April Seventh, 1928

Reading the first section of The Sound and The Fury has been challenging. I never know exactly what is happening and this frustrates me. The diction seems deliberately vague, perhaps because the first section is narrated by Benjy, who is mentally disabled. For instance, the first page depicts two men playing golf, but we can deduce this only because they keep "hitting" and moving "the flag".

Also, the story moves back and forth in time without a clear pattern. I quickly intuit that the passages in italic mark a transition, but sometimes they mark a flashback and sometimes they mark a return to the present. Also, sometimes the italics taper off even though there is no jump in time. Sometimes they mark an interruption in a scene; sometimes they separate two different scenes. For the first 30 pages, I can just about keep track of where I am in time if I pay close attention, but after that it becomes more ambiguous. I know that Benjy is jumping back and forth in time between the present, when he is 33 years old, and the past, when he is a young child. He recalls his grandmother's funeral and how his brothers and sisters deduce what is happening, even though they are kept away from the house and not told of their grandmother's death. But I am not sure whether Benjy and T.P. get drunk on the sasprilluh that same night or whether their drinking is a separate incident. Likewise, it is unclear when in time the scene where Caddy and Charlie kiss on the swings takes place.

So far the book reminds me of a Greek tragedy. There are several ominous refrains that set the tone and prepare me for misfortune. Benjy repeats over and over again that "Caddy smelled like trees", Roskus repeats "Taint no luck on this place", and Frony keeps saying "I knows what I knows". There is also the prolonged image of a fire in Roskus' house. Although the narrative is impenetrable, it creates a palpable sense of doom.