Compson Inset: Barn (Location Key)

During the years covered by the Benjy's and Quentin's memories in The Sound and the Fury, the barn at the back of the Compson place contains a number of horses and cows, with a pen next to it for the family's pigs. By the time Benjy passes it in 1928, the "stalls are all open" and the "roof is falling" apart (12), though the aged horse Queenie is still there someplace. It is in "the high sweet emptiness of the barn" that the adolescent Quentin has his first and perhaps only sexual encounter, with Natalie; when Caddy's appearance interrupts this encounter, Quentin leaps into "the hogwallow" - as he calls the pig sty - to cover himself and his mortification with foul-smelling muck (134, 136).