Compson Inset: Hole in Fence (Location Key)

For over a quarter of a century, apparently, the "garden fence" between the Compson yard and the farm area behind the house has had a hole in it - a hole with a nail sticking out (4). When Luster takes Benjy through this hole in 1928 to look for the lost quarter in The Sound and the Fury, Benjy remembers getting snagged in the same place and presumably on the same nail twenty-five years earlier, while going off the place with Caddy to deliver a message from Uncle Maury to Mrs. Patterson. Considering the way Benjy's mind is stuck on so many parts of his past, and the way the novel is constructed around the 'hole' left by the absence of Caddy (the lost quarter among the four Compson kids), Faulkner is making a very literate and complex pun.