And another connection -- I think this is something that you already know, but I just wanted to refresh your memory, they also are kin in the very dramatic reaction to this loss of innocence on Caddy's part. So this is something that we looked at last time. Benjy, the moment when Caddy can no longer go to the bathroom and wash herself clean.
"We were in the hall. Caddy was still looking at me. Her hand was against her mouth and I saw her eyes and I cried. We went up the stairs. She stopped again, against the wall, looking at me and I cried and she went on and I came on, crying, and she shrank against the wall, looking at me. She opened the door to her room, but I pulled at her dress and we went to the bathroom and she stood against the door, looking at me. Then she put her arm across her face and I pushed at her, crying.”
We remember this very well, a moment when suddenly, Caddy is not putting her arms around Benjy, but across her own face. And it is telling that is almost completely reproduced and repeated in Quentin's section.
" …one minute she was standing in the door the next minute he was pulling at her dress and
bellowing his voice hammered back and forth between the walls in waves and she shrinking against the wall getting smaller and smaller with her white face her eyes like thumbs dug into it until he pushed her out of the room his voice hammering back and forth as though its own momentum would not let it stop as though there were no place for it in silence bellowing."
It's exactly the same episode. Except that now, all of a sudden, we hear that sound, that bellowing, that Benjy is making, that of course is invisible and inaudible when Benjy is telling the story. We know exactly what that sound is doing. Caddy seems to be shrunken. She's getting smaller and smaller. She's so pushed around by Benjy, that she's getting smaller and smaller, until she has no place to go.
And we really haven't thought of Benjy as being aggressive. But that's really what he is. Innocence is aggressive in its demand that the world should completely conform to his dictates. And Benjy is relentless in demanding that Caddy should conform to his dictates. The bellowing is the weapon that he uses to make sure that she does that. When she cannot, he just keeps on doing it.
So from Quentin, we have this added perspective of what Benjy is doing to Caddy. But otherwise, it's exactly the same moment. The same Caddy, occupying the emotional center. It's an unbearable place for her two brothers to be. It's not surprising then, that the consequence of that traumatic loss should be articulated in the same way. In Benjy, it's articulated as incomplete syntax and the consequences of that incomplete
syntax--"I was trying to say, and I caught her, trying to say, and she screamed and I was trying to say"-- and the frustration would come after that. Here's Quentin exhibiting the same symptom, the same incomplete syntax in reaction to the loss of Caddy. And it is surprising, because we can say that Benjy has an incomplete syntax because he's an idiot. He's clinically retarded. Quentin is not retarded. But, he also doesn't speak in complete sentences when he's very agitated.
"Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs.
Outside outside of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that some man that all those mysterious and imperious concealed. With all that inside of them shapes an outward suavity waiting for a touch to. Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber flabbily filled getting the odor of honeysuckle all mixed up."
It is stream of consciousness. It is completely internal to Quentin. And the logic of association is also peculiar to Quentin. So that it would be very hard for us to understand completely. All we can say is that this is both a point of commonality between Quentin and Benjy. And also the point of departure or deviation.
From Benjy, we never get the sense that women are filthy, that there's something repulsive and abominable about women. That just having the menstrual cycle is in itself filthy. But this is really what Quentin is fixated on, is this kind of revulsion by female sexuality in its most elemental form. In a sense that it doesn't really take any action, just in its state as femaleness there's something
repulsive about them.
This form of narration -- this stream of consciousness-- is Faulkner's way of getting us to get into a mind that is very different. In some sense, as different from us as Benjy's mind is. Let's think about this, by way of the one thread that Faulkner is giving us. In the case of Benjy, we see that the guide that is taking us through the various salient moments in Benjy, is the phrase, "Caddy smelled like trees."
And in the case of Quentin, the phrase that will perform a comparable function is, "getting the odor of honeysuckle all mixed up." We see that, that's the last sentence in that very strange passage. And that phrase will appear again and again in the same manner as “Caddy smelled like trees.” So let's use that as a way to try to understand Quentin. I don't think that we ever will, completely. And that probably is a good thing, that's really the effect that Faulkner wants to cultivate.
So this is moving away from kinship to thinking about variation, the ways in which Quentin is different from Benjy. And one way in which Quentin is different from Benjy, is that “sister” is basically very clear, very straightforward, uni-vocal meaning for Benjy. It only has one meaning.
“Caddy smelled like trees.” She's the source of everything that is wonderful and comforting and good for Benjy. The word “sister” has a much more complicated meaning for Quentin.
Chapter 5. “Sister” as a Semantic Field [00:28:22]
We can think of it not just as a word, but as a very complex semantic field. What I'd like to do today is to follow the trajectory of that word “sister,” and the phrase "honeysuckle all mixed up." Follow that to try to get us from the beginning of Quentin's chapter, not quite as linear as I would like, but I'll try to get us from the beginning of Quentin's section to the end of Quentin's section. And I think that we all know that he kills himself, right? He kills himself by jumping into the Charles River in Cambridge.
How does he get from one to the other -- and it's just one day, it's the space of that one day-- how does he get from the beginning of that day, that morning, to the end of that day? We'll begin at the point when Quentin is closest to Benjy. And follow him in the ways in which he gradually moves away from Benjy. This is a moment when we begin to know why it is, when we're learning more about why it is that Caddy's loss of sexuality is so traumatic to Quentin.
"Caddy you hate him don’t you she move my hand up against her throat her heart was hammering therepoor Quentin her face looked at the sky it was low so low that all smells and sounds of night seemed to have been crowded down like under a slack tent especially the honeysuckle it had got into my breathing it was on her face and throat like paint…. I had to pant to get any air at all out of that thick gray honeysuckle yes I hate him I would die for him I’ve already died for him I die for him over and over again everytime this goes when I lifted my hand I could still feel crisscrossed twigs and grass burning into the palm poor Quentin.”
It's a weird moment. Caddy is the one who is going to be pregnant because of this out of wedlock affair with men — in fact, she might not even know who the father is. So she is the last person to be in a position to say, "Poor Quentin." But Faulkner's understanding of the situation is that even though Caddy is in a dire situation at this moment-- and it's a much worse thing, back in the 20s for a young lady to be pregnant out of wedlock-- but in spite of that dire situation, Caddy still has a better life than Quentin. It is dramatized by the complete incomprehension of Quentin for Caddy's life. So in that sense too, we can say this is the common ground between Benjy and Quentin. Benji doesn't understand Caddy because he doesn't have the mental capacity for it. And Quentin doesn't
understand Caddy because he's never had the experience. We know by the end of section two, that he never will have that experience -- what it means to have that particular sensation, and to have
gone through that, even though the consequences are terrible. So we can see another way in which there's actually a point of intersection between The Sound and the Fury and The Great Gatsby. And there's a lot in common between Quentin and Gatsby, as well. The intense desire for the love object to deny that she has any relation to anyone other than yourself. This is what unites Quentin and Gatsby. Gatsby can't stand the thought that Daisy might have been in love with Tom at one point.
And Quentin can't stand the thought that Caddy might actually be in love, just at that moment, when she's having sex with this guy. He can't stand that thought.
This inability to face that thought says something about a lack in Quentin's life. If he had had that experience, he wouldn't have hated it so much. It wouldn't have been so unbearable for him. And Caddy completely understands that. So that's the background for that repeated phrase, "Poor Quentin." And so this is the point where Benjy and Quentin are really kin. The two brothers are as one.