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William Faulkner's Benjy Compson and the Field of Consciousness WILLIAM SOWDER Many critics consider The Sound and the Fury to be Faulkner's greatest work. Through the "voices" of three members of the prominent Compson family of Jefferson, county seat of Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi - Benjy, an idiot; Quentin, his suicidal brother incestuously obssessed with their promis'cuous sister, Caddy; Jason, the oldest brother who is a cheap sadist and congenital liar - and Dilsey, the majestic mammy who devotes her life to the family, Faulkner explores the Compson's moral and social disintegration. The compositional center of the novel is the Benjy section. 'I'his, the first section, from which the other three evolve, extends over the thirty or so crucial years in which the tragic unraveling takes place. Benjy is a stroke of genius, a megaburst of creative energy activated by close observation. In the Deep South, owing mainly to incest, many rural areas and small towns have their quota of idiots. Faulkner in his own Oxford neighborhood had for years passed a home with an idiot enclosed by an iron fence much like the one enclosing Benjy on the Old Compson Place. Doubtless, this unfortunate and others like
Journal of Phenomenological Psychology – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1988
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