Throughout Benjy’s perspective in TSAF I found myself on a ride. A ride where time was not linear, but more like a patchwork of particular moments/memories. While reading Benjy’s chapter I thought about Woolf and her use of stream of consciousness. Particularly with To The Lighthouse and that famous dinner scene. I remember I was floating rather easily down this stream and was in awe of how Woolf crafted her sentences and was able to move through multiple bodies. Faulkner on the other hand…  I’m struggling to keep up and to know where I am, and it feels jarring, aggressive (like Benjy’s moaning), and confusing.

Benjy is struggling as well.

Benjy is an observer in this chapter. He is taking in what other people are doing and saying, but he can’t really interact with the other characters. Since he is just an observer, a fly on the wall he would likely be a reliable narrator. Faulkner flips this and makes the person who would most likely be a reliable narrator, incredibly unreliable. Benjy is stuck in his own stream of consciousness. Just as the reader is confused as to what is going on, Benjy is also supremely confused. Faulkner’s use of a character who has severe disabilities challenges the idea of stream of consciousness and what it means for someone who doesn’t have complete control of their mind.

Benjy tries to stay afloat in the chapter. “Caddy smelled like trees” seems to be the reader’s totem (IE: Leonardo Dicaprio’s top in Inception). It shows up plenty of times and is there to ground the reader and remind them that this is a series of memories.  This statement at first can be read right before Benjy gets jolted into a new memory. On the other hand, on pg 44, Benjy says this line multiple times and is thwarted between multiple memories and incidents. The passage starts with “I listened to the water. I couldn’t hear the water,” a possible inception-y type of allusion to the stream of consciousness or to the river of time. “Caddy smelled like trees” is used numerous times, and Benjy jumps between multiple time periods with Caddy. I would argue that this is his way of falling into memory after memory with no clear way of getting out. He continually repeats it, but he seems to fall into reliving multiple memories. While on the other hand the reader is noticing what is happening, and paying attention to details.

Overall, I’m not sure if Caddy is an anchor or a totem, just as I am not sure about the events I have read in the Benjy chapter. I feel as if I am riding the waves with Benjy and trying to grasp anything to stay afloat and navigate the narrative to a linear timeline. In the end, it seems as if Benjy understood that time is a Western concept.