Benjy Compson

Following on from a sentence from Wolfgang Iser's The Implied Reader, I'm having trouble sifting the information about the character of Benjy Compson in The Sound and The Fury.


Iser writes,
"The novel begins with a series of flucutating impressions of April 7, 1928 which Benjy, an idiot, attempts to hold onto. Benjy differs from most other idiots in literature mainly because he is seen from inside and not from outside. The reader sees the world through his eyes and depends almost exclusively on him for orientation. As a result, the reader's attention is drawn to the peculiar nature of this perception, so that the subject matter seems to be the idiot's experience of life rather this his effect on the intersubjective world; indeed, this could only become the subject if he were seen in the context of normality." (Iser, 137)

So what does this mean?

Benjy is a very important character in the history of the modern novel as his atemporal narrative is often likened to the 'internal monologues' (yawn) of modernism - Joyce's Ulysses, Woolf's To The Lighthouse etc.Taking issue with Iser's use of the word 'idiot' (1974), I've done some scant reading around the web on the issue. It seems that Benjy's diagnosis is a hot topic and it lead me to some interesting articles -

http://elisabeth-burton.blogspot.com/2007/11/benjy-compson-diagnosis.html
http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncw/listing.aspx?id=1554
http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/wfsj/journal/no12/pdf/EJNo12_Samway_Silver.pdf

The problem of diagnosing a 'mental disability' in a fictional character is not lost to all of the above writers, and certainly the historical problems of Faulkner's own views on the matter dwell on language, but for the most part, I'm prompted not to ask of the validity of identifying Benjy's condition, but rather, how apt or authentic is it to 'give voice' to someone it is claimed, can not speak?

It reminded me of a very powerful film - In My Own Language. Who is Faulkner to narrate a non-speaking person? Who am I to question Faulkner's use of character? Where is the line to be drawn, politically? Am I holding him to task for 'blacking up' when it is a fiction, and he is highlighting, in an contemporary style, the plight of those silenced through history? Maybe the inadequacy of language is to blame.

Signification is the question -

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."