Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Sun, 2014-04-13 19:18
Benjy is the cognitively disabled youngest child of Jason Compson III and Caroline Bascomb. In the novel he is referred to as a "natural" (160) and a "looney" (17); in interviews Faulkner frequently called him an "idiot"; until recently most readers probably thought of him as "severely retarded." At his birth he was named Maury, after Mrs. Compson's brother, but when he is five years old his mother changes his name to Benjamin after his mental disability has become apparent.
After describing the "negro murderer" who sings spirituals from inside the jail while awaiting his execution and the "few negroes" who "gather along the fence" to sing with him (114), the narrative goes on to note the "white people" who "slow and stop" to listen (115).
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Sun, 2014-04-13 10:24
The back of Mrs. Hait's house faces the railroad. There is a "shed building in the corner of the yard" (250), connected by a narrow plank walk to the main house. Mannie Hait moves into the shed and shares it with her cow after her house burned down.
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Sat, 2014-04-12 22:30
In The Sound and the Fury, most of Quentin Compson's wanderings on June Second, 1910, stay close to the Charles River, which flows between between Boston and Cambridge before emptying into Boston Harbor. It is still, as in the novel, where the Harvard crew teams row. However, like most of the Massachusetts settings in Quentin's section, the drawbridge where Quentin gets off the trolley, looks at the Charles River "healing out to the sea" (90), and then watches Gerald Bland take a shell from a boathouse and start rowing is apparently Faulkner's invention.
Submitted by grdenton@memphis.edu on Sat, 2014-04-12 21:38
Quentin recalls a story that Mrs. Bland tells about Gerald, involving "a sawmill husband" - the lower-class husband of a woman with whom Gerald has had sexual relations - who confronts him with a shotgun (107). According to Quentin's remembered version, Gerald is supposed to have bitten the gun in two. It's not clear how much of the exaggeration here is Mrs. Bland's and how much Quentin's.
Submitted by grdenton@memphis.edu on Sat, 2014-04-12 21:25
Anse is the Marshal of the town near Cambridge where Quentin goes in the second half of his section. He is described by Quentin as "oldish," and he wears a vest with a badge on it and carries a "knotted, polished stick" (139). Quentin is told to find him because he could help Quentin find the lost Italian girl's home. However, Anse found Quentin first; he arrested Quentin for trying to kidnap the lost Italian girl.
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2014-04-11 17:07
In "Mule in the Yard" and The Town the back of Mannie Hait's house faces the railroad. There is a "shed building in the corner of the yard" (250, 248), connected by a narrow plank walk to the main house. After her house burns down, Mrs. Hait moves into the shed and shares it with her cow
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2014-04-11 17:01
Mrs. Hait's front yard is described as a "handkerchief-sized plot of earth" (254). The yard surrounds Hait's house, which is located on the edge of town near the railroad station. A narrow plank walk connects the main house with a shed building in the corner of the yard.
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2014-04-11 16:54
Much of the action in "Mule in the Yard" occurs in Mrs. Hait's front yard. It is described as a "handkerchief-sized plot of earth" (254). The yard surrounds Hait's house, which is located on the edge of town near the railroad station. A narrow plank walk connects the main house with a shed building in the corner of the yard.
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2014-04-11 16:53
All we know for sure about the poorhouse where Old Het lives is that it is "a three-mile walk" from Hait's house in Jefferson (264). But since that's exactly the same distance from Jefferson as the poorhouse in which Old Will Falls lives in Flags in the Dust, and she is black while he is white, it seems possible that "the poorhouse" (249, 264) is one of the very few - perhaps the only - fully integrated space in Yoknapatawpha.
