Author: Rachel

Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and the Fury, is narrated through the three brothers of the Compson family: Benjy, Quentin and Jason. The narration that catches the most focus of the novel is Benjy’s. Benjy is described as a speechless idiot who the family treats as a tiresome burden in their everyday lives. When analyzing the character through a disability and autism lens, one can argue that Benjy displays symptoms on the autism spectrum. Although Faulkner wrote this novel in 1929 before the first autism diagnosis in 1943, it does not negate the possibility of Benjy being autistic. People with autism diagnoses are often not considered capable of complete thought, communication or comprehension because of their mental disabilities. Common signs of autism include: delayed speech and communication skills, reliance on routines, unusual reactions to smells, tastes, sights, sounds or touch, and excellent memory; however, most cases of autism are never the exact same and can vary from mild to severe. The Compson family believed Benjy lacked the abilities to think coherently, understand and comprehend what was happening around him. However, as readers we are able to see that Benjy in fact did understand the world around him, maybe even better than his brothers, Quentin and Jason, could. Benjy demonstrated through his narration in the novel that he was indeed capable of all these things, he interpreted and understood the world differently but just as richly as the people around him. 

Throughout the novel there are many indicators that lead to the idea that Benjy Compson could be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. The initial symptom the reader first notices is that Benjy is a mute, his family often refers to him as a “speechless idiot” or “looney”.  Unable to communicate with words, Benjy uses moans, cries and bellows to show when he is upset. He also knows simple terms and names like his sister’s, Caddy; however, he cannot distinguish the differences between different words that sound the same but have different meanings like “Caddy” and “caddie”.  One sees this through his interchangeable spelling and use of the two words in his narration. His inability to communicate not only frustrates his family but it also frustrates and upsets him, “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 arid the bright shapes began to stop and I tried to get out” (Faulkner 45). As Benjy tries harder to speak the more frustrated, blurry and distorted the world becomes around him. Another characteristic resembling a symptom of autism is his reliance on routines and order that creates structure and stability in Benjy’s life. This reliance is shown when Luster drives Benjy to the cemetery and takes a different route, “Luster hit Queenie again and swung her to the left at the monument. For an instant Ben sat in an utter hiatus. Then he bellowed. Bellow on bellow, his voice mounted, with scare interval for breath….. “Don’t you know any better than to take him to the left” (Faulkner 320). Patterns and routines are crucial to developing Benjy’s sense of order in the world. His outbursts are derived from the abrupt interruptions of his repetitive behavior. Benjy also demonstrates this fear of change when Caddy leaves the Compson home, “Miss Caddy done gone long ways away. Done got married and left you. You can’t do no good, holding to the gate and and crying” (Faulkner 51). Benjy becomes overwhelmed when his patterns and routines are disrupted and the only way he can communicate his discomfort is through cries and moans. 

The last two symptoms Benjy exhibits relating to autism are his unusual reactions to senses, particularly his sense of smell, and his excellent memory. Through his narration one can see that Benjy relies heavily on his senses for structuring his thoughts and memories. Out of all his family members, Benjy receives the most affection and patience from his sister, Caddy. Benjy often associates his sister with the smell of trees or leaves multiple times throughout the novel, “She opened the gate and came in and stooped down. Caddy smelled like leaves” and “Caddy smelled like trees and when we were asleep” (Faulkner 6).  Once Caddy eventually moves out of the family home, Benjy starts to disassociate her with the earth-like smell. Benjy is also noted substituting his sense of touch for smell seen here, “I could smell the cold” (Faulkner 6). The last symptom that corresponds with Benjy being on the autism spectrum is his memory. Not only does Benjy have an excellent memory, but his narration of the past is the most organized out of the three brothers. His ability to keep his memories straight also comes from his unusual responsiveness to his senses. Using his sense of touch, Benjy is able to go from one memory to another after catching his pants on a nail, “You snagged on that nail again. Can’t you never crawl through here without snagging on that nail” (Faulkner 3). Immediately after this incident, Benjy’s conscious jumps to a memory from the past with his sister unhooking his pants off the same nail, “Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through” (Faulkner 3). This ability to associate sensations with long-term memory is also demonstrated by Amanda Boggs, who is autistic, “My first memories involve sensations of all kinds. Colors. Sounds. Textures. Flavors. Smells. Shapes. Tones. These are short words, but the meaning of them is long, involved, and complex. Some things caught my attention, others did not, but all of them were absorbed into my mind” (Baggs). Benjy uses his recollections along with his senses to compensate for his lack of language and communication skills to form a comprehensive narrative. 

In conclusion, Benjy Compson’s narration in The Sound and the Furycan be analyzed through an autistic and disability lens. Benjy’s lack of speech, reliance on routines and unusual sensory responsiveness all point to signs that he could be diagnosed as autistic.  Benjy is a mentally disabled character in the Compson family who is treated as an infant at thirty-three years old. Although he is perceived as an idiot, Benjy is one of the few characters who can understand the world around him. Because Benjy interacts with the world in a different way, he is seen as unable to comprehend events going on around him. Baggs also relates to Benjy in this aspect, “the most important things about the way I perceive and interact with the world around me can only be expressed in terms that describe them as the absence of something important” (Baggs). Through Benjy’s narrative, readers can see that he is capable of understanding the world maybe even more than his “normal” brothers can. 

Word Count:1130

Works Cited:

Baggs, Amanda. “Cultural Commentary: Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours.” Disability Studies Quarterly, The Ohio State University Libraries .

Faulkner , William. The Sound and the Fury. Vintage Books , 1984.

I pledge

Mental illnesses carry a large stigma in society revolving around the fact that one cannot see it, it is invisible to the average human eye. These invisible illnesses are overshadowed and overlooked by more noticeable, physical disabilities although both can be equally debilitating. Two of the novels in class that stood out to me were Frankenstein and The Sound and the Fury. During these novels’ time frames, mental illnesses were more misunderstood than they are now due to the lack of advanced medical equipment that we now have. These novels stood out because of the fictional characters, Victor Frankenstein and Quentin Compson, and their mental disabilities being overlooked due to characters with more apparent disabilities. Since these characters’ disabilities are not addressed nor taken as serious, they struggle just as much or more due to societal ignorance of mental illnesses like depression and severe anxiety. Consequently, this ignorance and lack of help negatively impacts both of their mental states and leads both to heart-breaking ends.
William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury, published in 1929, is narrated through four different perspectives. Two of the four narrations, Benjy and Quentin Compson, can be read through a disability lens. Benjy Compson communicates through moans and cries, unable to speak due to an undiagnosed disability, and relies mostly on his senses to understand and view the world. Referred to in demeaning ways by his own family members, his family is fully aware of his mental and physical disabilities; however, they are ignorant to what extent Benjy is competent and able to process and understand. Benjy is described physically as “a big man who appeared to have been shaped of some substance whose particles would not or did not cohere to one another or to the frame which supported it. His skin was dead looking and hairless; dropsical too, he moved with a shambling gait like a trained bear. His hair was pale and fine. It had been brushed smoothly down upon his brow like that of children in daguerreotypes. His eyes were clear, of the pale sweet blue of cornflowers, his thick mouth hung open, drooling a little” (Faulkner 274). It is made evident in the novel by his physical description, behaviors and the interactions between his family and others with him that Benjy is noticeably disabled. However, his brother, Quentin who suffers from disability as well, is not portrayed as noticeably. Quentin, the oldest Compson sibling, attends Harvard and centers his morals and life around traditional southern standards based on reputation and physical appearance. He carries the burden of his family because he is the Compson heir and believes fixing their reputation lays on him. Quentin’s narrative is not seen as reliable as Benjy’s because he lives in his ideas and made up events rather than Benjy whose timeline of events is more accurate even though he is not seen as capable of order. He bases his life on the ideas of virtue, family reputation and purity which leads him to obsess over his sister, Caddy, breaking his ideas of tradition. Because Quentin’s whole life revolves around theses morals he has created, he is intent on saving his sister’s reputation which drives him to lie about actions of incest to his father. Once he realizes his father nor his sister do not care about his family’s reputation, Quentin does not know what to live his life by. This is where his mental state starts to deteriorate, and no one seems to notice because there is not a physical change in appearance. Quentin’s obsessions with the past, Caddy and time all seem to have an unfixable outcome and he is lost in despair. “Haunted by a past to which he is inadequate, dogged by a present he cannot face, and doomed to no future, Quentin, through his diction and general point of view-both what he speaks and what he thinks-dramatizes a modern yet universal sensibility” (Brown 553). No one can see Quentin’s internal struggles about the foundation of his life being completely destroyed and sense of failure in saving his family’s reputation. His family is oblivious to the mental disability he is dealing with, it is invisible to them. In that time, there was limited study on mental illnesses and treatments were in their infancy. The ignorance in itself on disability is also fatal to Quentin’s mental state. He does not understand his own disability nor knows he has one. Quentin looks like an average white male, attends Harvard, and is able to function normally; therefore, who would ever look further into Quentin’s mental state and be able to notice something was not right? His family does not pay as much attention to Quentin as they do Benjy, so they would never notice a difference in his behaviors. Quentin considers himself a failure and all the ideas and morals he has built his life on mean nothing to his family, “So Quentin succumbs, a victim of his father’s despairing vision of language, sexuality and indeed all existence” (Desmond 96). Arguably, Quentin suffers more or just as much as Benjy because he does not receive the help he needs. This endless despair in his mind leads him to suicide.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1818, Victor Frankenstein is born into a wealthy, well-known family with a fascination for science. Victor creates this creature, referred to as the Monster, while attending university at Ingolstadt. When looking at this novel through a disability lens, the most noticeable disabled character is the Monster. The Monster is described as “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips” ( Shelley 43). Frankenstein’s creation is seen as a monstrous or freakish to anyone it encounters. The Monster is isolated due to his looks although nothing is physically impaired nor is the creation mentally impaired. The creation is actually quicker, faster and stronger than the average human as well as being more intelligent and a faster learner too. “I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs” (Shelley 103).
However, the physical abnormalities of the Monster isolate it from civilization and society. Through a disability lens, the Monster is often seen as disabled due to its physical description in the novel, but a disabled character that is often overlooked from lack of physical disablement is Victor Frankenstein. After the death of his mother, Victor goes to the University and cuts himself off from the world. He throws himself into a world of science and becomes obsessive over creating his creature. From there Victor spirals into manic-like behavior, has spouts of severe anxiety and often faints when he is overwhelmed. He becomes the stereotypical “mad scientist”. “My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement … the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places… My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit” (Shelley 41). This passage from the novel shows the obsession and manic-like behaviors of Victor. He locks himself away in a room to create this creature while neglecting sleep and proper nutrition. Victor also becomes severely paranoid of his vengeful creature and “carries pistols and a dagger constantly about him” (Shelley 44). He is in a constant state of anxiety where he does not sleep or eat, and his family becomes extremely worrisome about his overall health. “I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness” (Shelley 44).
As the story progresses, Victor begins to lose his sanity due to paranoia, severe anxiety and grief and becomes delusional. “I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously and fell down in a fit” (Shelley 48). The only cure his family and friends could think of for this erratic behavior was rest. Mental illnesses such as the ones Victor Frankenstein most likely faced would not be easily handled during the 1800s. The cure for many facing severe mental disabilities in the 1800s was isolation or simply being thrown in an asylum. Because Victor was ignorant of his mental disabilities, he drove himself into insanity while chasing his creature around the world. When looking at Victor Frankenstein through a disability lens and not only his creation, one sees the novel in a whole new perspective. This perspective does not focus on physical appearances but instead examines the erratic behavioral patterns, paranoia and severe anxiety the main character, Victor, faces throughout the novel. Although Frankenstein’s disability is not made as evident as his creature’s, one can argue that he suffers just as much or more than his creation because of the invisibility of his own.
In conclusion, fictional characters in the novels previously mentioned have often been overshadowed due to a lack of a more noticeable disability. In Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, characters Quentin and Benjy Compson both face mental disabilities. However, because Benjy’s disabilities are more apparent due to his physical appearance and his inability to communicate with words, Quentin’s goes unnoticed by his family. Quentin struggles silently with his depression and despair until he commits suicide later in the novel. In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Creation’s physical abnormalities overshadow his creator’s severe depression, anxiety and paranoia. Victor Frankenstein slowly loses his sanity and follows the creature around the world to destroy what he has made. Both characters are not seen as disabled due to their disabilities being invisible and not noticeable on first glance. The lack of knowledge on their mental illnesses creates unnecessary suffering and fatal endings for these two characters. The stigma mental disability revolves around creates a negative environment for a person to heal and live healthily in.

Word Count: 1800
I pledge: Rachel Porchie

Works Cited:
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Print.

Brown, May Cameron. “The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury.”
American Literature 51.4 (1980): 544. JSTOR.

Desmond, John F. “From Suicide to Ex-Suicide: Notes on the Southern Writer as Hero in the Age of Despair.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 1992, pp. 89–105. . JSTOR

Shelley , Mary. Frankenstein . Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library .

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in a small town named Maycomb County, in southern Alabama. Set in the time period of the Great Depression, the 1930s was a time of poverty, strong racial divides and the peak of the patriarchal white male. Knowing this while reading the novel through a disability lens, one starts to notice the impact this harsh environment has on its characters. I would argue that this environment is disabling to characters such as the poverty stricken Cunninghams and the only main female protagonist, Scout. These disabling characteristics of the environment, such as poverty and a patriarchal society, enhance the characters’ isolation from their community due to their physical appearances.  

            Poverty effects many families in this small, southern town but one character who stands out as being affected more than most is Walter Cunningham. Initially, Walter’s physical appearance is the first thing introduced, following this is how he came to acquire hookworms, “Walter’s face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms. His absence of shoes told us how he got them” (Lee 21). Because Walter is not able to afford shoes, he walks around most of the time barefoot which is how he caught hookworms (Lee 21). Walter is called out by his teacher and made to feel uncomfortable about his financial situation and ultimately, his appearance because all the students are now staring at him. The Cunninghams are a poverty-stricken family in Maycomb County, that did not have enough to provide their children lunch everyday nor enough to buy shoes. This is disabling to Walter because since he is poor and cannot afford shoes, he has hookworms on his face. His physical appearance is altered due to his environment which causes him to look different from everyone else. Isolating only him due to his lunch, brings attention to his differences, it is also interesting to note that the first sentence written about Walter is his obvious, physical difference. 

            The second character affected by her environment is Jean-Louise Finch, also known as Scout. The disabling environment of a patriarchal society isolates Scout from her brother, Jem, and best friend, Dill. As they all three grow older, Jem and Dill start to seclude Scout from themselves with expressions such as “sometimes you act so much like a g-irl it’s mortifyin’” (Lee 42) or “but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with” (Lee 45). Belittling words like these eventually kept Scout away and she spent her days sitting with Miss Maudie, her neighbor, on the front porch (Lee 46). Scout reaches the age where people are now starting to categorize and treat her as a girl. Because of this anything she does in a negative light is now attributed to her being a female. The patriarchal society is disabling to Scout and all girls because it fits them all into one collective group thus isolating them from others. 

            In conclusion, the environment of the small-town Scout Finch and Walter Cunningham live in, disables them by isolation due to poverty and the patriarch. Physical differences that further disable them are a product of their environment like hookworms or being female. These are not the only two characters strongly affected by their disabling environment, but they are two of the most prominent ones seen in our reading of To Kill a Mockingbird so far. 

Word Count: 589

I Pledge: Rachel Porchie

In Doctor Gilman’s lecture on whether racism is a product of mental illness, which it is not if you were wondering, an interesting study called Dolls that was conducted by Kenneth and Phipps Clark was discussed. This study was used to observe children’s attitude and preference towards race using four dolls. These dolls were identical except for their skin color, two were colored and the other two were white. On being asked which doll they preferred to play with, and which doll looked the nicest, two-thirds of the Negro children chose the white doll (Clark 175). However, when told to pick the doll that they racially identified with, 9 out of 10 picked the colored doll (Clark 171). These children could identify dolls by color but preferred the white doll and attributed positive characteristics along with its color. Even when racially aware of their own skin color, the children still chose the white doll. From this study the Clarks concluded that formation of racial attitudes begins in childhood (Clark 177). This study is interesting because it can be applied with the idea of “Becky and Barbie” in Garland-Thomson’s article Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory. Most young girls had a Barbie in their childhood, playing with these dolls as young children creates a vision in our heads as to what a “normal” doll or person should look like. Barbie represented the able-bodied doll and Becky was the disabled, who was bought as an accessory to Barbie (Garland-Thomson 266). Young girls want Barbie who is a sexualized, feminine icon because she is socially accepted as normal; however, they do not want Becky who is not sexually objectified or viewed as normal (Garland-Thomson 266). This vision of “normalcy” is developed early in childhood like attitudes towards race and disability. As a society, we attribute positive notions towards what is “normal” and consequently our attitudes toward what is “abnormal” is negative.

Clark, Kenneth, and Mamie Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” Socialization of the Child.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory.”

In ancient Rome, Romans believed “madness” could stem from four main causes: anger, love, the divine and sickness. Anger and love were considered dangerous to one’s mind due to how deeply a person can feel these emotions. To go mad from the divine was to believe one was “touched by god” in which they would speak in tongues, go through oracular frenzies or become epileptic. The last cause Romans believed would cause madness was the mind deteriorating due to the toll sickness would take on one’s mental health. Some of the most popular Roman emperors accused of madness were Caligula, Domition, Commodus and Elagabalus. The talk focused on Caligula who became emperor at the age of 24 and was the 3rd emperor of Rome. Caligula was accused of mad acts such as incest, odd military campaigns, and threatening the senators. Dr. Houghtalin argued the position that Caligula was in fact not mad and he was portrayed as mad due to the lack of creditability during ancient times. He chose to reveal the real power of his position which scared the senators. Because Caligula was not afraid to demonstrate or speak of his powers as the Roman emperor, he made enemies with the senators. Caligula was assassinated in a plot by three of his guards who stabbed him in an underground palace. The senators used his assassination to restore the Republic in Rome and take back the power from the title of emperor. Because history is written by people in positions of power, like the Roman senators, accounts of history are often bias and not credible. Caligula was no longer popular among his people; consequently, who is to say they did not exaggerate? Most of ancient history is speculation because there is no real proof or evidence of stories like these, it is just someone’s word against another. Dr. Houghtalin concludes that there are simply not enough facts to claim that Caligula was mad.

I’m late to the party but hi, I’m Rachel! I play softball here at Mary Wash and I am an English major. Also, shoutout to the people who told me to check my spam folder or I wouldn’t be writing this right now 🙂