Blog #7 The Memory of Caddy

Memory is different for every individual. The memory of one incedent could be truly significant for one, and just another random memory for another. For example, something as common as a wedding will be a complete different memory for everyone that attended it. For the bride it will be one of the happiest days of her life; for the paternts it will be bitter sweet; for the quests it will be just another wedding; for some little kids it is just another boring ceremony their parents dragged them to. What is interesting is what makes a memory stand out in someone's brain, compared to someone else's, or even compared to other experiences. Why is that one memory so meaningful?

In The Sound and the Furry Faulkner uses memory to tell a story about a girl named Caddy. Throughout the story we see different memory perspectives on the same events. Faulkner uses the memories of Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey to tell the story. Every character's memory plays out throughout their daily lives differently. Benjy's memory comes in and out throughout every moment of his life, the wiff of one tree and he travels back ten years to a memory of Caddy. Quentin's memory plays a big part in his life because is completely absorbed in the past, his whole life is revolved around past experiences, and he is forever doomed by the past. Jason only uses his memories of the past when it has a specific affect on him, or when it has to do with money. The one who probably has the most normal sense of memory use is Dilsey, who seems to go on about her life day-by-day, and she accepts the past as it is.

Throughout the story Faulkner uses a combined memory of Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey to characterize Caddy, yet we never get a chance to see Caddy's memories, and how she views the past. I find it interesting that to tell the story of a girl, we never get to see anything from her point of view, we never get to see her memories! How odd.

So what is Faulkerner suggesting by his technique ? What I beleive Faulkner is suggesting by the way he uses memory, is that a person is truly characterized by the way they have an affect on others. So by the use of memories about Caddy we get to truly see who she is, without any personal bias. Though each character's memory of her may be biased in itself, none of it is filtered through Caddy because we are not seeing it from her perspective; therefore, we are truly experiencing the life of Caddy Compson through how everyone else sees it. We get a chance to see how she affects others lives and how the memory of her through others eyes is what truly characterizes her.

By Faulkner providing the reader with four different perspectives rather than just narrating the whole story from one point of view, that also helps characterize Caddy. Because it would be unfair to just take one perspective on a person or event and have that characterize the person or event as a whole. For example if we just had Quentin's memories to describe Caddy we would have a completly differnet idea of her than what we would if we added in Benjy's memories, and then Dilseys. This is similar to perhaps the memory of a wedding. If one had just asked the little kid who was bored out of his mind about the wedding, they would have a completely different idea of the wedding then they would if they had asked the maid of honor.

Memory is different for everybody, and people can definitely picture the past in different ways. Faulkner utilizes these facts about memory to characterize the character Caddy in The Sound and the Furry.

Blog #6 The Sound and the Fuzzy!

Though The Sound and the Furry has been very difficult to follow, I have actually enjoyed trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I mean, the whole concept of no time, and everything kind-of happening at once is really cool. It reminds me a little of Slaughterhouse Five. When I first read Faulkner's introduction I had no idea of what he meant by "I wrote this book and learned to read," but now I am gradually beginning to see where he is coming from. The fact that time doesn't have much of a purpose, and that the reader has to focuse on the relationships, the setting, the characters, is all pretty cool and interesting. What is interesting to me is that this story could easily be told in the traditional way by many authors; a story about a disfunctional family in the south. And although I keep finding myself quite frustrated with trying to figure out the story line, when we discuss it in class I feel like we, as a class, are getting much more out of this book than any other book we have read, purely because of the way which we have to look at it. Rather than look at the order in which things happened, the particular way in what happened, we are just looking at what is.

This book has also made me think about time in a different way as well, I mean for time to be insequential is very weird, and I still don't quite understand that part of the book either. I mean, I realize that Benjy is mentally ill, but I still don't see how everything is all kind-of occurring at the same time. To think that something that happened 10 years ago could seem like it's happening now is quite odd, so I'm still trying to grasp that aspect of the book.

One other thing I found intereting about The Sound and the Furry is how by Benjy's senses he kind of jumps from one point of time to another. This is cool to me because it's something that happens to me all the time, and I know it happens for a lot of other people too. For example, there are certain songs, certain smells, certain images, and feelings, and whenever I experience these certain things, I can often related it to the past, or it just often reminds me of something that has happened in the past. So to me it is really interesting how our minds work that way, which is kind-of what our little "timed" writing exercise at the end of Thursday's class showed us.

Overall although I'm enjoying figuring out some of the deeper meanings and what is really going on, the book as a whole is still a little fuzzy to me, and I'm curious to see how the rest of it will play out!!