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This web project is the second such project taken on by Salisbury School's AP English Language and Composition class. In 2001 the class traced six storylines within Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! In 2002 we embarked on the unique jouney of tracing the ramblings of Benjy Compson's mind in The Sound and the Fury. In the first 72 pages of the novel, Faulkner presents the man-child mind of the youngest Compson son. Over the course of those pages Faulkner makes 94 shifts in his stream-of-consciousness account of Benjy's mind. All of the pieces come from 14 different moments in Benjy's life from the time he was five to the present moment of his thirty-third birthday.

At first glance (and perhaps second or third as well) Benjy's section makes little sense. He seems to haphazardly move from one moment in time to the next, but luckily there are many scholars who have spent years unpacking the subtleties therein. We relied heavily on Stephen M. Ross' and Noel Polk's Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury, Glossary and Commentary. Using their breakdown of the section, we have created a web site that traces the shifts in time and place. From any one piece, the arrows at the bottom of the page allow someone to move forward or backward chronologically or in the original paginated version. We hope you enjoy the experience of what we have created. Please let us know what you think: sbrennan@salisburyschool.org

 

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