For Benjy and Quentin Compson, memory in "The Sound and the Fury" is a tool for discovering and escaping reality. Both brothers have difficulty seeing the past as part of a chain linked to both the present and the future. Benjy does not recognize linear time, giving his memories the same qualities as his contemporary experiences. Quentin chooses to ignore his present and live in the memories of his childhood. Both brothers find comfort in memories of the past as they seek protection from an unpredictable world that moves faster than they can keep up. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayBenjy can narrate first, because he is the only one who is incapable of lying. He cannot embellish stories, nor can he control his memories. Due to his severe mental disability, he is unable to think subjectively; for him, life is an infinite present of images, sounds and thoughts that he cannot decipher, reflect on or organize in any meaningful way. He has no concept of time; since his memories are perfectly connected to visual and auditory signals from the present, he considers them equivalent to current experiences. As a result, he is unaware of the concepts of cause and consequence and does not hold grudges or guilt like his brothers do. Unlike Quentin and Jason, who are so obsessed with Caddy that their perceptions of any history with her are distorted by their ability to consciously shape their memories, Benjy's unconscious blending of memory and reality contributes to his almost inhuman objectivity . He has no opinions, no real differentiation in his descriptions. He enforces his neutrality towards those he quotes, always reporting that "he said", "she said" - never "he warned" or "she laughed", regardless of the situation. Free from the movement of time and judgment, Benjy is completely static, letting history sort itself out as he assimilates it. The timelessness of Benjy's tale means that he cannot discriminate between the present and the past, and so he relives both the memory and the experience as they arise. occur. As a result, he is stuck in a process of constantly regenerating Caddy's memory and losing it at the same time, building it up and tearing it down at the same time. It's as if she sees the shadow of the dead Caddy, only to have it replaced by her living self. He lives in a continuous cycle of loss and degenerative change, which Quentin has failed to achieve; his memory is composed of infinite life-death rotations. His mind has the ability to bring something back to life only to promptly abandon it moments later. Instead of measuring a moving stream of memories on a linear time scale, Benny maps his rush of experiences against a powerful, instinctive sense of order and chaos. His memory is predictable; his memories are all connected to each other. However, his memories are tied to the typically linear past-present-future structure, in which floods are to flow, as seas are to rivers: discrete blocks falling on top of each other with no clear direction. He reacts to the world by comparing his perceptions and experiences to his mind's pattern of order and familiarity. Benjy's reality is a matching game: he operates using inflexible relationships that link a word to an object, an emotion to a scenario. Names are rarely replaced with pronouns because names like Quentin, Caddy, or Jason make up a person's entire identity. Benjy doesn't mind discriminating by using descriptive details about gender, race, or age. Process an entire site, sensing flashes ofimpressions before being aware of the individual elements of a scene. When he hears golfers calling, his extreme literalism kicks in and cries of "Caddie" attract the only possible response. Dilsey Cemetery only exists when the two blue bottles are on top of the mound; without them, Benjy's rigid pattern of recognition is disrupted. Benjy reacts strongly to novelty and change because he relies on the stability of patterns. Any deviation from this familiarity sets off a turmoil in his mind and upsets him, causing him to cry or moan. For example, Caddy's first experiment with perfume upsets Benjy's sense of constancy: he detects something wrong, and it deeply disturbs him. However, he does not force the reader to accept his emotional reaction, unlike Quentin and Jason, whose respective shame and bitterness infuse the fiber of their stories, so that those emotions are the only ones acceptable if their memories are to be addressed. value.Benjy, however, requires readers to organize his jumble of memories. While it can instantly blend together random facts and meanings, we can't pass off an anarchy of images as reality without going crazy. Once we control the confusion, we realize that Benjy's objectivity comes at a cost; the events are too transparent, the narrative too simple, the characters too basic and crude. Benjy's internal compass dictates that everything he encounters is an immutable archetype: Caddy is the embodiment of love, Jason the devil incarnate. The lack of subtlety in his worldview makes Benjy's testimony border on the robotic; it's too abrupt, too emotionally impoverished. There is no single "Benjy context" to help the reader understand what Benjy's memories mean to Benjy himself. His mind does not expand as his memories increase, nor do his perceptions become more sophisticated. For example, every time he remembers a death, he conjures up the same images of buzzards stripping a corpse. He is stuck in an interpretive rut, reliving each memory with the exact feelings and reactions he felt when it first occurred, repeating his past life in the spaces where a normal person would be studying the meaning of his present one. Benjy's memories, therefore, compose a plot that belies the humanity of the story. His reality is valid only in a perfectly still world, where all experiences have the same value for everyone, but since our world is never static and since human consciousness is inherently judgmental, Benjy's impartiality is empty for the reader. “Detached truth,” without imagination or a mind actively engaged with reality, is not the kind of truth that can successfully describe human experience. Quentin's memories also operate on an inescapable cycle. He is trapped in a fantasy world where time is everywhere: in clocks, in the ticking and beating of hearts. Quentin's obsession with the linearity of incessantly advancing time conflicts with his attempts to retreat from his uncertain reality into a place of predictable tradition. Despite supposedly being the smartest member of the family, Quentin is tormented by the prospect of having to act decisively, of facing his destiny as Chief Compson without Caddy at his side. All he wants is to fall back into a world that conforms to his ideals without forcing him to lift a finger. Quentin prefers to ruminate on something rather than act on it, he prefers to tell a story rather than participate in it, because he is afraid of making a mistake in the present and upsetting the pattern of the past. It is as if retreating into memory slows down the present and delays the march towards destiny.Quentin finds security in the quiet of the past, in his rigid moral code, in the refuge of Caddy's past purity. Quentin tries to be as uninvolved as possible in his current environment. He lives in a romantic daydream where there are no clocks pushing him, where his days are not numbered, where he can play the hero and make decisions for Caddy instead of pining for her. He is threatened by the constantly changing modern world, the changing of the guard, the rejection of its outdated moral myths and ideals. As he watches, Damuddy, the lone Compson representative of the old, genteel South, dies. Hard Fist Jason replaces Mr. Compson, and Miss Quentin, the reclusive new generation Compson, is a shameless bastard who flaunts his promiscuity without any hint of sense of guilt. For Quentin, changes in his established reality confuse his sense of balance, as Caddy's absence does for Benjy. For both men, "the whole thing came to symbolize night and unrest... where all things stable had become dark and paradoxical" (211) As this strange and erratic future constantly looms over Quentin, his thoughts they become tormented and confused. His identity changes along with Caddy's, and for the first time in his life he is lost without a pattern to follow safely and numbly in the heady rush of time and movement. Quentin cannot control "the sequence of natural events and their causes" like he can control his memories. Each day brings with it its own pattern of probabilities and circumstances, making Quentin "a seagull on an invisible thread attached across space dragged" (123). He desires a sort of stability and constancy, and fixates on time, on the repetition of beats and tics that remind him of the momentary transience but definitive permanence of the daily norms of his youth. Clocks and clocks invade Quentin's narrative, but while these clocks harken back to times past, they also warn of times to come, trapping Quentin in a present suspended between a past he cannot return to and a future he is terrified of. The ticking of his watch haunts him even after he smashes it against the dresser. Quentin asks the watch shop owner if any of the watches are correct, but he doesn't want to know what time it is. The inexorable ticking, the infinitesimal movements of the moments that replace each other become a wave of change that brings Quentin closer and closer until the definitive calm: death. Doomsday bells and lengthening shadows prophesy Quentin's inevitable night. Ultimately, the permanence and immobility of his memories and the control he has over them is what makes death so appealing. It is a state that offers no suspense and is as clear and stable as the past. He would rather face stagnant certainty than the roaring and active surprises of the future. However, even his attempt to stop the movement of time with a self-imposed end ultimately fails, as the ticking, banging, and chiming that plagued him during his lifetime will simply continue after his death. Quentin's suicide is simply the beginning of time without Quentin. Perhaps Quentin's tragedy is most visible through his quixotic attempts to control a fleeting entity (such as Caddy, or period-specific moral concepts), to make time permanent before it transforms his beloved past. in an indistinguishable blur. He wants to preserve the rawness and intensity of his emotions from the moment he first feels them, fearing that his father's cynical analysis of the situation is true: You can't bear to think that one day it won't hurt anymore in this way... it's hard to believe that a love or (126).