Benjy's section, The Sound and the Fury
04/12/2006

Image: Trees/Caddy smelling like trees

I believe that the most important sensory memory that Benjy has in this section is the memory of Caddy smelling like trees. He constantly points out when she smells like trees and when she doesn't. Benjy seems to associate the smell of trees with Caddy’s childhood, when she was there to protect him. When Caddy starts growing up, she loses the smell of trees. Faulkner uses this sensory image of the tree smell as the common thread in all of Benjy’s memories, and this is the thread that allows us and Benjy to piece together Benjy’s story of Caddy growing up. In other words, as Caddy’s smell changes, we can infer that Benjy is referring to different time periods. Benjy, being most likely mentally handicapped in some way, doesn’t think of time in a linear fashion: he jumps back and forth in time between different periods of Caddy’s life, and each of these periods seems as clear to him as the present day (as shown in how he uses the same verb tenses and narrative style in all his memories). He doesn’t report how he feels about a given situation, merely what’s happening. Given this, there is no basis for reporting what’s going on with Caddy or what Benjy himself is doing except for the sensory images he has of the various time periods, including what Caddy smells like.

Benjy almost isn’t telling his own story here, but the story of Caddy growing up. His memories all center around various periods of Caddy’s life: Caddy’s wedding, Caddy as a teenager, Caddy as a child playing in the stream. Caddy, of course, isn’t there in the story that’s taking place on April 7, 1928, as she’s already married someone and moved away. However, Benjy is constantly reminded of her through what’s going on in the present day. When he hears the word “caddie” as spoken by the golfers on page 1, he immediately starts crying because he thinks of Caddy and how she’s not there. (Of course, none of this is articulated by Benjy himself; we just know that he starts crying at this point because Lester starts complaining about Benjy’s moaning.) Throughout Benjy’s memories, whenever Caddy even mentions going away, he starts to cry. “’I’ll run away and never come back.’ Caddy said. I began to cry.” (pg. 19) He is obviously afraid of her leaving him all throughout his childhood, as Caddy seems to be one of the few people that treat him as a human being and tries to communicate with him directly instead of talking over his head about him. His relationship with her is the central focus of his section, and her smell triggers some of Benjy’s feelings about her.

Benjy associates Caddy smelling like trees with good times, when Caddy was his caretaker. Whenever Caddy hugs Benjy as a child, he notes that she smells like trees. He seems to associate the tree smell with her being there to protect him and comfort him. “You’re not a poor baby. Are you. Are you. You’ve got your Caddy. Haven’t you got your Caddy.” (pg. 9) Benjy notes immediately before this, as Caddy hugs him, that she smells like trees.

However, as Caddy starts to grow up, she also starts to grow away from Benjy. She goes from being his caretaker to being her own independent person. The most obvious of these “growing up” scenes is when Caddy is fourteen years old and starting to use perfume. When she hugs Benjy this time, he starts to cry instead of feeling comforted as he usually does. When she washes herself off, though, he stops crying, and Caddy figures out that it was her perfume that was causing him to cry. She even gives away her perfume to Dilsey rather than letting it upset Benjy. Caddy seems to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of taking care of Benjy.

Even when Benjy is thirteen years old (meaning Caddy is a few years older than that), he still sleeps in the same bed as Caddy when he’s upset. “‘You a big boy.’ Dilsey said. ‘Caddy tired sleeping with you.’” (pg. 44) When Benjy is upset and won’t go to sleep, Caddy is brought in to stay with him and thereby comfort him. He notes that Caddy smells like trees during this time also, as he’s safe in bed with her. However, Caddy is going to go back to her own room as soon as Benjy falls asleep, showing her growing independence from Benjy. “‘He be gone in a minute,’ Dilsey said. ‘I leave the light on in your room.’”(pg. 44)

As Benjy associates the smell of trees with Caddy being there solely to comfort him and help him, when she doesn’t smell like trees, he gets rather upset. She doesn’t smell like trees on several occasions, as when she puts perfume on and when she’s making out with her boyfriend Charlie. However, on these occasions, she just washes herself off and Benjy stops crying. This is not so as Caddy grows up further. On Caddy’s wedding day, Benjy once again start to cry when she tries to hug him after he’s gotten drunk on sarsparilla. She doesn’t smell like trees anymore “It kept making it… and I began to cry.” (pg. 40) Caddy’s wedding seems like a more permanent separation from Benjy than any of the previous incidents, such as her putting on perfume. It represents her becoming truly independent from Benjy and starting a new life with another man. “You cant do no good… She cant hear you.” (pg. 51) Thus, on her wedding day, she doesn’t smell like trees anymore, and she can’t fix it just by washing herself off.

Caddy’s smell also is, whether Benjy consciously realizes it or not, the mechanism that he himself uses to keep track of change. After all, Benjy’s conception of time is somewhat distorted: he remembers everything as clearly as if it were happening right at that moment, and we mainly figure out what time period he’s talking about by what the characters around him are saying. However, Caddy’s smell is different. Benjy connects Caddy smelling like trees with him being safe because of her, a sensation that steadily disappears as she gets older. When she’s there and she doesn’t smell like trees, something is different about her: Benjy recognizes that this is a sign that she’s going to leave him and that she’s changing. As he notes Caddy’s smell in basically every memory that he jumps between, he can keep track of how she’s changing. This is also how Faulkner appears to be using Caddy’s smell: not only does it represent Benjy being safe with her, but it represents Benjy’s sense of time and change. Thus, Caddy’s smell is one of the most important recurring images in Benjy’s section.

Notes:
What triggers Benjy's thoughts?
-Sensory experiences. He remembers sensory images: Caddy smelling like trees, for example. He doesn't consciously connect these sensory images with anything, but they obviously are connected very strongly to his memories. In the example of Caddy smelling like trees, Benjy unconsciously connects the smell with Caddy as a presence in his childhood, when she was still there for him and he was safe with her. Caddy doesn't smell like trees after she starts growing up. Ex. at Caddy's wedding: "It kept on making it and I couldn't tell if I was crying or not, and TP fell down on top of me, laughing, and it kept on making the sound and Quentin kicked TP and Caddy put her arms around me, and her shining veil, and I couldn't smell trees anymore and I began to cry." (pg. 40)

How does Benjy remember?
-Benjy seems to have a whole bunch of clear, distinct scenes that he connects through sensory experiences. Ex: page 4, Luster tells Benjy to crawl through the fence without snagging himself on the nail, which reminds Benjy of Caddy telling him to not get snagged on the nail, which reminds him of the scene at Christmas. His memories seem to be triggered in this way.
-He thinks of time in a very non-linear way: for him time is made up of discrete experiences that he jumps back and forth between. Time doesn't flow in a straight line, but events just happen and remain clearly in his mind regardless of what's actually happening around him in the present.

What does he remember?
-Benjy's thoughts seem to center around Caddy, and Caddy growing up and moving away from him.
-Scenes (as best as I can piece them together due to Benjy's non-linear concept of time):
-Benjy/Caddy/Quentin as children, Caddy playing in the stream and getting wet. Caddy has to take off her dress when it gets wet, which is a bit of an uncomfortable scene. At this point in time Versh is still Benjy's caretaker. The children come home as Damuddy's funeral is going on. Caddy/Quentin/Benjy/Jason are kept with Dilsey during the funeral. At this time Benjy's name has very recently been changed from Maury. I think this is the earliest scene, chronologically.
-Luster and Benjy on April 7, 1928 searching for Luster's quarter-- Benjy's 33rd birthday. Luster is Benjy's caretaker. Benjy gets a cake from Dilsey and Luster, but burns his hand in the fire. Caddy is already married and has gone away, which Benjy remembers when he hears the golfers in the pasture say "caddie." This is obviously the last scene chronologically.
-Benjy as a child at Christmastime at around 13 years old. Caddy goes to deliver a letter to Mrs. Patterson on behalf of Uncle Maury. Father derides Maury as being a freeloader and makes fun of him. (It's debateable whether or not this is part of the same scene, though.) Versh is still Benjy's caretaker.
-Caddy's wedding night, with TP and Benjy drinking sarsparilla. Benjy gets drunk but doesn't quite know that. Quentin gets mad at TP (I assume for getting Benjy, who doesn't know any better, drunk) and starts beating him up, although TP is too drunk to really care. Caddy tries to comfort him, but she doesn't smell like trees anymore, and Benjy shrinks away from her.
-Caddy as a teenage girl trying out new things: perfume, having a boyfriend, etc. Each time she ventures out on her own Benjy trails after her and tries to keep her with him, as he's very afraid of her leaving him. Benjy associates the smell of trees with Caddy as a good thing; he recalls her smelling like trees whenever he feels comfortable with her (ex. when Caddy washes off her perfume). After Caddy loses her virginity, she no longer smells like trees.
-Benjy ritually going to the graveyard in the horse and carriage
-Benjy being castrated, although this is really hard to spot—people misunderstand his intentions and think he’s going to rape some of the young girls or something
-Each of these stories is about some kind of loss—the most obvious loss being the loss of Caddy. Luster’s quarter is lost, Benjy’s pasture, Damuddy, even Benjy’s name.

What do we know about Benjy and how do we know/learn it?
-Benjy doesn't seem to understand people's motivations for doing things. He also doesn't seem to have a very good concept of himself as an individual; he almost doesn't seem to be aware of what he's doing, as we learn that he's crying a lot of the time by people telling him to stop crying. He reports things as they happen, without describing any of his own thoughts on what happens.
-All of the dialogue he reports is with "he said," or "she said," without any regard to how the person is saying it. Additionally, when people ask questions, Benjy doesn't report what they say with question marks-- all dialogue is the same to him, just words without any inflection. Sometimes he just ends a person's remarks without ending the sentence. Ex. "'You did not.' Caddy said. 'I was the one that said there was. I said I would '" (pg. 24) I believe that this is where the person speaking gets cut off by another person, or just stops speaking suddenly.
-About Benjy not being self-aware: he seems to understand that he's an individual (he refers to himself in first-person) but he seems very detached from himself. He reports his actions almost as if an outside observer were reporting them. For example, on page 59, when Benjy puts his hand into the fire and gets burned, he says "My voice was going loud every time," instead of "I started yelling" or something. It's almost like he's not in control of himself.
-Benjy is most likely mentally handicapped. "You mean, he been three years old thirty years." (pg. 17)
-People talk about Benjy while they're around him all the time, usually not in a favorable light. They seem to ignore that he's there, or just figure that he can't understand them. Luster, for example, seems to believe that Benjy can't hear him at all: "'He can't tell what you saying.' Luster said. 'He deef and dumb.'" (pg. 49) However, the black people and Caddy talk to Benjy directly. Caddy in particular treats him like a normal human being. "So that was it. And you were trying to tell Caddy and you couldn't tell her. You wanted to, but you couldn't, could you." (pg. 42) Caddy recognizes that Benjy is trying to tell her something instead of just crying and moaning.
-Benjy is afraid of Caddy going away from him, and he seems to try to keep her with him. Whenever Caddy threatens to run away, he starts crying. Ex. "'I'll run away and never come back.' Caddy said. I began to cry. Caddy turned around and said 'Hush' so I hushed." (pg. 19) In the beginning of this section, he starts crying when he hears the word "Caddie," as it reminds him of his sister Caddy. When Caddy ventures out on her own and does things, Benjy follows after her trying to keep her with him. Example: when Caddy and her boyfriend Charlie are in the swing and Caddy gives up being with Charlie for Benjy's sake.
-When Caddy tells him to hush, he hushes-- he obviously likes Caddy a great deal.

How does Benjy tell his story?
-He jumps back and forth in time between different stages of Caddy's life. -Benjy tells his story in what seems to be a rather detached manner. I believe that it seems like this because he doesn't add any of his own emotions or thoughts into his story: he just reports sensory observations of what's going on around him, including what he's doing at that moment. Instead of saying that he feels sad because Caddy has grown up, he reports that he's crying and that Caddy doesn't smell like trees. This, combined with Benjy's non-linear sense of time (he remembers things as if they're currently happening to him; he narrates his memories in the same manner as he narrates what's going on on April 7, 1928), makes the story he's telling rather hard to follow.

What is the story Benjy tells?
-Benjy seems to be telling the story of Caddy growing up. All of his scenes focus around Caddy at some specific time period: when she's a child, when she's a teenager, when she gets married. Eventually, despite Benjy's fears, Caddy leaves him and starts her own life. Benjy's memories of Caddy are triggered when, while looking for Luster's quarter in his former pasture, he hears two golfers say the word "caddie." Despite the fact that Benjy is telling this story from his perspective, this almost seems to be more Caddy's story than his, as he doesn't add any of his own thoughts to what's going on around him and merely observes, crying when he's trying to communicate something.
-On another level, Benjy is also telling his personal life story of being alienated from everyone around him-- except Caddy-- because he can't communicate with them. He tries to tell people things by crying, as Caddy recognizes (such as in the scene where Caddy has perfume on), but people try to shut him up whenever he does this, telling him to hush.