The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner (1929)
“Four voices. Four narrators. One family destroying itself in real time — and Faulkner gives the first chapter to the one who cannot understand what he's telling you.”
Character Analysis
Thirty-three years old (the age of Christ, Faulkner notes) at the novel's main action. Born 'Maury' — renamed 'Benjamin' when his disability became apparent, to protect the Bascome name. He cannot speak. He moans, bellows, and reaches. He smells trees and knows when something is wrong. He is the novel's most honest witness — he cannot interpret, revise, or sentimentalize. His love for Caddy is the purest love in the novel precisely because it asks nothing of her except her presence.
No register at all — pure sensation, no abstraction. He cannot perform class because he cannot perform anything