s events are rather insignificant, they elicit Benjy’s memories about his childhood and youth.

On the 17th of April 1928, Benjamin turns thirty-three years old, and Dilsey, the family servant bakes him a cake. He is led around the Compson property by Luster, Dilsey’s grandson. Luster is Benjy’s caretaker, and he is required to keep Benjy away from the house when he begins to make loud noises. Luster sets out to search for a quarter that he had lost earlier, and he needed the quarter to go see the musical show that was being held in Jefferson. Unable to find the quarter, Luster leads Benjy out of the Compson estate and into the neighboring golf course, which was made on land that had once belonged to the Compsons.

The golfers call for their caddie, and Benjy begins to moan as he recalls his sister, Caddy. Luster gets through the fence separating the two properties with ease, but Benjy gets his clothes stuck in it. Luster comes back to help Benjy, and he happens to recall how his sister had helped him out of quite a similar situation. He remembers a night twenty-six years ago when his mother had been preparing for a Christmas party and had instructed him not to go out because she didn’t want him to ruin her party by being sick. Benjy’s uncle, Uncle Maury, who lived off his brother-in-law’s money, allowed Benjy to go out into the cold so that he could greet Caddy even though he couldn’t verbally express that he wanted to see her. Caddy takes Benjy out to play with her, and although their mother protests, Uncle Maury can convince her once again. Uncle Maury is using the young Caddy as a messenger to carry out an adulterous relationship with the Compsons’ neighbor Mrs. Patterson.

Luster leads the moaning Benjy past the carriage house, and this reminds Benjy about a trip he had taken on the carriage with his mother, Dilsey, and Jason Compson, Benjy’s brother. In this memory, the Compsons are going out to the cemetery where Benjy’s father, and his other brother, Quentin, have been buried. Dilsey remarks that Jason needs to buy the family a new carriage since the current one has become too old. Jason doesn’t respond to Dilsey and addresses his mother as he informs her about Uncle Maury’s request for more money. Benjy continues to moan, and Luster leads him onwards. They reach the Compson barn, and Benjy recalls the time he had been caught delivering one of Uncle Maury’s letters. He had been seen by Mr. Patterson, and though Mrs. Patterson had attempted to reach Benjy before her husband, she had failed. Mr. Patterson had learned of Uncle Maury’s affair with his wife from the letter that Benjy had been carrying.

Luster leads Benjy to a nearby stream, locally called the branch, and Luster meets other black townsfolk. They discuss the musical show, and Luster tells them about his missing quarter. Benjy begins to recall a time in his childhood, when he had been just three years old, and no one had yet learned of his mental disability. Benjy had been playing in the stream with his brothers Jason, Quentin, and his sister, Caddy, under the watchful eye of their caretaker, Versh. The children had gotten into a water fight when Quentin had told Caddy to be careful of making her dress wet. Caddy had splashed water at Quentin, but she had fallen in the mud, and that had made her underclothes dirty. Benjy had started to cry and had hushed at Caddy's insistence. The siblings had then made their way back to the Compson house, on the way there, Quentin and Caddy discussed the likelihood of Jason tattling on them to their parents. Jason had denied all intentions of tattling, and the children focus on the fact that they had been sent away from home due to a large number of guests. They climb the hill, and Benjy sees Roskus milking a cow, and it reminds him of Caddy’s wedding in 1910.

On the day of the wedding, Benjy and TP, another black servant, had pilfered champagne from the party and gotten drunk. TP had drunk far too much champagne and was having trouble standing up, but he had gotten into a fight with Quentin. TP had remarked on Quentin’s relationship with Caddy and that had set Quentin off. Benjy returns to his memory of the day they had been playing in the river as Versh takes them into the house where they are met by their father. He tells them that they need to take their dinner on their own since they were seeing guests, and Jason tattles about the children’s water fight. They hear some moaning, and the children guess that someone is crying. They are taken into the kitchen by Dilsey, who makes the children eat their dinner, while Caddy lords over them, claiming to have received the right to be the babysitter from her father. Benjy cries as he eats, and Dilsey tells them that they will be staying at Versh’s house for the night, which makes Jason cry. Jason likes to sleep with their grandmother, Damuddy, but Damuddy has been sick for a while now, and the children think that their mother has also become sick now since they believe they heard her crying. They question Dilsey, but she refuses to give them any answers as she leads them to Versh’s cabin.

Benjy is then reminded of several conversations that he has overheard between Dilsey and Roskus. In 1912, TP brings both Benjy and Quentin, Caddy’s illegitimate daughter, to his house. Benjy cries after he takes Quentin’s toy, and he overhears Roskus complaining that the Compsons have ill luck. He also talks about Caddy with Dilsey, as they discuss how the family no longer talks about her because of how her promiscuity has damaged the family's reputation. Benjy comes back to the present as Luster gets hold of a golf ball, but Benjy begins thinking about death. He remembers the evening of her funeral, and how TP had had a jar of fireflies as they had walked towards the house with Frony. She had remarked that Damuddy was dead, and the adults of the household were occupied with her funeral. Caddy disputed that claim as she believed that her parents were hosting a party and not a funeral. Benjy thinks about Nancy, a horse that had died on the property, and he also thinks about the death of his father, Mr. Compson, in 1912. He returns to the evening of his grandmother’s funeral and recalls Caddy’s plan to look through a window to confirm whether there was a funeral going on at the house. She had climbed a tree to look into the tree, and it led to all of her brothers seeing her soiled undergarments that had been dirtied in the branch. Benjy begins to cry when he sees her dirty inner clothes.

Benjy’s memory returns to the day of Caddy’s wedding, and then to a day in 1905. Jason had been mocking Caddy for wearing a pretty dress, but Benjy kept crying and Caddy couldn’t understand why. He remembers thinking repeatedly that she smells like trees. Benjy continues to follow her around, and only stops moaning after Caddy washes off her perfume. She understands that Benjy doesn’t like the perfume, and so presents it to Dilsey as a gift from Benjy. In the present, Luster admonishes Benjy for making his way towards a section of the property as he is certain that Miss Quentin is there with her lover, the man with the red tie. Benjy remembers a night when he had found Caddy kissing Charlie, who had probably been her first boyfriend. Benjy had become quite upset, and Caddy could not pacify him. Charlie became upset with Benjy which only seemed to aggravate him more. Finally, Caddy decided that she could not remain there with Benjy any longer and so quickly left with him. Benjy only became calm after Caddy had washed her mouth with soap, and he reiterates that she had smelled like trees.

In the present, Luster is unable to deter Benjy from approaching the area with Quentin and her lover. Benjy ambles into the scene, and Quentin becomes instantly abusive with him and Luster. She yells at Benjy for constantly spying on her and she also berates Luster for his constant refusal to control Benjy. The man with the red tie tries to calm her down but Quentin rushes inside the house. Luster picks up an unused quarter believing it to be a quarter and the man notices it. He asks Luster where he had got it, and Luster believes it belonged to one of the several other men that Quentin sneaks out of the house to meet. After the man leaves, Luster and Benjy walk along the fence that borders the road. They notice a couple of young schoolgirls and Benjy remembers an incident. He recalls the fence being open, and the rush that he had made towards the girls because of how much he had missed his sister, Caddy. He had grabbed one of the girls, and then an angry man had attacked him. Later that night, Benjy overhears Jason and Mr. Compson discussing Benjy’s castration as a means to prevent further incidents.

In the present, Luster tries to sell a golf ball that he had picked up to one of the golfers. He wants a quarter to watch the show, and the golfer takes the ball but he refuses to give Luster the quarter. Benjy begins moaning when the golfer calls for his caddie, and he is reminded of his sister, Candace. Luster calms him down by giving him a flower, and as they continue their meandering Luster tells Benjy that Jason would have Benjy admitted to the asylum in Jackson after his mother’s death.

Luster brings him back to the kitchen of the Compson house, where Dilsey greets them and berates Luster for the crying Benjy. She believes that Luster has been teasing Benjy, and Benjy sits down next to the fire. He remembers a night when he had sat at the fire with Caddy, this had been soon after his parents had changed his name from Maury to Benjamin. In the present, Luster and Dilsey accompany Benjy as he cuts his cake. Luster and Benjy eat the cake, but Luster eats a lot more of it than Benjy, and Dilsey berates him for that as well. Benjy accidentally puts his hand into the fire and then stuffs it into his mouth. His moaning brings an old and ill Mrs. Compson to the kitchen. She launches into a monologue about her poor condition, and how the house servants are unable to give her any reprieve from her wailing son. Dilsey calms her down as she sends Luster out with Benjy. They go into the library, and Benjy recalls how Caddy had cared for him. She had continued to carry him around like a baby despite her mother complaining that he was too big. She attempted to comfort him by giving him a cushion but their mother complained that she spoiled him too much. Caddy had once beaten Jason when he had destroyed Benjy’s paper dolls.

Luster and Benjy are joined in the room by a sour Jason and a still annoyed Miss Quentin. Luster asks Jason for a quarter but he is refused nearly instantly, and Dilsey calls everyone for food. They sit at the dinner table, and Jason gets into an argument with Quentin. Jason is far too critical of Quentin, and she reacts very aggressively to his comments about her character. She threatens to run away, and Benjy begins to think about the night Caddy lost her virginity. She had returned late at night, and Benjy had tried to get her to change her smell, but she had run away from him. She had hidden in her room, while Benjy moaned the fact that she no longer smelled like trees. The argument between Jason and Quentin continues to worsen until they storm, Benjy sneaks off to a bedroom where he undresses. He cannot stand to look at the scars of his castration. Luster and Benjy quietly watch from the room as Miss Quentin climbs out of her room window using the pear tree. Benjy returns to the night of Damuddy’s funeral when all the siblings had slept in the same room. Caddy’s drawers had still been dirty, and she had asked her father about Mrs. Compson. Caddy had then gone to sleep while holding Benjy.

Analysis

William Faulkner stated that The sound and the Fury can be seen as four different attempts to tell the same story. This first section of the book is narrated by the mentally challenged Benjamin Compson. Faulkner makes use of the stream of consciousness narrative that further complicates the reading process. This complication arises due to Benjamin’s unique perception of time which is not linear but rather constantly in the present. His experience of memories is nearly unstoppable, and yet he perceives these memories to be occurring in the present. Benjamin’s perspective, although difficult to interpret, turns out to be one of the most objective narratives in the book, as the other two brother’s bias morphs into the account of the Compson decline. A further complication meets the reader through the confusing names of the characters. Benjamin shares a name with his uncle Maury, Caddy’s daughter Quentin shares a name with her deceased uncle, and Jason shares a name with his father.

Benjy’s section allows us to view the Compson children from the years of their youth, which allows the reader to form a more complete picture of the characters in the book. One of the major themes in the book is that of the loss of sexual innocence, and it is developed chiefly through the character of Caddy. Caddy’s promiscuity is foreshadowed in her childhood through the symbolic muddied underpants. Literary critics have also held that the brothers seeing her dirty drawers is an essential moment in the story that irrevocably causes them all to obsess over their sister’s sexuality.

Benjy’s understanding of the world does not include complex concepts like virginity, purity, and marriage, but it is rather concerned chiefly with innocence. Benjy’s complete self-centredness is essentially the innocence of a child, and he demands the same innocence from all those around him, but most of all from Caddy. Benjy’s relationship with Caddy is far closer to that of a mother than his relationship with his true mother. Mrs. Compson’s poor ability to parent her children is rather fantastically compelling. Over the course of this section, we see Caddy progress through the stages of development that include sexual maturity. Benjy attempts to force Caddy to remain the same, and she cannot manage to maintain his cruel and unthinking standards. In the later sections, we come to understand that Caddy’s other brothers were just as obsessed with her sexual activity as Benjamin.