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.