Humanities and Social Sciences Review,

CD-ROM. ISSN: 2165-6258 :: 2(2):193–202 (2013)

WILLIAM FAULKNER’S NARRATIVE MODE IN “THE SOUND AND

Tatiana Vepkhvadze
International Black Sea University, Georgia

The present research analyzes William Faulkner’s writing style in “The Sound and Fury”, it
refers to the stream of consciousness technique called interior monologue. The term is
borrowed from drama, where ‘monologue’ refers to the part in a play where an actor expresses
his inner thoughts aloud to the audience. The interior monologue represents an attempt to
transcribe a character’s thoughts, sensations and emotions. In order to faithfully represent the
rhythm and flow of consciousness, the writer often disregards traditional syntax, punctuation
and logical connections. He does not intervene to guide the reader or to impose narrative order
on the often confused, and confusing, mental processes. Stream of consciousness is now
widely used in modern fiction as a narrative method to reveal the character’s unspoken
thoughts and feelings without having recourse to dialogue or description. Faulkner’s handling
of stream of consciousness technique allows the FID narrator to shape a particular version of
the character’s consciousness in terms of images, which need not be actual words or thoughts
as the character expressed them. The use of interior monologue is common narrative mode of
Benjy’s section that makes the text absolutely ambiguous for the reader. Benjy can’t speak and
being a narrator of the first section ,we have an access to the plot of the story through his
perceptions and feelings.

Keywords: Stream of consciousness technique, Interior monologue, Linguistic devices.

Introduction

The Present research analyzes William Faulkner’s narrative mode in “The Sound and the Fury.”
It deals with stylistic devices used by the author in the first section of the novel. Stream of
consciousness technique or Interior monologue is the main focus of the research, as it is widely
used in Benjy’s section. Our aim is to reveal the depth of Benjy’s speech that lies beyond his
rudimentary speech. Firstly, we might suggest that Faulkner presents symbols as substitutes for
rationally formulated ideas.
Moreover, kernel sentences in the text create the impression of simplicity and illiteracy,
though we can submit an idea that the author utilizes a few phrasal motifs, and a number of
unusual lexical combinations to enrich the stark uniformity of the text.
Upon further analysis, we conclude that direct presentation of utterances and attitudinal
phrases are one of the linguistic devices used by the narrator. The stream of consciousness
technique or interior monologue is used in the section with complete or near -complete
interference of the narrator.

193
194 Tatiana Vepkhvadze

In the paper we analyze William Faulkner’s narrative method in The Sound and the Fury
and suggest stylistic analysis of the first section of the text.
The term stream of consciousness was first used by the psychologist William James in 1890
to refer to the unbroken flow of thought and awareness in the human mind. The public
fascination with the “stream of consciousness” was part of the widespread interest in
psychology—particularly the psychology of self-control. Stream of consciousness literature is
psychological literature,but it must be studied at the level on which psychology mingles with
epsitomology. [ų฀pųstԥ'mŝlԥƭų].
As a literary term, “stream of consciousness” refers to any attempt by a writer to represent
the conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions in the mind of a character. This
technique takes the reader inside the narrating character's mind, where he sees the world of the
story through the thoughts and senses of the focal character.

Literature Review

The term stream of consciousness was first used by the psychologist William James in 1890 to
refer to the unbroken flow of thought and awareness in the human mind. The public fascination
with the “stream of consciousness” was part of the widespread interest in psychology—
particularly the psychology of self-control. Stream of consciousness literature is psychological
literature, but it must be studied at the level on which psychology mingles with epsitomology.
“The mind is a stream,” Harry Dexter Kitson explains in the opening chapter of his 1921
monograph. The stream, he continues, consists “of the sum-total of mental processes going on
within the individual: ideas, sensations, feelings, volitions and actions,” and his “task” in this
book is “to describe this stream; to slow it up and examine its contents”. One might assume to
find such a definition of the “stream of consciousness” in a book about Jamesian philosophy or
in a psychology text.
As a literary term, “stream of consciousness” refers to any attempt by a writer to represent
the conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions in the mind of a character. This
technique takes the reader inside the narrating character's mind, where he sees the world of the
story through the thoughts and senses of the focal character. Robert Humphrey concludes that
the realm of life with which stream-of-consciousness literature is concerned is mental and
spiritual experience-both the whatness and the howness of it. The whatness includes the
categories of mental experiences: sensations, memories, imaginations, conceptions, and
intuitions. The howness includes the symbolizations, the feelings, and the processes of
association. It is often impossible to separate the what from the how.
According to Frederick R. Karl, the stream of consciousness “is the epitome of Modernism”
(239). This method has become synonymous with “high” modernism. It appealed to a large
audience because it invited identification with a variety of subjective perspectives (or
“consciousnesses”).
Robert Humphrey offers two levels of consciousness which can be rather simply
distinguished: the “speech level” and the ‘’prespeech level”. The prespeech level involves no
communicative basis as does the speech level. In short, the prespeech levels of consciousness are
not censored, rationally controlled or logically ordered. We may define stream-of -consciousness
fiction as a type of fiction in which the basic emphasis is placed on exploration of the prespeech
levels of consciousness for the purpose, primarily of revealing the psychic being of the
characters.
 William Faulkner’s Narrative Mode In “The Sound and the Fury”... 195

The most prominent subjective fictions of the 20th century are Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway, To
the lighthouse and The Sound and The Fury. As the stylistic method of Joyce, Woolf, and
Faulkner, the “stream of consciousness” has become synonymous with textual “difficulty,” with
a “high” modernism separate from mass or popular culture. The stream-of-consciousness
novelists were like the naturalists, the life they were concerned with was the individual’s psychic
life trying to depict life accurately; but unlike the naturalists.
In examining the chief stream-of-consciousness writers in order to discover their diverse
evaluations of inner awareness Robert Humphrey suggests two important questions.

1. What can be accomplished by presenting character as it exists psychically?

Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner are the most
prominent stream-of-consciousness writers. Stream-of-consciousness is not technique for its own
sake. It is based on a realization of the force of the drama that takes place in the mind of human
beings. Faulkner saw one aspect of the drama as a tragedy of blood. These come to the reader
most forcibly in that writer’s stream-of consciousness novels, where the scene can be the one in
which the tragedy actually takes place. The only writer who utilizes effectively this natural
advantage for satire in depiction of psyche is William Faulkner. Faulkner as a stream-of-
consciousness writer combines the views of life of Woolf with those of Joyce. His characters
search for insight, and their search is fundamentally ironic.
Some critics agree on the basic proposition that all Faulkner’s work can be interpreted on a
basis of broad myth and related symbolism. The principal of this interpretation is that Faulkner’s
entire work is dramatization, in terms of myth, of the social conflict between the sense of ethical
responsibilities in traditional humanism and the amorality of modern naturalism (animalism) in
Faulkner, in the south, and universally.
John T. Matthews describes William Faulkner’s narrative mode in the following words“
Faulkner does construct the narrative as leading up to and away from these incidents, but
the events or thoughts themselves do not appear in the text. His paradoxical descriptions
are not pointy less riddles but rather terse formulae to describe the subversion of resolved
meaning, closed form, and full representation by the language that aspires to those very
achievements’’ (John T. Matthews).
Not to go afield we will try to focus on William Faulkner’s narrative mode in “The Sound
and Fury”, a stream of consciousness technique or interior monologue in Benji’s section is the
topic for our discussion. The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner’s fourth novel, is his first true
masterpiece, and many consider it to be his finest work. It was Faulkner’s own favorite novel,
primarily, he says, because it is his “ most splendid failure.” Depicting the decline of the once-
aristocratic Compson family, the novel is divided into four parts, each told by a different
narrator.
Nearly all critics consider it a technical masterpiece for the way Faulkner incorporates four
distinct narrative modes in telling the story of a little girl with muddy drawers.

Stylistic analysis of the text

William Faulkner describes his writing style in the following words: “There is always a moment
in experience a thought an incident that's there. Then all I do is work up to that moment. I figure
196 Tatiana Vepkhvadze

what must have happened before to lead people to that particular moment, and I work away from
it, finding out how people act after that moment.’’
Indeed, it is his narrative mode, in which a character’s unadorned thoughts are conveyed in a
manner roughly equivalent to the way our minds actually work. And nearly all critics consider it
a technical masterpiece for the way Faulkner incorporates four distinct narrative modes in telling
the story of a little girl with muddy drawers.
We suggest the stylistic analysis of the first section; a writer applies a stream of
consciousness technique, where a reader reveals the character’s unspoken thoughts and feelings
without having recourse to dialogue or description. In particular, Faulkner’s handling of stream
of consciousness technique allows the FID narrator to shape a particular version of the
character’s consciousness in terms of images, which need not be actual words or thoughts as the
character expressed them.
The first section in The Sound and the Fury is told from the point of view of Benjy
Compson, a thirty-three-year-old “idiot”, and recounts via flashbacks the earliest events in the
novel. As an idiot, Benjy is the key to the novel’s title, which alludes to Shakespeare’s tragedy
Macbeth. For the most part, his language is simple-sentences are short, vocabulary basic. Every
reader recognizes the simplicity of Benji’s manner of speech, it ( the simplicity) is strengthened
by the repetitiveness of the diction and by the systematic flattening out of the relationships
between clause units, most of which are either asyndentic ( mere juxtaposition) or paratactical
(mere coordination). L. Moffitt Cecil (1970) provides statistical confirmation: he finds that
Benji’s working vocabulary amounts to only five hundred words, most of them verbs and nouns.
Benji’s grammatical patterns are as simple as his vocabulary; though not all of his sentences are
subject-verb-object kernels, he can manage only about seventy complex ones ( those with
subordinate clauses).
Reading this section is profoundly difficult, however, because the” idiot” has no concept of
time or place- sensory stimuli in the present bring him back to another time and place in the past.
Most of his memories concern his sister, Caddy, who is in some ways the central character in the
novel. Key memories regarding Caddy include a time when she uses perfume, when she loses
her virginity, and her wedding. Banjy also recalls his name change ,( from Maury to Benjamin)
his brother Quentin’s suicide in 1910 and the sequence of events at the gate which lead to his
being castrated, also in 1910.
Section one has Benjy as the centre of things. The reason for this is that Benjy, with an
idiot’s mind, is able to present the necessary exposition in not only its simplest tragic terms , but
also in terms of symbols, which because they’re from an idiot’s mind are conveniently general in
their meaning and are therefore flexible. Benjy is dumb, and yet he speaks; he is deaf and yet he
can hear. ”Which is to say that he belongs with the idiots of literature, not with those of the
asylum.” Faulkner saw idiocy as a possible way for a Sartoris-Compson to escape the ethical
rigor of a code that depends on exertion of intellect and will. Benjy’s role, then, is both to reflect
an aspect of Compson degeneracy and to introduce the terms of the main conflict with the
simple, forceful symbols available to an idiot.
It’s almost enough for us to submit that the advantages of the stream-of-consciousness
method for this novel are explained by the central role consciousness itself plays in it. Benjy’s
discourse is essentially symbolic and it is absolutely suitable for this section, as symbols come
from simple perceptions and feelings; We might suggest that Faulkner presents symbols as
substitutes for rationally formulated ideas. This can be illustrated in both Benjy and Quentin
sections of the novel. The two kinds of mental aberration represented reveal themselves naturally
in terms of images and symbols. Because they are represented as coming directly from a
 William Faulkner’s Narrative Mode In “The Sound and the Fury”... 197

premeditative stage of conscious activity, they carry a convincingness and a fuller impact than
they otherwise would. We have identified three symbols that signify everything for Benjy, e.g.
firelight, the pasture and Candace. E.g.“ Here, Caddie.” He hit. They went away across the
pasture. I held to the fence and watched them going away.
They were hitting little, across the pasture. I went back along the fence to where the flag
was. It flapped on the bright grass and trees.
It was red, flapping on the pasture. Then there was a bird slanting and tilting on it.
Luster threw. The flag flapped on the bright grass and the trees. I held to the fence.
The words ( firelight, the pasture and Candace) are used so frequently that they come to
dominate not only Benjy’s consciousness, but the reader’s also. Yet, such repetition has a
naturalness about it because it comes from a mind as simple as Benjy’s is.
In our research, Benjy’s speech is categorized as interior monologue. Its overall effect is
one of inflexible rigidity and ceaseless fragmentation rather than free, spontaneous flux. Taking
into consideration that Benjy can’t speak and he is a narrator of the first section ,we have an
access to the plot of the story through his perceptions and feelings. The author uses the first-
person narration in Benjy’s section that assumes participant role within the fictional context and
so adopt a subjective perspective on the events. There is no central I through whose agency his
speech might be ordered and made meaningful; in like manner, there is no sense of identity to
make his experience his. The severe restrictions imposed on his linguistic abilities reveal the
extent of his mental deficiencies. Benjy’s monologue sends us back to the confusions of the pre-
subjective, pre-logic, animistic, world of infancy. Since there is no distinction between I and
non-I, there can be no boundary between inner and outer space, and nothing to focalize what
Benjy does, perceives or suffers.
We will try to strengthen our arguments with some examples from the text.
Benji’s section begins at an almost leisurely pace with extended narrative units devoted to
relatively minor incidents. So the section comprises several episodes that are not logically
connected with each other and there is no coherence between them.
It begins with the following passage:
” Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were
coming towards where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass
by the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked
through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.”
“Here caddy.” He hit. They went away across the pasture.
I held to the fence and watched them going away.
“Listen at you, now .... Ain’t you something, thirty-three years old, going on that way”.
The puzzling opening scene of the sound and the Furry initiates the reader into the
preoccupation of Benjy’s mind as it shows “the mind child” and his black caretaker, Luster,
“hunting” for a lost quarter. Benjy and Luster look for the quarter along a fence that borders a
golf course. Benjy describes the players “ hitting” and replacing the flag in the hole. As they
play, golfers periodically call for their caddies. After Benjy first records what he hears, he seems
to begin making a noise and Luster scolds him, “ Listen at you, now .... Ain’t you something,
thirty-three years old, going on that way”, the word caddy reminds him of his sister Caddy. In
this passage, we can clearly spot the presence of the narrator showing the flow of the events at
that moment. “I could see them hitting”, They were coming towards where the flag was”, I went
along the fence, they stopped and we stopped.’’ Narrative mode involves us in the course of
action and we follow the flow of thoughts and feelings of the character; moreover, non-
introduced people, “They, them, Luster” mentioned in the passage suggest that we are in his
198 Tatiana Vepkhvadze

consciousness. In the passage we can spot the example of free association, when Benjy
associates the word caddy with his sister Caddy. Free association is widely used in stream-of-
consciousness fiction in order to determine the movement of the psychic processes of their
characters. The narrator doesn’t give any guidance or exposition suggesting that caddy reminds
him of his sister, moreover, nothing is mentioned regarding the noise; we conclude it from
Luster’s reaction: “ Listen at you, now .... Ain’t you something, thirty-three years old, going on
that way.”
We can say that Benjy thinks with images and his world is different from ordinary people’s
world. His perception of the environment is colourful and a bit exaggerated and of course, far
from realistic. So attitudinal phrases used by Banjy are the direct reflection of his world . The
narrator often uses evaluative words and phrases and conveys the subjective nature of his
perceptions and observations using the words that describe the environment, people and the
events from his point of view, e.g. “Rattling leaves”, “bright grass”, “flower rasped and rattled
against us”, between the curling flower spaces”, “rattling flowers”, it flapped on the bright
grass”, ”shining wind”, ” bright cold”, “spinning yellow.”
We should also note that smell is the most important stimuli for Benjy; in most cases, it has
the positive meaning for him as it is associated with his sister.
E.g. “The room went black. Caddy smelled like trees”, “Caddy smelled like trees in the
rain”, he feels the smell of his sister, it is something familiar and very warm for him.” Caddy
smelled like trees and like when she says we were asleep.” To sum up, a narrator uses a few
phrasal motifs (Caddy smelled like trees,) and a number of unusual lexical combinations (e.g.
“my hands saw it”) to enrich the stark uniformity of the text.
Benjy’s monologue presents difficulty for any reader because the information we need to
interpret doesn’t appear until later in Benjy’s section. Faulkner delays us as we try to make
sense of Benjy’s mind, in part to create the sensation of an idiot’s world. Benjy cannot reason
abstractly, his experience seems a flood of chaotically unrelated sensations and images.
Therefore, fragmentation of narrative line into nonchronological segments is one of the leading
techniques used by the narrator throughout the Benjy’s section.

1. “My poor baby.” mother said. She let me go. “You and Versh take good care of him, honey.”
“Yessum.” Caddy said. We went out Caddy said, “You needn” go, Versh. I’’ll keep him for
a while.” He went on and we stopped in the hall an Caddy knelt and put her arms around me
and her cold bright face against mine. She smelled like trees. “You aren’t a poor boy. Are
you. Are you. You have got your Caddy. Haven’t you got your Caddy.”
2. Can’t you shut up that moaning and slobbering, Luster said. Ain’t you shamed of yourself,
making all this racket. We passed the carriage house, where the carriage was. It had a new
wheel.
3. “Git in, now, and set still until your maw come.” Dilsey said. She shoved me into the
carriage. T.P. held the reins. “Clare I don’t see how come Jason wont get a new surrey.”
Dilsey said. “This thing going to fall to pieces under you all some day. Look at them wheels.

Three different episodes are told one after another without any coherent link between them,
because the idiot has no concept of time or place- sensory stimuli in the present bring him back
to another time and place in the past, instantly and without warning, except for a change in
typeface from Roman to italic. In our example, we can get some sense of the time by noting who
is taking care of Benjy. Three black servants look after him at different times: Versh when Benjy
is a small child, T.P. when Benjy is approximately 15 years old, and Luster in the present, when
 William Faulkner’s Narrative Mode In “The Sound and the Fury”... 199

Benjy is 33. The episodes in the example refer to different times. In the first one ,Benjy is with
his family members in the house, mother expresses sympathy for Benjy and calls him “my poor
baby”, Caddy is trying to correct her mother’s mistake explaining that he is not a “poor boy”.
“You aren’t a poor boy. Are you. Are you. You have got your Caddy. Haven’t you got your
Caddy.” Caddy’s warm rudimentary speech reminds Benjy of Luster’s scolding and memory
image appears instantly. The last episode is also thematically different from the previous ones.
The technique of shifting from one of Benjy’s remembered time zones to another-without
warning or transition of any sort-constitutes Faulkner’s strategy for showing how Benjy remains
innocent of the abstraction of passing time. Benjy has no consciousness of time, but his
consciousness is in time. The utilized narrative mode suggests the functioning of an abnormally
limited consciousness. Lexical variations and syntactic modulations are kept within extremely
narrow bounds; language is stripped to its barest essentials, generating a discourse from the
looser patterns of living speech. Each sentence hardens into a discrete unit, standing by itself in
utter isolation. The severe restrictions imposed on his linguistic abilities, that is effectively
expressed in direct speech or interior monologue, reveal the extent of his mental deficiencies,
and negligible author interference gives a reader a chance to travel through Benjy’s
kaleidoscopic mind.
As we have already mentioned, the use of interior monologue/ Direct Speech is common
narrative mode of Benjy’s section that makes the text absolutely ambiguous for the reader.( At
the beginning of the twentieth century some authors developed a stream of consciousness
technique called interior monologue.) The term interior monologue is borrowed from drama,
where ‘monologue’ refers to the part in a play where an actor expresses his inner thoughts aloud
to the audience. The interior monologue represents an attempt to transcribe a character’s
thoughts, sensations and emotions. In order to faithfully represent the rhythm and flow of
consciousness, the writer often disregards traditional syntax, punctuation and logical
connections. He does not intervene to guide the reader or to impose narrative order on the often
confused, and confusing, mental processes.
We’ll suggest a few more examples of interior monologue with close analysis.
The organic use of punctuation to control movement of stream of consciousness is one of the
leading techniques used by the narrator in The Sound and the Fury. Direct interior monologue is
always indicated at its beginning by italics. The italics have further function as we have already
mentioned: they signal to the reader that there is a shift in time. It is a shift which is usually
sudden. Unless the reader is aware of this important function of the italics, he is likely to be
confused. One illustration will suffice. Benjy, the idiot, is being guided along a fence
overlooking a golf course by Luster, his keeper.
The excerpt begins with Luster speaking aloud to Benjy.

1. “You snagged on that nail again. Cant you never crawl through here without snagging on that
nail.”
2. Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through. Uncle Maury said to not let anybody see us, so
we better stoop over, Caddy said. Stoop over, Benjy. Like this, see. We stooped over and
crossed the garden, where the flowers rasped and rattled against us. The ground was hard.
We climbed the fence, where the pigs were grunting and snuffing. I expect they’re sorry
because one of them got killed today, Caddy said. The ground was hard, churned and
knotted.
Keep your hands in your pockets, Caddy said. Or they’ll get froze. You don’t want your
hands froze on Christmas, do you.
200 Tatiana Vepkhvadze

3. “It’s too cold out there. “Versh said. “You don’t want to go out doors” “What is it now”.
mother said.

What has happened is that Benjy’s snagging himself reminds him of another time eighteen
years before when he snagged himself while he was with his sister, Caddy. This memory is
presented in the italics. However, the resumption of straight dialogue after the italicized section
doesn’t represent a continuation of the dialogue that had preceded the italics; it is a continuation
of Benji’s stream of memory of the past. When italics do appear again ( two pages later), they
indicate a shift of time to the present. The use of italics in the novel maintains the fluidity in the
depiction of consciousness, seldom have other writers been able to disappear from their narrative
as completely as Faulkner does here.
One of the puzzling scenes that preceded Benjy’s castration has become the focus of our
attention . After Caddy’s marriage, Benjy developed a habit of standing at the gate and watching
schoolchildren. By standing at the gate Benjy hoped eternally that someday Caddy would walk
back. On one fateful day, Benjy chased one of the passing girls in order to substitute the little
Burgess girl for Caddy he may never have again. Since Benjy was mentally retarded, the
neighbors interpret the event as a sexual assault and as a result he was castrated.
The extract from the text:
It was open when I touched it, and I held to it in the twilight. I wasn’t crying, and I tried to
stop, watching the girls coming along in the twilight. I wasn’t crying.
“There he is.”
They stopped.
“He can’t get out. He won’t hurt anybody, anyway. Come. on.”
“I’m scared to. I’m scared. I’m going to cross the street.”
“He can’t get out. He won’t hurt anybody, anyway. Come on.”
“I’m scared to.’’ I’m scared. I’m going to cross the street.”
“ He can’t get out.”
I wasn’t crying.
“ Don’t be a ‘fraid cat. Come on.”
They came on the twilight. I wasn’t crying, and I held to the gate. They came slow.
“I’m scared.”
“He wont hurt you. I pass here every day. He just runs along the fence.”
They came on. I opened the gate and they stopped, turning. I was trying to say, and I caught
her, trying to say, and she screamed and I was trying to say and trying and the bright shapes
began stop and I tried to get out. I tried to get it off of my face, but the bright shapes were going
again. They were going up the hill to where it fell away and I tried to cry. But when I breathed
in, I couldn’t breathe out again to cry, and I tried to keep from falling off the hill and I fell off the
hill into the bright, whirling shapes
This is Benjy’s retelling of the Burgess girl episode, the close repetition of ‘’trying to say’’
stresses the urgency of his desire: to seize the unexpected opportunity of communication and so
break the isolation in which Caddy’s departure has left him. In order to determine why this is
direct interior monologue, we must answer the following question: What role does the author
play in the passage? As it is represented he plays none. The author has disappeared entirely.
Narration is in first person, the tense is willy-nilly ( past, future, present) as Benjy’s mind
dictates, and in most cases, there are no commentaries, no stage directions from the author. The
dialogue between the girls is put in brackets, the brackets and the preposition they are the only
indicators showing that other characters appear; the punctuation in the example helps us to guess
 William Faulkner’s Narrative Mode In “The Sound and the Fury”... 201

who is speaking. The elements of fluidity and incoherence are emphasized by the frequent
interruption of one idea by another. It should be emphasized that in the last passage the character
is not speaking to anyone within the fictional scene; he is not also represented as speaking to the
reader or even for his benefit.
We can also suggest that the direct presentation of utterances is one of the linguistic devices
used by the narrator. Directness of the dialogue creates a kind of vacuum which the reader is
drawn in to fill: e.g. “What trance you been in”, “they aint nothing over yonder”, “Where bouts
you lose in”, “Aint in sight yet,” “ain’t in sight yet”, “you shut your mouth,” “You sho done it
now,” “ Hush,” “You mind Dilsey now,” “ You all done.”
The narrator talks to the second-person addressee with a marked familiar tendency. In all the
exclamations, we apparently hear the character’s inner voice. The very absence of narratorial
intervention has significant effects on the reader that positions him in Benjy’s consciousness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I will quote the author’s words “He was a prologue,” said Faulkner of Benjy,” like
the grave-digger in the Elithabethan dramas. He serves his purpose and is gone.” He really serves
his purpose with admirable efficiency. The choice of an idiots point of view was obviously a
gamble from the author. As Benjy is unable to order his memories and perceptions in a
consistent temporal perspective, his point of view is actually no point of view at all, and his
telling of the Compson story is the very negation of narrative.
The narrator presents life from an abnormal person’s point of view using different stylistic
devices.
In our research, we analyze the author’s narrative method; particularly, stream of
consciousness technique or Interior monologue that enables the narrator to reveal the character’s
unspoken thoughts and feelings without having recourse to dialogue or description.
The research refers to stylistic devices such as direct interior monologue, free associations,
direct presentation of utterances and attitudinal phrases. The stream of consciousness technique,
interior monologue is used in the section with complete or near -complete interference of the
author. We also suggest that Faulkner presents symbols as substitutes for rationally formulated
ideas.
Benjy’s monologue might be defined as information shorn of explanation and undistorted by
subjectivity, or as a narrative held in timeless suspension, waiting for the reader to give it form
and meaning: it does not tell a story but creates within us the possibility of telling one or several.
Used narrative mode( stream of consciousness) made it possible for Faulkner to create the idiot’s
world and put the reader into his consciousness.

References

1. “William Faulkner” Forms of modern fiction, ed. William Van O’Connor. Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 1948.
2. Robert Humphrey (1998) Stream of Consciousness in the modern novel. University of California Press.
3. Peter Verdonk (2002) Stylistics, Oxford University Press.
4. Denis Delany, Ciaran Ward, Carla Rho Fiorina (2005) Fields of Vision, Longman
5. THE MAINSTREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: JAMES JOYCE, VIRGINIA WOOLF, WILLIAM
FAULKNER AND MASS MODERNISMJ. Gregory Brister Ph.D., University of Kansas, 2010.
202 Tatiana Vepkhvadze

6. Lesley Jeffries and Dan Mclntyre ( 2010) Stylistics, Cambridge University Press.
7. Michael J. Toolan’s (1990) more recent The Stylistics of Fiction: A Literary-Linguistic Approach.
8. John T. Matthews (1991) The Discovery of Loss in The Sound and the Fury, Twayne Publishers.
9. Andre Bleikastein (1976) The Most Splendid Failure, Indiana University press .
10. Dorrit Cohn’s Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (1978).
11. Frederick J. Hoffman’s more oblique (but no less important) discussion of the stream of consciousness in
Freudianism and the Literary Mind (1945).