In The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner draws attention to Benjy's ability to observe through his inability to speak. His character tends toward omniscience, as he constantly stumbles upon (or participates in) various clandestine acts but lacks the power to articulate these events. Through these situations, Benjy appears as a weakened representative of Jesus, capable of seeing many things, but powerless to influence the immoral acts he faces. The parallels between Benjy and Jesus seem clear; the reader meets him for the first time on his thirty-third birthday, the day before Easter, etc. However, Benjy represents an extremely diluted version of what Jesus "should" be, capable of changing events only through his observing eyes, and even then, only the vaguest terms, incapable of making a real difference in the lives of people. characters. He discovers both Caddy (apparently the less corrupt Compson) and Quentin in the woods with lovers, forcing both girls to flee the situation. Yet in both cases, Benjy only delays the inevitable: Caddy marries at fourteen and Quentin runs away the next morning with his lover. Benjy thus plays the contradictory role of a voiceless moral “voice,” making others uncomfortable about their immorality by observing them rather than scolding them. With Benjy as the symbolic Jesus in the novel, it seems that the most important implications concern the seemingly inevitable decay of all concrete human values, with only a vague paranoia regarding the "evil" of his actions replacing true religious sentiments. Faulkner offers a sort of racialized alternative to Dilsey's Compsons by demonstrating his stronger sense of spirituality. Dilsey's family, however, only delays the decline of humanity, and while Dilsey represents a moral authority with a voice, almost no one listens. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Most of the important moments in Benjy's narrative arise from him innocently encountering some sort of immoral enterprise that he wouldn't have access to if he weren't. mentally handicapped. Either other people are forcing Benjy to participate, or he's really coming across the situation. One of the first such instances occurs when he acts as a messenger between Uncle Maury and the adulterous Mrs. Patterson (whom he botches by giving the note to Mr. Patterson) and quickly flees (9) . TP and the male Quentin also force him to participate in their drunken "sassprilluh" session, which they give to him partly because they want him to "shut up" and not give them to the rest of the marriage (14) . In both of these cases, others somehow coerce Benjy into committing these acts, and he manages to disrupt them in some way. When he finds Caddy and the female Quentin in the woods, he does so independently and even against the orders of his keepers. Benjy therefore seems to have a "nose" for discovering what is shamefully hidden, always acting as an innocent witness, producing a feeling of guilt in Caddy and at least interrupting Quentin's meeting with his lover. He comes between the girls and their immoral sexual relations outside of marriage, but only on the vaguest moral basis: their discomfort in continuing under Benjy's innocent eyes. When Benjy surprises Caddy with Charlie in the woods, she initially tries to get him to return home, and it seems that it is only during her meeting with her brother that she realizes the fault of his actions. She “confesses” to Benjy, and he gives her a sort of revelationon his promiscuity. Faulkner writes: "Charlie came and put his hands on Caddy and I cried again... 'Are you crazy.' » said Caddy. "He can see. No. No." Caddy fought...Caddy and I ran...I could hear him and feel his chest. “I won’t.” she said. "I won't do it again, ever. Benjy. Benjy." Then she cried, and I cried, and we held each other. “Silence,” she said. "Shh. I won't do it again." So I shut up and Caddy got up and we went into the kitchen and turned on the light and Caddy took the kitchen soap and washed her mouth out at the sink, hard. (31) Here, Faulkner clearly emphasizes Benjy's role as observer in what drives Caddy to take him home. She tells Charlie "that he can see" as the only reason he should not touch her around Benjy. Once Caddy and Benjy arrive home, guilt overcomes her and she cries, repeating both Benjy's name and his promise: "I won't do it again." » It seems that with such a silent and innocent witness nearby, the immoral act of promiscuity simply cannot continue; indeed, Benjy's watchful eyes make Caddy realize the error of her ways. Benjy thus continues his role as “Jesus” by being the person to whom his sister “admits” her shame, as it were, and even, perhaps, does penance in front of her by washing his mouth with soap. However, this newly installed morality ultimately fails; Caddy loses her virginity a few years later and marries the following year, after defiling herself by having premarital sex. However, it is because Caddy exists among the less corrupt Compsons that she senses any sort of morality through Benjy - her daughter, Quentin, only allows Benjy to interrupt her date with the man from the series, and doesn't seem to benefit any more from it. moral insight, however fleeting it may be. Quentin, as Caddy's offspring, represents the next generation of Compson in a more corrupted version of his mother. Thanks to Benjy's consciousness and his simultaneous memory of Caddy, the reader realizes the parallel situation of Quentin, surprised by Benjy on the swings with his lover. Rather than his eyes producing moral shame like Caddy's, Benjy only makes Quentin and his lover somewhat uncomfortable. The impact of his observation is thus diluted as the Compsons degrade, moving away from a spiritual and morally concrete world where "good" and "bad" are pre-arranged for people by a society or a society. religion. In a paragraph about Caddy's escape with Benjy, Faulkner writes: “You crazy old fool,” Quentin said. I'm going to talk to Dilsey about how you let him follow me everywhere I go. I'm going to make him whip you good... "You were snooping all over me. Did grandma send you all here to spy on me." She jumped off the swing... [Quentin's lover] lit a match and put it in her mouth... I opened my mouth. Quentin struck the match with his hand and it went away... Quentin ran towards the house. She walked around the kitchen. (31-32) A few paragraphs later, Luster gives Benjy the contraceptive labeled "Agnes Mabel Becky", which provides the first evidence that Quentin is actually having sex in this area, a problem worse than that of his mother, who loses her virginity years after Benjy. discovers her in the woods. Once again, however, Benjy's observant eyes produce Quentin's first strong reaction, asking, "Did Grandma send you all here to spy on me?" His concern arises not from Benjy's innocent gaze, but from a more paranoid and morally bankrupt view of a world that assumes that badThere is intention behind even Benjy's actions. Faulkner further reveals her separation from her mother when she runs "into the kitchen", the very place where Caddy finds her moral ground with Benjy. As previously mentioned, Benjy manages to delay Caddy's corruption for a few years, but Quentin leaves the house the next morning with the man from the show. Thus, Compson's intensifying promiscuity is also accompanied by a diluted capacity to find concrete moral meaning through Benjy's innocence. The lack of a moral and spiritual basis for the Compson family becomes clear in several ways throughout the book; aside from their ability to ignore Benjy's omniscient gaze, none of them seem to change their schedules on Easter Sunday. Mrs. Compson only complains that she can't rest even on a Sunday, Jason goes so far as to complain about letting the servants visit the church, and Quentin sees no problem in running away with his lover. Compson's decline and lack of moral center coincides well with a lack of spirituality. Faulkner seems to wonder whether one can have a sense of moral concreteness without a spiritual center. Through the Compsons, Faulkner documents the retreat of religion in a modern society. Jesus, or Benjy, is quasi-omniscient but not omnipotent nor capable of affecting the mindless world in any significant way. Faulkner offers a possible and problematic solution to the Compsons' lack of spiritual center in the person of Dilsey, the old black servant who fervently believes in Jesus, even proclaiming "I have the seed of the first and the last" (185), a statement similar to that made by Jesus himself in Revelation 22:13. She uses her voice in the Compson household to defend those in need, most notably the wife Quentin, from Jason's irrational anger, thus demonstrating an absent altruism in most of Compson's actions. Faulkner clearly presents her as a fictionalized character, capable of “feeling” religion through the Easter church service, which earns her proclamation above. She exudes an aura of strange dignity in Faulkner's first "objective" description of her in chapter four: She wore a stiff black straw hat perched on her turban and a brown velvet cape with a mangy, anonymous fur trim above a purple dress. silk, and she stood for a moment in the door with her myriad, sunken face lifted by time... She had once been a great woman but now her skeleton stood erect, draped loosely in unpadded skin... as if of muscle and tissue had been the courage or fortitude which the days or years had consumed until only the indomitable skeleton stood as a ruin or a landmark... (165) In this passage, the worn suit Dilsey's , but once impressive, velvet and silk work represents her status as a sort of elderly queen, forced into years of hard labor. All the fabrics and their colors evoke this reading: purple silk, brown velvet and fur, which are hardly the kinds of things even the richest person wears without a certain pomp. The turban serves to add exoticism, although covered by his banal black straw hat – undoubtedly America's imposition on its African past. However, Dilsey's outfit, like the survival of his spirituality in later generations of his family, seems doomed. Her fur is "mangy" and her skeleton seems to protrude from her flesh as a sign of impending death, the "courage and fortitude" of her body being consumed until she resembles a "ruin or a landmark,” objects that represent a fallen body. civilization or way of life. Spirituality and concreteness.