The Sound and the Fury: memory's manipulation

#4.
Memory plays a strong role in The Sound and the Fury because memory manipulates the characters' perceptions of the same story. The shifting narration shows how multiple people describe a situation completely differently based on their memory. Faulkner suggests that depending on what's important to people, what stands out in people's minds, and what emotional attachments people have, their stories of what happened are going to change. Benjy sees the past through connections to the future. He sees something, smells something or hears something that triggers an emotion or a memory to take over his mind. Benjy's narration is told through the eyes of what seems to be a three year old; therefore, he is straight forward about the happenings without adding input or analysis on the situation. Without adding bias, the reader is able to get the basics of what happens, but details are left out because Benjy only talks about the things that are important to him: at the end of one important thought, he skips to the next important thought, leaving out the boring things that had little or no direct impact on his life. Quintin's narration is confusing, but in a different way by leaving out punctuation and having a stream of thoughts from the past intertwined with the description of his present thoughts and actions. Through Quintin's eyes, the reader is able to read deeper into the story that Benjy touched on, but emotional bias is included because he feels strongly about different situations. Jason's narration clarifies the first two chapters, but his thoughts and ideas are so clear and definite that his negative opinion overrides certain feelings that the other characters reacts completely opposite to, but his opinion is important because the reader is able to make his or her own opinion after hearing all of the different sides of the story. One person's actions may make more sense when redefined by another character. Faulkner then fills in any gaps in the last chapter with a narration that is not based on memory; therefore, the reader experiences all different aspects of the story by the end.

Blog #6: The Sound and the Fury, a new perspective

I think that the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury is extremely interesting, even though it was pretty difficult to follow at times. The interactions that people have with Benjy are so one-sided since he can hardly respond; therefore, the reader is almost getting a third person point of view written in the first person. I found this intriguing because you're inside Benjy's mind looking out at the rest of the world, but not interacting with anyone or anything. It's like you're a part of the world, but not actually a part of it. I wonder if that's how Benjy feels, since he never talks about his feelings he only reacts on instinct to them. All Benjy can do is think, and so he thinks about one thing until it leads him to his next thought, which then brings the reader on a paradoxical journey through time from Benjy's oblivion to time. He purely focuses on the important moments in his life, and never goes on about unnecessary things. This way, the reader can't get lost in unimportant information, only in confusion.
I have always wondered about people who are unable to talk, and what their voices would sound like if they could speak. I wonder if people would treat them differently if they could respond, even if their thoughts were mixed up. Maybe Jason would treat Benjy with more respect if he knew that Benjy understood what he was saying, or if Benjy's mother would stop treating him as a baby if she knew that he could think for himself. And even though Benjy has no perception of time, he is the most pure and innocent character because his actions are not thought through or tampered with, they're simply how they would be naturally. I think that Benjy's role in the book is to set up the scene, the characters and the storyline altogether exactly how is without any bias or persuasion.