An (extremely long - sorry!) Ode to Benjy

Benjy is a faun if Faulkner ever wrote of one, and certainly among the wisest of his fools. Like the faun, Benjy is extremely in tune with nature, he lacks all self-consciousness. He also possesses intuition and, therefore, an important kind of wisdom.

Benjy’s intuition can be seen in a conversation between Dilsey and Roskus: “‘He know a lot more than folks thinks.’ Roskus said. ‘He knowed they time was coming, like that pointer done. He could tell you when hism coming, if he could talk. Or yours. Or mine.’”

In part two, Quentin reflects on Dilsey saying of Benjy: “He smelt hit.” Smell, as a means of acquiring knowledge, is certainly more animalistic than human.

Benjy lacks self-consciousness, another trait of the faun. Often the reader learns of his actions through reactions from other characters. We often learn he is moaning, for instance, when he is told to “hush.” He is also very in tune with nature, finding comfort in such things as flowers, lightning bugs, and other natural objects. Caddy, whom he loves, smells like grass. Not only that, but the reader gets the impression that the house is a dark place for Benjy, and the outside somehow light (“…we went out the door, out of the dark”).

Benjy’s close relationship to the black family working for the Compsons is also an indication of his faunlike nature. After all, according to Cleanth Brooks, when writing about “Negroes,” Faulkner tended to take the direction of “black mystique” (Brooks, 97). Black people in Faulkner novels certainly can be comically portrayed, but they also possess a “spiritual maturity,” often absent in white characters. There is also a strong relationship between black characters and the land. Benjy seems to have a much closer relationship to Dilsey and T.P., for instance, than to his own mother and father. This further supports the idea of him as a faun. Caddy and Quentin also have strong relationships with black characters and, incidentally, also have faunlike qualities.

Benjy and Quentin, for whatever reason, are both drawn to fire. Benjy describes fire as “bright, smooth shapes.” Quentin sees the “clean flame” as something he and Caddy can seek refuge behind. He dreams of taking Caddy and Benjy to hell and the “clean flame.” I am very curious as to why these characters find fire so appealing.

One stark difference between Benjy and Quentin are their respective perceptions of time. For Benjy, Faulkner’s quote about the past never being past holds very true. He is unaware of time: its passage, its order, its existence. Quentin, on the other hand, is obsessed with time – he says, when he cannot see his watch, “And so as soon as I knew I couldn’t see it, I began to wonder what time it was.” The first paragraph of Quentin’s part is an extremely important quote about the nature of time in this novel:

“…I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire…I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”
This quote ties in very strongly to the Macbeth quote, from which Faulkner took the novel’s title. With Quentin there is certainly a strong awareness of Time and the futility of a life “signifying nothing.”The theme is continued throughout part two, up until his suicide.

Although Benjy is the idiot character, it is the intelligent Quentin, with his existential turmoil (fed to him by his father) and old-fashioned ideals (protection of the female), who ultimately kills himself. Is Benjy simply in a happy ignorance? Or is he really, like Roskus says, able to know when his “time” will come? The latter idea is interesting, considering Benjy is seemingly unaware of time. He does hear “the clock between [his] voice,” but there is no indication that he has any understanding of the purpose of the clock. Maybe it is his timelessness which makes him so wise. One almost gets the impression that Benjy will never die.

Another thing I want to point out is the shift in the novel. As in Soldiers’ Pay, there seems to be a time of idealism and a time of corruption. In Benjy’s youth, there is a big field in which he can romp, Caddy is present, T.P. is a friendlier helper, and his father is benevolent, if deeply troubled. In his older age, the field is gone, Caddy is gone and replaced by the bratty female Quentin, Luster is a cranky, (understandably) unwilling caretaker, and spiteful Jason is head of the house. Also, like the character of Mahon, Benjy is a character who cannot function in normal society. True, he is taken in by the black characters, who belong to a sort of wise, earthy subculture. Personally, I think he is too good for this world. Maybe Faulkner does find an unchronological, unselfconscious, follow-your-nose lifestyle ideal. But he certainly does not find it practical.