The book is divided into four perspectives. Four perspectives = four blog posts, I guess.
April Seventh, 1928 is told in first person from the perspective of Benji Compson, the youngest son of the Compson family. Benji is severely retarded and is being watched by a boy named Luster and today is his thirty-third birthday. Luster takes Benji to the golf course so that he can fetch golf balls and hopefully get a quarter because he lost one earlier. On the way to the golf course, Benji gets caught on a nail.
Enter stream of consciousness.
The story then goes off track to a memory that Benji has about his older sister Caddy and himself. Many Christmases ago, Benji got stuck on that needle and she helped him get unstuck. I think it's still Christmas and in the memory, Benji's mother Mrs. Compson is arguing with her brother, Uncle Maury, about whether she should let Benji out of the house due to the cold winter weather. Mrs. Compson eventually lets them out of the house. The story then returns to the present tense in 1928 for like a sentence until something else that Luster and Benji come across reminds Benji of another memory.
More stream of consciousness. Great.
This memory is about a trip the Compson family makes in a carriage to go somewhere that I can't figure out. It seems like Dilsey likes to yell at another servant named T.P.
Back to the regular story. Benji is crying and I don't know why. Back to more past memories.
Caddy asks Benji if he would like to hold the letter they need to deliver to Mrs. Patterson from Uncle Maury. Once they arrive at the Patterson house, Caddy tries to climb the fence in order to deliver the letter to Mrs. Patterson. However, Mr. Patterson intercepts the letter before Mrs. Patterson does. Something bad is happening because Benji is crying and he runs away down the hill.
At this point, I must insert my own thoughts. I have NO IDEA what is going on. Stream of consciousness is such a difficult thing to master. Anyways, poor Benji! I'm assuming that these memories are from his childhood. He gets thrown around so much because he is a young age. Benji rarely has actions or thoughts of his own, he's constantly jumping between events that involve other people in the story.
I think we are now back in the present though. Luster and Benji go to look for golf balls in the stream nearby. Luster tells Benji to "hush up and git in that water" so that he can look underwater. (Poor Benji, he really does get bossed around.) This reminds Benji of a memory he has. Wow, big surprise Faulkner, really.
This memory is about a time when Quentin, Caddy, Jason, and himself are all playing in the stream. Caddy gets her clothes dirty and when they are walking back to the house, they see Roskus. This activates another memory Benji has.
The pattern of memories that make Benji upset and start to cry continues for the rest of this first section of the novel. I think this pattern is well addressed above this paragraph. Faulkner definitely does not have any care for chronology. There is a consistent bouncing between the past memories and the present story. Since Benji is so incompetent, it makes the section even more difficult to understand. One thing Faulkner really bases an emphasis on is the way Benji connects his memories to feelings. Benji seems like a very deep and sensitive individual, but people don't get that because he is severely retarded.
Faulkner, I'm so confused. On to the next one. (Section, that is.)
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