American Literature books summary

American Literature books summary

right, and Lazarro promises that he is going to have the man killed after

the war. After the amused Brit leaves, Lazarro tells Derby and Billy that

revenge is life's sweetest pleasure. He once brutally tortured a dog that

bit him. He is going to have all of his enemies killed after the war. He

tells Billy that Weary was his buddy, and he is going to avenge him by

having Billy shot after the war. Because of his time hopping, Billy knows

that this is true. He will be shot in 1976. At that time, the United States

has split into twenty tiny nations. Billy will be lecturing in Chicago on

the Trafalmadorian concept of time and the fourth dimension. He tells the

spectators that he is about to die, and urges them to accept it. After the

lecture, he is shot in the head by a high-powered laser gun.

Back in the POW camp, Billy, Derby, and Lazarro go the theater to elect a

leader. On the way over, they see a Brit drawing a line in the dirt to

separate the American and British sections of the compound. In the theater,

Americans are sleeping anywhere that they can. A Brit lectures them on

hygiene, and Edgar Derby is elected leader. Only two or three men actually

have the energy to vote. Billy dresses himself in a piece of azure curtain

and Cinderella's boots. The Americans ride the train to Dresden. Dresden is

a beautiful city, appearing on the horizon like something out of a fairy

tale. They are met by eight German irregulars, boys and old men who will be

in charge of them for the rest of the war. They march through town towards

their new home. The people of Dresden watch them, and most of them are

amused by Billy's outlandish costume. One surgeon is not. He scolds Billy

about dignity and representing his country and war not being a joke, but

Billy is honestly perplexed by the man's anger. He shows the man his two

treasures from the lining of his coat: a two-carat diamond and some false

teeth. The Americans are brought to their new home, a converted building

originally for the slaughter of pigs. The building has a large 5 on it. The

POWs are taught the German name for their new home, in case they get lost

in the city. In English, it is called Slaughterhouse Five.

Chapter Seven. Summary:

Billy is on a plane next to his father-in-law. Billy and a number of

optometrists have chartered a plane to go to a convention in Montreal.

There's a barbershop quartet on board. Billy's father-in-law loves it when

they sing songs mocking the Polish. Vonnegut mentions that in Germany Billy

saw a Pole getting executed for having sex with a German girl. Billy leaps

in time to his wandering behind the German lines with the two scouts and

Roland Weary. He leaps in time again to the plane crash. Everyone dies but

him. The plane has crashed in Vermont, and Billy is found by Austrian ski

instructors. When he hears them speaking German, he thinks he's back in the

war. He is unconscious for days, and during that time he dreams about the

days right before the bombing.

He remembers a boy named Werner Gluck, one of the guards. He was good-

natured, as awkward and puny as Billy. One day, Gluck and Billy and Derby

were looking for the kitchen. Derby and Billy were pulling a two-wheeled

cart; it was their duty to bring dinner back for the boys. Gluck pulled a

door open, thinking the kitchen might be there, and instead revealed naked

teenage girls showering, refugees from another city that was bombed. The

women scream and Gluck shuts the door. When they finally find the kitchen,

an old cook talks with the trio critically and proclaims that all the real

soldiers are dead. Billy also remembers working in the malt syrup factory

in Dresden. The syrup is for pregnant women, and it is fortified with

vitamins. The POWs do everything they can to sneak spoonfuls of it. Billy

sneaks a spoonful to Edgar Derby, who is outside. He bursts into tears

after he tastes it.

Chapter Eight. Summary:

Howard Campbell, Jr., the American-turned-Nazi propagandist, visits the

captives of Slaughterhouse Five. He wears an elaborate costume of his own

design, a cross between cowboy outfit and a Nazi uniform. The POWs are

tired and unhealthy, undernourished and overworked. Campbell offers them

good eating if they join his Free American Corps. The Corps is Campbell's

idea. Composed of Americans fighting for the Germans, they will be sent to

fight on the Russian front. After the war, they will be repatriated through

Switzerland. Campbell reasons that the Americans will have to fight the

Soviet Union sooner or later, and they might as well get it out of the way.

Edgar Derby rises for his finest moment. He denounces Campbell soundly,

praises American forms of government, and speaks of the brotherhood between

Russians and Americans. Air raid sirens sound, and everyone takes cover in

a meat locker. The firebombing will not occur until tomorrow night; these

sirens are only a false alarm. Billy dozes, and then leaps in time to an

argument with his daughter Barbara. She is worrying about what should be

done about Billy. She tells him that she feels like she could kill Kilgore

Trout.

We move to Billy's first meeting with Trout, which happened in 1964. He is

out driving when he recognizes Trout from the jackets of his books. Trout's

books have never made money, so he works as a newspaper circulation man,

bullying and terrorizing newspaper delivery boys. One of Trout's boys

quits, and Billy offers to help Trout deliver the papers on the boy's

route. He gives Trout a ride. Trout is overwhelmed by meeting an avid fan.

He has only received one letter in the course of his career, and the letter

was crazed. It was written by none other than Billy's friend from the

mental ward, Elliot Rosewater. Billy invites Kilgore Trout to his

anniversary party.

At the party, Trout is obnoxious, but the optometrists and their spouses

are still enchanted by having an actual writer among them. A barbershop

quartet sings "That Old Gang of Mine," and Billy is visibly disturbed.

After giving Valencia her gift, he flees upstairs. Lying in bed, Billy

remembers the bombing of Dresden.

We see the events as Billy remembers them. He and the other POWs, along

with four of their guards, spend the night in the meat locker. The girls

from the shower were being killed in a shallower shelter nearby. The POWs

emerge at noon the next day into what looks like the surface of the moon.

The guards gape at the destruction. They look like a silent film of a

barbershop quartet.

We move to the Trafalmadorian Zoo. Montana Wildhack asked Billy to tell her

a story. He tells her about the burnt logs, actually corpses. He tells her

about the great monuments and buildings of the city turned into a flat,

lunar surface.

We move to Dresden. Without food or water, the POWs have to march to find

some if they are to survive. They make their way across the treacherous

landscape, much of it still hot, bits of crumbling. They are attacked by

American fighter planes. The end up in the suburbs, at an inn that has

prepared to receive any survivors. The innkeeper lets the Americans sleep

in the stable. He provides them with food and drink, and goes out to bid

them goodnight as they go to bed.

Chapter Nine. Summary:

When Billy is in the hospital in Vermont, Valencia goes crazy with grief.

Driving to the hospital, she gets in a terrible accident. She gears up her

car and continues driving to the hospital, determined to get there even

though she leaves her exhaust system behind. She pulls into the hospital

driveway and falls unconscious from carbon monoxide poisoning. An hour

later, she is dead.

Billy is oblivious, unconscious in his bed, dreaming and time traveling. In

the bed next to him is Bertram Copeland Ruumford, an arrogant retired

Brigadier General in the Air Force Reserve. He is a seventy-year-old

Harvard professor and the official historian of the Air Force, and he is in

superb physical condition. He has a twenty-three year-old high school

dropout with an IQ of 103. He is an arrogant jingoist. Currently he is

working on a history of the Air Corp in World War II. He has to write a

section on the success of the Dresden bombing. Ruumfoord's wife Lily is

scared of Billy, who mumbles deliriously. Ruumfoord is disgusted by him,

because all he does in his sleep in quit or surrender.

Barbara comes to visit Billy. She is in a horrible state, drugged up so she

can function after the recent tragedies. Billy cannot hear her. He is

remembering an eye exam he gave to a retarded boy a decade ago. Then he

leaps in time when he was sixteen years old. In the waiting room of a

doctor's office, he sees an old man troubled by horrible gas. Billy opens

his eyes and he is back in the hospital in Vermont. His son Robert, a

decorated Green Beret, is there. Billy closes his eyes again.

He misses Valencia's funeral because he is till too sick. People assume

that he is a vegetable, but actually he is thinking actively about

Trafalmadorians and the lectures he will deliver about time and the

permanence of moments. Overhearing Ruumford talk about Dresden, Billy

finally speaks up and tells Ruumford that he was at Dresden. Ruumford

ignores him, trying to convince himself and the doctors that Billy has

Echonalia, a condition where the sufferer simply repeats what he hears.

Billy leaps in time to May of 1945, two days after the end of the war in

Europe. In a coffin-shaped green wagon, Billy and five other Americans ride

with loot from the suburbs of Dresden. They found the wagon, attached to

two horses, and have been using it to carry things that they have taken.

The homes have been abandoned because the Russians are coming, and the

Americans have been looting. When they go to the slaughterhouse and the

other five Americans loot among the ruins, Billy naps in the wagon. He has

a cavalry pistol and a Luftwaffe ceremonial saber. He wakes; two Germans, a

husband-and-wife pair of obstetricians, are angry about how the Americans

have treated the horses. The horses' hooves are shattered, their mouths are

bleeding from the bits, and they are extremely thirsty. Billy goes around

to look at the horses, and he bursts into tears. It is the only time he

cries in the whole war. Vonnegut reminds the reader of the epigraph at the

start of the book, an excerpt from a Christmas carol that describes the

baby Jesus as not crying. Billy cries very little.

He leaps in time back to the hospital in Vermont, where Ruumford is finally

questioning Billy about Dresden. Barbara takes Billy home later that day.

Billy is watched by a nurse; he is supposed to be under observation, but he

escapes to New York City and gets a hotel room. He plans to tell the world

about the Trafalmadorians and their concept of time. The next day, Billy

goes into a bookstore that sells pornography, peep shows, and Kilgore Trout

novels. Billy is only interested in Kilgore Trout novels. In one of the

pornographic magazines, there is an article about the disappearance of porn

star Montana Wildhack. Later, Billy sneaks onto a radio talk show by posing

as a literary critic. The critics take turns discussing the novel, but when

Billy gets his turn he talks about Trafalmadore. At the next commercial

break, he is made to leave. When he goes back to his hotel room and lies

down, he travels back in time to Trafalmadore. Montana is nursing their

child. She wears a locket with a picture of her mother and the same prayer

that Billy had on his office wall in Ilium.

Chapter Ten. Summary:

Vonnegut tells us that Robert Kennedy died last night. Martin Luther King,

Jr., was assassinated a month ago. Body counts are reported every night on

the news as signs that the war in Vietnam is being won. Vonnegut's father

died years ago of natural causes. He left Billy all of his guns, which

rust. Billy claims that on Trafalmadore the aliens are more interested in

Darwin than Jesus. Darwin, says Vonnegut, taught that death was the means

to progress. Vonnegut recalls the pleasant trip he made to Dresden with his

old war buddy, O'Hare. They were looking up facts about Dresden in a little

book when O'Hare came across a passage on the exploding world population.

By 2000, the book predicts, the world will have a population of 7 billion

people. Vonnegut says that he supposes they will all want dignity.

Billy Pilgrim travels back in time to 1945, two days after the bombing of

Dresden. German authorities find the POWs in the innkeeper's stable. Along

with other POWs, they are brought back to Dresden to dig for bodies. Bodies

are trapped in protected pockets under the rubble, and the POWs are put to

work bringing them up. But after one of the workers is lowered into a

pocket and dies of the dry heaves, the Germans settle on incinerating the

bodies instead of retrieving them. During this time, Edgar Derby is caught

with a teapot he took from the ruins. He is tried and executed by a firing

squad.

Then the POWs were returned to the stable. The German soldiers went off to

fight the Soviets. Spring comes, and one day in May the war is over. Billy

and the other men go outside into the abandoned suburbs. They find a horse-

drawn wagon, the wagon green and shaped like a coffin. The birds sing, "Po-

tee-weet?"

The Sound and the Fury

Summary of April Seventh, 1928:

This section of the book is commonly referred to as "Benjy's section"

because it is narrated by the retarded youngest son of the Compson family,

Benjamin Compson. At this point in the story, Benjy is 33 years old - in

fact, today is his birthday - but the story skips back and forth in time as

various events trigger memories. When the reader first plunges into this

narrative, the jumps in time are difficult to navigate or understand,

although many scenes are marked by recurring images, sounds, or words. In

addition, a sort of chronology can be established depending on who is

Benjy's caretaker: first Versh when Benjy is a child, then T. P. when he is

an adolescent, then Luster when he is an adult. One other fact that may

confuse first-time readers is the repetition of names. There are, for

example, two Jasons (father and son), two Quentins (Benjy's brother and

Caddy's daughter), and two Mauries (Benjy himself before 1900 and Benjy's

uncle). Benjy recalls three important events: the evening of his

grandmother "Damuddy's" death in 1898, his name change in 1900, and Caddy's

sexual promiscuity and wedding in 1910, although these events are

punctuated by other memories, including the delivery of a letter to his

uncle's mistress in 1902 or 1903, Caddy's wearing perfume in 1906, a

sequence of events at the gate of the house in 1910 and 1911 that

culminates in his castration, Quentin's death in 1910, his father's death

and funeral in 1912, and Roskus's death some time after this. I will

summarize each event briefly.

The events of the present day (4/7/28) center around Luster's search for a

quarter he has lost somewhere on the property. He received this quarter

from his grandmother Dilsey in order to go to the circus that evening.

Luster takes Benjy with him as he searches by the golf course that used to

be the Compson's pasture, by the carriage house, down by the branch of the

Yoknapatawpha River, and finally near Benjy's "graveyard" of jimson flowers

in a bottle.

As the story opens, Benjy and Luster are by the golf course, where the

golfers' cries of "caddie" cause Benjy to "beller" because he mistakes

their cries for his missing sister Caddy's name. In the branch, Luster

finds a golfer's ball, which he later tries to sell to the golfers; they

accuse him of stealing it and take it from him. Luster tries to steer Benjy

away from the swing, where Miss Quentin and her "beau" (one of the

musicians from the circus) are sitting, but is unsuccessful. Quentin is

furious and runs into the house, while her friend jokes with Luster and

asks him who visits Quentin. Luster replies that there are too many male

visitors to distinguish.

Luster takes Benjy past the fence, where Benjy sees schoolgirls passing

with their satchels. Benjy moans whenever Luster tries to break from the

routine path Benjy is used to. At Benjy's "graveyard," Luster disturbs the

arrangement of flowers in the blue bottle, causing Benjy to cry. At this

Luster becomes frustrated and says "beller. You want something to beller

about. All right, then. Caddy. . . . Caddy. Beller now. Caddy" (55).

Benjy's crying summons Dilsey, Luster's grandmother, who scolds him for

making Benjy cry and for disturbing Quentin. They go in the kitchen, where

Dilsey opens the oven door so Benjy can watch the fire. Dilsey has bought

Benjy a birthday cake, and Luster blows out the candles, making Benjy cry

again. Luster teases him by closing the oven door so that the fire "goes

away." Dilsey scolds Luster again. Benjy is burned when he tries to touch

the fire. His cries disturb his mother, who comes to the kitchen and

reprimands Dilsey. Dilsey gives him an old slipper to hold, an object that

he loves.

Luster takes Benjy to the library, where his cries disturb Jason, who comes

to the door and yells at Luster. Luster asks Jason for a quarter. At

dinner, Jason interrogates Quentin about the man she was with that

afternoon and threatens to send Benjy to an asylum in Jackson. Quentin

threatens to run away, and she and Jason fight. She runs out of the room.

Benjy goes to the library, where Luster finds him and shows him that

Quentin has given him a quarter. Luster dresses Benjy for bed; when Benjy's

pants are off he looks down and cries when he is reminded of his

castration. Luster puts on his nightgown and the two of them watch as

Quentin climbs out her window and down a tree. Luster puts Benjy to bed.

Benjy's memories, in chronological order:

Damuddy's death, 1898: Benjy is three years old and his name at this point

is still Maury. Caddy is seven, Quentin is older (nine?) and Jason is

between seven and three.

The four children are playing in the branch of the river. Roskus calls them

to supper, but Caddy refuses to come. She squats down in the river and gets

her dress wet; Versh tells her that her mother will whip her for that.

Caddy asks Versh to help her take her dress off, and Quentin warns him not

to. Caddy takes off her dress and Quentin hits her. The two of them fight

in the branch and get muddy. Caddy says that she will run away, which makes

Maury/Benjy cry; she immediately takes it back. Roskus asks Versh to bring

the children to the house, and Versh puts Caddy's dress back on her.

They head up to the house, but Quentin stays behind, throwing rocks into

the river. The children notice that all the lights are on in the house and

assume that their parents are having a party. Father tells the children to

be quiet and to eat dinner in the kitchen; he won't tell them why they have

to be quiet. Caddy asks him to tell the other children to mind her for the

evening, and he does. The children hear their mother crying, which makes

Maury/Benjy cry. Quentin is also agitated by her crying, but Caddy

reassures him that she is just singing. Jason too begins to cry.

The children go outside and down to the servants' quarters, where Frony and

T. P. (who are children at this point) have a jar of lightning bugs. Frony

asks about the funeral, and Versh scolds her for mentioning it. The

children discuss the only death they know - when their mare Nancy died and

the buzzards "undressed her" in a ditch. Caddy asks T. P. to give

Maury/Benjy his jar of lightning bugs to hold. The children go back up to

the house and stop outside the parlor window. Caddy climbs up a tree to see

in the window, and the children watch her muddy drawers as she climbs.

Dilsey comes out of the house and yells at them. Caddy tells the others

that their parents were not doing anything inside, although she may be

trying to protect them from the truth. The children go inside and upstairs.

Father comes to help tuck them into bed in a strange room. Dilsey dresses

them and tucks them in, and they go to sleep.

Benjy's name change, 1900: Benjy is five years old, Caddy is nine, etc.

Benjy is sitting by the library fire and watching it. Dilsey and Caddy

discuss Benjy's new name; Dilsey wants to know why his parents have changed

it, and Caddy replies that mother said Benjamin was a better name for him

than Maury was. Dilsey says that "folks don't have no luck, changing names"

(58). Caddy brings Benjy to where her mother is lying in the bedroom with a

cloth on her head, to say good night. Benjy can hear the clock ticking and

the rain falling on the roof. Mother chides Caddy not to carry him because

he is too heavy and will ruin her posture. She holds Benjy's face in her

hands and repeats "Benjamin" over and over. Benjy cries until Caddy holds

his favorite cushion over his mother's head.

She leads him to the fire so that he can watch it. Father picks him up,

and he watches the reflection of Caddy and Jason fighting in the library

mirror. Father puts him down and breaks up Caddy and Jason, who are

fighting because Jason cut up all of Benjy's paper dolls. Father takes

Jason to the room next door and spanks him. They all sit by the fire, and

Benjy holds his cushion. Quentin comes and sits next to them. He has been

in a fight at school and has a bruise. Father asks him about it. Versh sits

next to them and tells them a story about a "bluegum" he knows who changed

his name too. Father tells him to be quiet. Caddy and Versh feed Benjy his

dinner, and the four children sit in father's lap. Benjy says that Caddy

and Quentin smell like trees and rain.

Versh, Caddy and Benjy go outside, December 23, 1902: Benjy is seven years

old and Caddy is eleven.

Benjy is crying because he wants to go outside. Mother says it is too cold

for him and he will freeze his hands. She says that if he won't be quiet he

will have to go to the kitchen. Versh replies that Dilsey wants him out of

the kitchen because she has a lot of cooking to do, and Uncle Maury tells

her to let him go outside. Versh puts on his coat and they go outside;

Versh tells him to keep his hands in his pockets. Caddy comes through the

gate, home from school. She takes his hands and they run through the fallen

leaves into the house. Caddy puts him by the fire, and Versh starts to take

his coat off, but Caddy asks if she can take him outside again. Versh puts

on his overshoes again, and mother takes his face in her hands and calls

him "my poor baby," but Caddy kneels by him and tells him that he is not a

poor baby at all because he has her. Benjy notices that she smells like

trees.

Caddy and Benjy deliver Uncle Maury's letter to Mrs. Patterson, December

25, 1902.

Caddy and Benjy cross the yard by the barn, where the servants are killing

a pig for dinner. Caddy tells Benjy to keep his hands in his pockets and

lets him hold the letter. She wonders why Uncle Maury did not send Versh

with the letter. They cross the frozen branch and come to the Patterson's

fence. Caddy takes the letter and climbs the fence to deliver it. Mrs.

Patterson comes out of the house.

Benjy delivers a letter to Mrs. Patterson alone, spring 1903: Benjy is

eight years old.

Benjy is at the Patterson's fence. Mr. Patterson is in the garden cutting

flowers. Mrs. Patterson runs from the house to the fence, and Benjy cries

when he sees her angry eyes. She says that she told Maury not to send Benjy

alone again, and asks Benjy to give her the letter. Mr. Patterson comes

running, climbs the fence and takes the letter. Benjy runs away.

Caddy wears perfume, 1906: Benjy is ten years old and Caddy is fourteen.

Caddy tries to hug Benjy but he cries and pushes her away. Jason says that

he must not like her "prissy dress," and says that she thinks she is all

grown up just because she is fourteen. Caddy tries to hush Benjy, but he

disturbs their mother, who calls them to her room. Mother tells Caddy to

give Benjy his box full of cut-out stars. Caddy walks to the bathroom and

washes the perfume off. Benjy goes to the door. Caddy opens the door and

hugs him; she smells like trees again. They go into Caddy's room and she

sits at her mirror. Benjy starts to cry again. She gives him the bottle of

perfume to smell and he runs away, crying. She realizes what made him cry

and tells him she will never wear it again. They go to the kitchen, and

Caddy tells Dilsey that the perfume is a present from Benjy to her. Dilsey

takes the bottle, and Caddy says that "we don't like perfume ourselves"

(43).

Caddy in the swing, 1907?: Benjy is eleven or twelve and Caddy is fifteen

or sixteen.

Benjy is out in the yard at night. T. P. calls for him through the window.

He watches the swing, where there are "two now, then one in the swing"

(47). Caddy comes running to him, asking how he got out. She calls for T.

P. Benjy cries and pulls at her dress. Charlie, the boy she is with on the

swing, comes over and asks where T. P. is. Benjy cries and she tells

Charlie to go away. He goes, and she calls for T. P. again. Charlie comes

back and puts his hands on Caddy. She tells him to stop, because Benjy can

see, but he doesn't. She says she has to take Benjy to the house. She takes

his hand and they run to the house and up the porch steps. She hugs him,

and they go inside. Charlie is calling her, but she goes to the kitchen

sink and scrubs her mouth with soap. Benjy sees that she smells like trees

again.

Benjy sleeps alone for the first time, 1908: Benjy is thirteen years old.

Dilsey tells Benjy that he is too old to sleep with anyone else, and that

he will sleep in Uncle Maury's room. Uncle Maury has a black eye and a

swollen mouth, and Father says that he is going to shoot Mr. Patterson.

Mother scolds him and father apologizes. He is drunk.

Dilsey puts Benjy to bed alone, but he cries, and Dilsey comes back. Then

Caddy comes in and lies in the bed with him. She smells like trees. Dilsey

says she will leave the light on in Caddy's room so she can go back there

after Benjy has fallen asleep.

Caddy loses her virginity, 1909: Benjy is fourteen years old and Caddy is

eighteen.

Caddy walks quickly past the door where mother, father, and Benjy are.

Mother calls her in, and she comes to the door. She glances at Benjy, then

glances away. He begins to cry. He goes to her and pulls at her dress,

crying. She is against the wall, and she starts to cry. He chases her up

the stairs, crying. She stops with her back against the wall, crying, and

looks at him with her hand on her mouth. Benjy pushes her into the

bathroom.

Caddy's wedding, 1910: Benjy is fifteen years old and Caddy is nineteen.

Benjy, Quentin, and T. P. are outside the barn, and T. P. has given Benjy

some sarsaparilla to drink; they are both drunk. Quentin pushes T. P. into

the pig trough. They fight, and T. P. pushes Benjy into the trough. Quentin

beats T. P., who can't stop laughing. He keeps saying "whooey!". Versh

comes and yells at T. P. Quentin gives Benjy some more sarsaparilla to

drink, and he cries. T. P. takes him to the cellar, and then goes to a tree

outside the parlor. T. P. drinks some more. He gets a box for Benjy to

stand on so he can see into the parlor. Through the window, Benjy can see

Caddy in her wedding veil, and he cries out, trying to call to her. T. P.

tries to quiet him. Benjy falls down and hits his head on the box. T. P.

drags him to the cellar to get more sarsaparilla, and they fall down the

stairs into the cellar. They climb up the stairs and fall against the fence

and the box. Benjy is crying loudly, and Caddy comes running. Quentin also

comes and begins kicking T. P. Caddy hugs Benjy, but she doesn't smell like

trees any more, and Benjy begins to cry.

Benjy at the gate crying, 1910.

Benjy is in the house looking at the gate and crying, and T. P. tells him

that no matter how hard he cries, Caddy is not coming back.

Later, Benjy stands at the gate crying, and watches some schoolgirls pass

by with their satchels. Benjy howls at them, trying to speak, and they run

by. Benjy runs along the inside of the fence next to them to the end of his

yard. T. P. comes to get him and scolds him for scaring the girls.

Quentin's death, 1910.

Benjy is lying in T. P.'s bed at the servants' quarters, where T. P. is

throwing sticks into a fire. Dilsey and Roskus discuss Quentin's death

without mentioning his name or Caddy's name. Roskus talks about the curse

on the family, saying "aint the sign of it laying right there on that bed.

Aint the sign of it been here for folks to see fifteen years now" (29).

Dilsey tells him to be quiet, but he continues, saying that there have been

two signs now (Benjy's retardation and Quentin's death), and that there

would be one more. Dilsey warns him not to mention Caddy's name. He replies

that "they aint no luck on this place" (29). Dilsey tucks Benjy into T.

P.'s bed and pulls the covers up.

Benjy attacks a girl outside the gate and is castrated, 1911: Benjy is

sixteen years old.

Benjy is standing at the gate crying, and the schoolgirls come by. They

tell each other that he just runs along the inside of the fence and can't

catch them. He unlatches the gate and chases them, trying to talk to them.

They scream and run away. He catches one girl and tries to talk to her,

perhaps tries to rape her.

Later, father talks about how angry Mr. Burgess (her father) is, and wants

to know how Benjy got outside the gate. Jason says that he bets father will

have to send Benjy to the asylum in Jackson now, and father tells him to

hush.

Mr. Compson's death, 1912: Benjy is seventeen.

Benjy wakes up and T. P. brings him into the kitchen where Dilsey is

singing. She stops singing when Benjy begins to cry. She tells T. P. to

take him outside, and they go to the branch and down by the barn. Roskus is

in the barn milking a cow, and he tells T. P. to finish milking for him

because he can't use his right hand any more. He says again that there is

no luck on this place.

Later that day, Dilsey tells T. P. to take Benjy and the baby girl Quentin

down to the servants' quarters to play with Luster, who is still a child.

Frony scolds Benjy for taking a toy away from Quentin, and brings them up

to the barn. Roskus is watching T. P. milk a cow.

Later, T. P. and Benjy are down by the ditch where Nancy's bones are. Benjy

can smell father's death. T. P. takes Benjy and Quentin to his house, where

Roskus is sitting next to the fire. He says "that's three, thank the Lawd .

. . I told you two years ago. They aint no luck on this place" (31). He

comments on the bad luck of never mentioning a child's mother's name and

bringing up a child never to know its mother. Dilsey shushes him, asking

him if he wants to make Benjy cry again. Dilsey puts him to bed in Luster's

bed, laying a piece of wood between him and Luster.

Mr. Compson's funeral, 1912.

Benjy and T. P. wait at the corner of the house and watch Mr. Compson's

casket carried by. Benjy can see his father lying there through the glass

in the casket.

Trip to the cemetery, 1912.

Benjy waits for his mother to get into the carriage. She comes out and asks

where Roskus is. Dilsey says that he can't move his arms today, so T. P.

will drive them. Mother says she is afraid to let T. P. drive, but she gets

in the carriage anyway. Mother says that maybe it would be for the best if

she and Benjy were killed in an accident, and Dilsey tells her not to talk

that way. Benjy begins to cry and Dilsey gives him a flower to hold. They

begin to drive, and mother says she is afraid to leave the baby Quentin at

home. She asks T. P. to turn the carriage around. He does, and it tips

precariously but doesn't topple. They return to the house, where Jason is

standing outside with a pencil behind his ear. Mother tells him that they

are going to the cemetery, and he asks her if that was all she came back to

tell him. She says she would feel safer if he came, and he tells her that

Father and Quentin won't hurt her. This makes her cry, and Jason tells her

to stop. Jason tells T. P. to drive, and they take off again.

Roskus's death, later 1920s: Luster is old enough to take care of Benjy by

now.

Dilsey is "moaning" at the servants' quarters. Benjy begins to cry and the

dog begins to howl, and Dilsey stops moaning. Frony tells Luster to take

them down to the barn, but Luster says he won't go down there for fear he

will see Roskus's ghost like he did last night, waving his arms.

Analysis of April 7, 1928:

The title of this novel comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act five, scene

five, in Macbeth's famous speech about the meaninglessness of life. He

states that it is "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, /

signifying nothing." One could argue that Benjy is the "idiot" referred to

in this speech, for indeed his section seems, at first reading, to "signify

nothing." No one vignette in his narrative seems to be particularly

important, much of it detailing the minutiae of his daily routine. His

speech itself, the "bellering" with which me makes himself heard, does, in

fact, "signify nothing," since he is unable to express himself even when he

wants to in a way other than howling. However, Benjy Compson is not merely

an idiot, and his section is much more meaningful than it first seems.

When discussing Mr. Compson's death, Roskus states that Benjy "know a lot

more than folks thinks" (31), and in fact, for all his idiocy, Benjy does

sense when things are wrong with his self-contained world, especially when

they concern his sister Caddy. Like an animal, Benjy can "smell" when Caddy

has changed; when she wears perfume, he states that she no longer smells

"like trees," and the servants claim that he can smell death. He can also

sense somehow when Caddy has lost her virginity; she has changed to him.

From the time she loses her virginity on, she no longer smells like trees

to him. Although his section at first presents itself as an objective

snapshot of a retarded boy's perceptions of the world, it is more ordered

and more intelligent than that.

Most of the memories Benjy relates in his section have to do with Caddy,

and specifically with moments of loss related to Caddy. The first memory of

Damuddy's death, for example, marks a change in his family structure and a

change in his brother Jason, who was the closest to Damuddy and slept in

her room. His many memories of Caddy are mostly concerned with her

sexuality, a fact that changes her relationship with him and eventually

removes her from his life. His later memories are also associated with some

sort of loss: the loss of his pasture, of his father, and the loss

associated with his castration. Critics have pointed out that Benjy's

narrative is "timeless," that he cannot distinguish between present and

past and therefore relives his memories as they occur to him. If this is

the case, he is caught in a process of constantly regenerating his sister

in memory and losing her simultaneously, of creating and losing at the same

time. His life is a constant cycle of loss and degenerative change.

If Benjy is trapped in a constantly replaying succession of losses, the

objects that he fixates on seem to echo this state. He loves fire, for

instance, and often stares into the "bright shapes" of the fire while the

world revolves around him. The word "fire" is mentioned numerous times in

the memory of his name change. Caddy and the servants know that he stops

crying when he looks at the fire, which is the reason in the present day

that Luster makes a fire in the library even though one is not needed.

The fire is a symbolic object; it is conventionally associated with the

contrast between light and dark, heat and cold. It is a comfort, not merely

to Benjy because of the pleasure he receives in watching it, but because it

is associated with the hearth, the center of the home. As critics have

pointed out, it is often Caddy who places Benjy in front of the fire: "she

led me to the fire and I looked at the bright, smooth shapes" (64). The

fire is therefore tied in Benjy's mind with the idea of Caddy; both are

warm and comforting forces within a cold family. But unlike Caddy, the fire

is unchanging; there will always be a fire, even after she leaves him. The

fact that Benjy burns himself on the kitchen stove after Luster closes the

oven door reveals the pain - both physical and mental - that Benjy

associates with Caddy's absence.

Another object that provides comfort to Benjy is the library mirror. Like

the fire, the mirror plays a large part in the memory of his name change,

as Benjy watches the various members of his family move in and out of the

mirror: "Caddy and Jason were fighting in the mirror . we could see Caddy

fighting in the mirror and Father put me down and went into the mirror and

fought too . He rolled into the corner, out of the mirror. Father brought

Caddy to the fire. They were all out of the mirror" (64-65). The mirror is

a frame of reference through which Benjy sees the world; people are either

in or out of the mirror, and he does not understand the concept of

reflection. Like the mirror, Benjy's section of the book provides readers

with a similar exact reflection of the world that Benjy sees, framed by his

memories. Characters slide in and out of the mirror of his perception,

their conversations and actions accurately reported but somewhat distorted

in the process.

As the "tale told by an idiot," Benjy's section makes up the center kernel

of the story of the Compson family tragedy. And the scene of Damuddy's

death in many ways makes up the center around which this section and the

entire story revolve. Faulkner has said that the story grew out of the

image of a little girl's muddy drawers as she climbs a tree to look into

the parlor windows at the funeral taking place. From this image a story

evolved, a story "without plot, of some children being sent away from the

house during the grandmother's funeral. There were too young to be told

what was going on and they saw things only incidentally to the childish

games they were playing" (Millgate, 96). This original story was entitled

"Twilight," and the story grew into a novel because Faulkner fell in love

with the character of this little girl to such an extent that he strove to

tell her story from four different viewpoints.

If this one scene is the center of the story, it is also a microcosm of the

events to follow. The interactions of the children in this scene prefigure

their relations in the future and in fact the entire future of the Compson

family. Thus Caddy's soaking her dress in the water of the branch is a

metaphor for the sexual fall that will torment Quentin and ruin the family:

She was wet. We were playing in the branch and Caddy squatted down and got

her dress wet and Versh said, "Your mommer going to whip you for getting

your dress wet."

"It's not wet." Caddy said. She stood up in the water and looked at her

dress. "I'll take it off." she said. "Then it'll be dry."

"I bet you won't." Quentin said.

"I bet I will." Caddy said.

"I bet you better not." Quentin said.

"You just take your dress off," Quentin said. Caddy took her dress off and

threw it on the bank. Then she didn't have on anything but her bodice and

drawers, and Quentin slapped her and she slipped and fell down in the water

(17-18).

Caddy sullies her garments in an act that prefigures her later sexuality.

She then takes off her dress, a further sexual metaphor, causing Quentin to

become enraged and slap her. Just as the loss of her virginity upsets

Quentin to the point of suicide, his angry and embarrassed reaction to

taking off her dress here reveals the jealous protectiveness he feels for

her sexuality. Benjy, too, is traumatized by the muddying of Caddy's dress:

"Caddy was all wet and muddy behind, and I started to cry and she came and

squatted in the water" (19). Just as her sexuality will cause his world to

crack later on, her muddy dress here causes him to cry.

Jason, too, is a miniature version of what he will become in this scene.

While Caddy and Quentin fight in the branch, Jason stands "by himself

further down the branch," prefiguring the isolation from the rest of his

family that will characterize his later existence (19). Although the other

children ask him not to tell their father that they have been playing in

the branch, the first thing he does when he sees father is tattle. He is as

perverse and mean here as he is sadistic in the third section of the book.

His reaction to Damuddy's death, too, is a miniature for the way he will

deal with the loss that he sees in Caddy's betrayal of the family later on:

"Do you think the buzzards are going to undress Damuddy." Caddy said.

"You're crazy."

"You're a skizzard." Jason said. He began to cry.

"You're a knobnot." Caddy said. Jason cried. His hands were in his pockets.

"Jason going to be rich man." Versh said. "He holding his money all the

time" (35-36).

Here Jason cries over the loss of Damuddy with his hands in his pockets,

"holding his money," just as later he will sublimate his anger at Caddy's

absence by becoming a miserly workaholic and embezzling thousands of

dollars from Quentin and his mother.

The scene ends with the image of Caddy's muddy drawers as she climbs the

tree: "We watched the muddy bottom of her drawers. Then we couldn't see

her. We could hear the tree thrashing . . . . the tree quit thrashing. We

looked up into the still branches" (39). This image of Caddy's muddy

undergarments disappearing into the branches of the tree, the scene that

prompted Faulkner to write the entire novel, is, as critic John T. Matthews

points out, an image of Caddy disappearing, just as she will disappear from

the lives of her three brothers:

What the novel has made, it has also lost . . . . [Caddy] is memorable

precisely because she inhabits the memories of her brothers and the novel,

and memory for Faulkner never transcends the sense of loss . . . . Caught

in Faulkner's mind as she climbs out of the book, Caddy is the figure that

the novel is written to lose (Matthews, 2-3). Thus the seminal scene in

this section of the story is that of the sullied Caddy, "climbing out of"

Benjy's life.

The scene of Damuddy's death is not the only part of this section that

forecasts the future. Like a Greek tragedy, this section is imbued with a

sense of impending disaster, and in fact the events of the present day

chronicle a family that has fallen into decay. For Benjy, the dissolution

of the life he knows is wrapped up in Caddy and her sexuality, which

eventually leads her to desert him. For his mother and the servants, the

family's demise is a fate that cannot be avoided, of which Benjy's idiocy

and Quentin's death are signs. This is what prompts Roskus to repeatedly

vow that "they aint no luck on this place," and what causes mother to

perform the almost ritualistic ablution of changing Benjy's name. It is as

if changing his name from Maury, the name of a Bascomb, will somehow avert

the disastrous fate that the Compson blood seems to bring. This

overwhelming sense of an inescapable family curse will resurface many times

throughout the book.

Summary of June Second, 1910:

This section of the book details the events of the day of Quentin's

suicide, from the moment he wakes in the morning until he leaves his room

that night, headed to the river to drown himself. Like Benjy's section,

this section is narrated in stream of consciousness, sliding constantly

between modern-day events and memories; however, Quentin's section is not

as disjointed at Benjy's, regardless of his agitated mental state. As with

Benjy, most of the memories he relates are centered on Caddy and her

precocious sexuality.

The present day:

Quentin wakes in his Harvard dorm room to the sound of his watch ticking:

"when the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtain it was between seven

and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch" (76).

This is the watch his father gave him when he came to Harvard. He tries to

ignore the sound, but the more he tries, the louder it seems. He turns the

watch over and returns to bed, but the ticking goes on. His roommate Shreve

appears in the doorway and asks him if he is going to chapel, then runs out

the door to avoid being late himself. Quentin watches his friends running

to chapel out the window of his dorm room, then listens to the school's

bell chiming the hour (8:00 a.m.).

He goes to the dresser and picks up his watch, tapping it against the side

of the dresser to break the glass. He twists the hands of the watch off,

but the watch keeps ticking. He notices that he cut himself in the process

and meticulously cleans his wound with iodine. He painstakingly packs up

all his clothes except two suits, two pairs of shoes, and two hats, then

locks his trunk and piles his schoolbooks on the sitting-room table, as the

quarter-hour bell chimes.

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