1In The Sound and the Fury, Benjy Compson Most Likely Suffers from Autism
Patrick Samway, S.J.
Gentry Silver

Stating that Benjy Compson most likely suffers from autism in The Sound and the Fury introduces
methodological concerns never before seen in Faulkner criticism, insofar as ongoing information concerning an
actual neurological disorder is used to diagnose a completely fictional character. To a great extent, thepossibility of such a diagnosis supposes Benjy to be a genuine candidate for a neurological/psychological casestudy, a supposition that, admittedly, needs to remain speculative, but which nevertheless has value in
identifying more exactly why he acts as he does. As in any neurological/psychological case study, a review of
earlier opinions by literary critics can bring to light how Benjy has been perceived to date, which, when linked
with precise textual evidence from the novel and recent neurological theories, will allow for a more coherent
explanation of his condition.
Given His Physical Condition and Mental Limitations, Should Benjy Be Called an “Idiot” or Would “Autistic”
Be More Appropriate?
Due in large part to the “idiotic” or “lunatic” ways in which Benjy perceives and relates the world
around him, literary critics and Faulkner himself have preferred to call Benjy an idiot, though they often
discuss the nature of his idiocy in different ways (see, for example, The Most Splendid Failure, 67, 71, 88, 1789; “The Ordeal of Consciousness,” 175; “Nihilists and Their Relations,” 93; “Faulkner, Childhood, and theMaking of The Sound and the Fury,” 381; “Idiocy and Idealism,”101; “‘Where you want to go now’,” 4;
Faulkner’s Inexhaustible Voice, 171; “Searching for Jason Richmond Compson,”185 ; The Fool: Character asTechnique in the Novels of William Faulkner, 51; “‘Trying to Say’,” 40; “A propos de ‘Le Bruit et laFureur’,”1058). Only once in the novel is Benjy actually called an idiot, by an angry Mrs. Patterson after hehas been caught by her husband with the letter written by Uncle Maury (13). With no relationship to
Dostoyevsky’s idiot/hero, Prince Leo Nikolayevich Myshkin, in The Idiot, nor the idiot so loved by his motherin Wordsworth’s poem, “The Idiot Boy,” the title of Faulkner’s novel, chosen by Faulkner from Macbeth’s
soliloquy (V.v.), underscores not only a fundamental compatibility between psychology and literature, but

2gives incalculable authorial weight to the role of the idiot in this novel. Faulkner noted that while the original
the title applied to the Benjy section, the more he “worked on the book, the more elastic the title became, until
it covered the whole family” (Faulkner in the University, 87). Faulkner’s own assessment of Benjy as an idiot,as mentioned explicitly in the Compson Appendix (1141) , in letters to Ben Wasson and Malcolm Cowley(Selected Letters, 55, 255), and to the cadets at West Point (Faulkner at West Point, 109), has undoubtedly
impelled many critics not to question his choice of this word. While in Japan in 1955, Faulkner linked thenotion of innocence with the idiot: “So the idiot was born and then I became interested in the relationship of theidiot to the world that he was in but would never be able to cope with and just where could he get thetenderness, the help, to shield him in his innocence. I mean ‘innocence’ in the sense that God had stricken him
blind at birth, that is, mindless at birth and there was nothing he could ever do about it” (Lion in the Garden,
146; see also 222). “To that idiot,” Faulkner added upon further reflection, “time was not a continuation, it was
an instant, there was no yesterday and no tomorrow, it all is this moment, it all is [now] to him. He cannot
distinguish between what was last year and what will be tomorrow, he doesn’t know whether he dreamed it, or
saw it” (Lion in the Garden, 147-48). In addition, Faulkner’s telling interview with Jean Stein vanden Heuvelin 1956 nuances even more his thoughts about Benjy:
I had already begun to tell it through the eyes of the idiot child since I felt that it would be
more effective as told by someone capable of knowing what happened, but not why….The
only emotion I can have for Benjy is grief and pity for all mankind. You can’t feel anythingfor Benjy because he doesn’t feel anything. The only thing I can feel about him personally isconcern as to whether he is believable as I created him. He was a prologue like thegravedigger in the Elizabethan dramas. He serves his purpose and is gone. Benjy is incapableof good and evil because he had no knowledge of good and evil….Benjy wasn’t rationalenough even to be selfish. He was an animal. He recognized tenderness and love though hecould not have named them, and it was the threat to tenderness and love that cause him tobellow when he felt the change in Caddy. (Lion in the Garden, 245-46)
In a similar vein, Luster states that Benjy was born a “looney,” a popular term that carries minimal medical or
psychological information, but which suggests antisocial behavior and limited cognitive inability—in short, acode word for mental retardation and moronic comportment (53). The figure of the idiot, also referred to as a“loony” in “The Kingdom of God,” serves as a definite prototype of Benjy (48, 46). He shares some of theexact same features as Benjy: “The face of the sitting man was vague and dull and loose-lipped, and his eyes
were clear and blue as cornflowers, and utterly vacant of thought; he sat a shapeless, dirty lump, life without

3mind, an organism without intellect. Yet always in his slobbering vacuous face were his two eyes of a heartshaking blue, and gripped tightly in one fist was a narcissus”(45-46). Is it possible, we ask, to give a more
technical psychological appellation to Faulkner’s recurring characterization of Benjy? Do the generic terms“idiot” or “looney/loony” describe Benjy with the accuracy found in the novel?
While the novel points inwards on itself to the ongoing drama it presents, it also points outward to alarger world that Faulkner, as author, could name with historical specificity: Harvard (77, 85, 92, etc.), New
London [Connecticut] (77), Saint Louis Fair (80), Garabaldi’s [Giuseppi Garabaldi] (82), Parker’s [Parker
House in Boston] (83), [Hernando de] DeSoto (88), French Lick [Indiana] (95), Princeton (97), [Babe] Ruth
(252), and Beale [Street in Memphis, Tennessee] (264). Except in a very limited way, Faulkner has chosen not
to use specific medical terms in this novel. Were it not for the increasing prevalence today of autism, a specificlifelong disorder with a neurological basis in the brain first known to the public in the mid-1940’s due to thegroundbreaking article, “Early Infantile Autism,” by Leo Kanner, M.D., a Johns Hopkins University
psychiatrist—and thus not part of Faulkner’s vocabulary when The Sound and the Fury was published in
1929—it might not be possible to suggest that Benjy suffered from autism.1 Faulkner simply never heard thisword in 1928. But why look to a scientific basis for Benjy’s physical and psychological profile outside the textof the novel itself? Faulkner, himself, has provided the key: he wrote a number of para-historical texts about
this novel in which he steps forward not as literary author but as historical guide whose own knowledge of theactual world about him provides valuable commentary about the novel. In fact, he took a most unusual step ingiving some additional background not only on specific characters in the novel, but on the history of theCompson family in general. After the first publication of the novel in 1929, and the confusion experienced byalmost all of the novel’s readers in trying to understand the Benjy section, Faulkner added further thoughts,
ideas, and data not intrinsic to the novel, but which can be used as aids in interpretation, the most notable being
the “Compson Appendix: 1699-1945,” published much later in The Portable Faulkner (1946).2 Had Faulknercontinued writing para-historical information about the Compsons, and had he read in the 1950’s some
psychological and medical journals, one can well ask if he would have changed the way he discussed anddescribed Benjy—even possibly calling him autistic?

4
For us today, contemporary data about autism reveals how common it is. For children ages 6-22, thestatistics (1993-2006) from the Center for Disease Control show that the cumulative growth rate of autism has
increased 1,342 percent, or now about 1 in 166 children, more than three times the number with juvenile
diabetes ( www.cdc.gov.). While no one definition of autism will satisfy all specialists in the field, autism, as
defined by Professor Lori Ernspberger of Indiana University, refers “to neurologic disorders involving serious
impairment of abilities to interact and communicate socially, and repetitive and restricted interests andactivities” and usually can be recognized in the first three years of life (3). Males today are four times more
likely to have autism than females.3 In short, those who are autistic suffer from deficits in language,
communication, and social behavior and respond abnormally to their physical environments, often exhibiting
repetitive patterns of behavior.
To date, no specific biological markers are recognized as being genetic indicators of this disorder.
According to the Autism Society of America, persons with autism may exhibit some of the following traits:
resistance to change; difficulty in expressing needs, using gestures and pointing instead of words; repeatingwords or phrases in place of normal, responsive language; laughing and/or crying for no apparent reason; analoof manner; tantrums; difficulty in mixing with others; not wanting to be cuddled; little or no eye contact;
unresponsive to normal teaching methods; sustained odd play; obsessive attachment to objects; apparent oversensitivity or under-sensitivity to pain; no real fear of danger; noticeable physical over-activity or extreme
passivity; uneven gross/fine motor skills; non-responsive to verbal cues, and acts as it deaf, although hearing
tests are in normal range (www.autism-society.org). In one degree or another, many of these traits can beapplied to Benjy, who is perhaps based on Edwin, the brother of Miss Annie Chandler, Faulkner’s first-gradeteacher. In his biography of Faulkner, Joseph Blotner notes that Edwin was “retarded,” could be seen playing
in the family’s front yard “behind a high fence,” and “lived past the age of thirty” (21). Once, as Faulkner was
reading the novel to Phil Stone, his friend automatically connected Benjy with Edwin Chandler (Faulkner: A
Biography, 219). Since Faulkner never averted to Edwin’s medical or psychological histories, the question ofsource remains somewhat moot, though it does not cancel out the possibility that Benjy suffered from autism.

5
A handful of literary critics have linked Benjy and autism, but not in any systematic way that relies on thefindings of psycholinguistic or neurological evidence. André Bleikasten, for example, makes a general allusion
to this disorder, but never explains it with precision: “Contrary to Quentin’s extreme estrangement from society(not to speak of Benjy’s autistic isolation), Jason’s relation to it is a very odd mixture of rebellion andconformity. His paranoid resentment is surely boundless, and for his ever-ebullient malice any available target
will do” (The Most Splendid Failure, 155). Since “Benjy’s world hardly seems bigger than the sphere of asingle organism,” John Matthews maintains, “we might be tempted to read his predicament narrowly as theresult of an individual mental deficiency, or at most as the outgrowth of a particular family’s pathology. But
Benjy has never fit clinical definitions of mental retardation or autism (though he may have been modeled on
an impaired townsman Faulkner knew, the brother of his beloved first grade teacher). Rather, the literal traits of
the Compson family serve…more as emblems of a whole class’s values and behavior” (William Faulkner:
Seeing Through the South, 83). On the other hand, Sara McLaughlin’s 1987 exploratory essay, entitled“Faulkner’s Faux Pas: Referring to Benjamin Compson as an Idiot,” raises the issue of Benjy being autistic,
looking primarily at a limited number of Benjy’s speech patterns; unfortunately she never plumbs the depth ofher insight: “Regarding speech, for example, many autistic children are mute; they produce no recognizable
words. Others’ expressive speech is minimal. Benjy was mute, though the reader gets the rare opportunity toread Benjy’s mind in a sense, in the chapter he narrates figuratively. This devices enables readers to see how
Benjy might talk if he could” (35). Ineke Bockting’s psycholinguistic evaluation of Benjy’s “mind-style” as away of diagnosing his situation points to the medical basis of why Benjy speaks and acts as he does. She
acknowledges in a footnote that Benjy shows many characteristics of autism (no awareness of the feelings ofothers, no comforting seeking with others in time of distress, no imitation play, no verbal, para-verbal or
nonverbal communication, echolalia, and attachments to unusual objects), adding that mentally retarded people
relate to others in accordance with their mental age, whereas autistic people do not (5). She correctly avoids acommon pitfall: equating those who are mentally retarded with those who are autistic. The first shows
relatively even skill development, whereas autistic individuals exhibit uneven skill development especially incertain areas. At the same time, it should be noted, those with autism can and do manifest some behavioral
patterns of those who are mentally retarded.

6
Even though readers of The Sound and the Fury observe and understand Benjy, the youngest of thefour Compson children, through the eyes and actions of the other characters in the novel, he relates, for themost part, his own story, however confusedly, without the help of others. Thus evidence of Benjy’s autism isderived principally from his monologue. Like the intersecting threads of a web, many of the characters discuss
others in the novel, who, in turn, have feelings and observations they feel compelled to share in language
appropriate to their personalities. Though Benjy, himself, cannot communicate with others through vocal
speech, his monologue, lacking any genuine nuancing, reveals the voice of the narrator who assumes the maskof Benjy, forcing us to constantly ponder the relationship between them. And especially in the backlooping,manneristic style of the first two sections, the past is absorbed into the present and vice versa, achieving in theend a remarkable synchronicity. “Every site of Benjy’s domain opens immediate access to all the moments thathave ever occurred there: to duck through the ‘broken place’ in the fence with Luster in 1928 is to emerge with
Caddy two decades earlier” (The Play of Faulkner’s Language, 65). Before long, we become so accustomed tobilocation that initial feelings of dislocation disappear, and we soon marvel at the malleability of thelandscape/mindscape.

Benjy unwittingly serves as a guide and participant, especially given his mental and physical condition,
into what might be called from his perspective his family’s “dumbshow.” His uncooperative body rarely acts insync with his racing mind. Ironically, as Cheryl Ware observes, Benjy’s section, seemingly chaotic andmeaningless, “contains all the necessary information the reader needs” (63). While all four sections of the novel
have specific dates, giving the illusion that the past actually enfolds into 1928, the present time in the novel,
Benjy, in fact, never uses the present tense. Motivated instead by pleasure or pain, Benjy reacts on anelementary sensory level, devoid of moral evaluations that deal with possibilities, probabilities, and statementsof ultimate value. In doing this, he co-locates the important time-filled events in his life into one timelesspresent that, in and of itself, achieves not timelessness but a new and often unlocateable sense of time for thereader. “Faulkner thus achieves the effect of cinematic montage and he is able to juxtapose significant episodes
in the Compson family history simply by alternating between episodes—his encounter with Caddy and Charlie
in the swing, for example, is intertwined associatively with a similar, later, encounter with Miss Quentin and7
her boyfriend in the same swing; Caddy’s wedding and Damuddy’s funeral are intimately intertwined in thissame way,” Noel Polk notes. “Through these juxtapositions, these comparisons and contrasts of scenes,
Faulkner creates meanings, hierarchies of emotions and significances that Benjy cannot. At the top of thehierarchy is, of course, his loss of Caddy, which registers most powerfully and most constantly—on himself
and on everybody else” (Children of the Dark House, 109). In short, the intertextual voids comment inrevelatory fashion on one another—especially when the often haphazard patterns of texts-intertextual voids
repeat themselves, not programmatically but nevertheless with a sense of predictability.

The gaps the narrator creates in portraying Benjy’s conscious mental activity have significance; theytransform a small nothingness, a space or void, into a quest for seeing and articulating connections. Yet, as
Robert Dale Parker observes “the concepts of an extra-linguistic ontology, of Benjy as teller his story, and evenof Benjy—a fictional character—having an actual consciousness of the sort we attribute to people outsidenovels are all suspect at the least…” (16). Parker’s caveat merits considerable attention because no fictional
antecedents exist for Benjy, and thus traditional critical discourse must cede to multilateral forays in an attempt
to do justice to this novel and supply meaning to a fictive world that no literary critic, as far as we know, hasever experienced.4 More importantly, readers are forced, willy-nilly, to co-create with the author and Benjy,
both of whom supply the reader with unevaluated interlocking episodes or events for which, alas, Benjy cannot
make sense or integrate within himself—with the unanticipated result that, in the spirit of some of Wallace
Stevens’ poetry, Benjy’s section embodies and dramatizes a commentary on the very nature of art itself—anobservation affirmed by Arnold Weinstein who notes that Faulkner’s task was “to fashion a story of brutal
losses (pasture, sister, genitals) in such a way that the reader is virtually trapped within the character’s orbit.
We too are now seeing through the fence. And the world is thereby metamorphosed, personalized into theprivate calvary of an idiot for whom every event recasts the presence and loss of his sister. Finding a languagethat captures the feeling and pathos of this story is what Faulkner means by ‘trying to say’” (40). Both André
Bleikasten and John Matthews, as they try separately to find the axis upon which the novel rotates, underscorethe importance of these three words, repeated by Benjy running along the fence seeking Caddy (The Ink ofMelancholy, 66-67, and The Play of Faulkner’s Language, 71). Unfortunately, Benjy does not realize that he8
has not communicated anything to anybody—except incredible anguish and despair. Indeed, as Harold Bloom
infers, the world is too much for Benjy and, at the same time, without Caddy, never enough. Benjy’s
unpredictable, symbolic-ladened, fragile, non-linear world cannot be reduced to outline form, since much ofwhat transpires there does so precisely in the tensile spaces-in-between.

Yet, Benjy remains a perennial three-year-old child, the age when autism is normally detected: “‘He
thirty three.’ Luster said. ‘Thirty three this morning’.” To which an unnamed friend replies: “‘You mean, hebeen three years old thirty years’” (17). His fragmentary thoughts, easily interrupted, emerge from a linguistic
center within him, as filtered by the narrator, which makes free association essential to his ability to express
himself. Naively, Benjy never thinks that he will not be understood or that others will misunderstand his
intramental spoken English. Above all, he has an amazing capacity to hear and repeat the conversations aroundhim, rendering his section the most unbiased of the four, since he never provides any personal reflections orcommentary. When he says, “the dark tall place on the wall came and I went and touched it. It was like a door,
only it wasn’t a door,” Benjy knows that the empty space once contained a mirror that had been removed, but
he does not go beyond the evidence to try to name it (61). And when he sees an obscure figure descending fromMiss Quentin’s window because it is dark, he does not guess at the identity of this person. Given themonologue’s intricate nature, André Bleikasten provides a sharp focus to its overall profile: “Not that thenovel’s opening section confounds comprehension. Most sentences in it are perfectly grammatical and taken
one by one, nearly all of them make sense. Moreover, reported conversation, developing into scenes or at least
scene fragments, occupies more than half of Benjy’s monologue—a monologue that, strictly speaking, is nomonologue at all but rather a polylogue, a patchwork of many voices seemingly recorded at random by an
unselective mind” (The Ink of Melancholy, 57). Benjy never poses the “why” question, nor does he project
imaginatively his needs. “Things and persons come and go, materialize out of nowhere and vanish with magic
suddenness: the jimson weed is there or gone, and it is the same with the cushion (78), the bowl (86), or any
other object. Which is to say that there is at least one distinction registered by Benjy’s mind: the opposition ofpresence and absence. They are the two categories into which his whole universe is divided, and they make all
the difference” (The Most Splendid Failure, 73). In short, Benjy’s “idiolect” relates what is happening around9
him but makes no effort to provide explanations; he speaks to himself constantly as if he had a listener inside
his own mind.
With limited lexical variation and basic sentence structures, Benjy’s discourse reveals unsophisticatedmannerisms of speech, which are pleasantly fresh and appealing. In his research, L. Moffitt Cecil has
discovered that Benjy has a working vocabulary of about 500 words, including 210 different nouns, 175 verbs
or verbals, 61 adjectives, 37 adverbs, 25 prepositions and 13 conjunctions of one sort or another (A Critical
Casebook, 69-70). Though mute, Benjy—as a thinking/speaking character in a novel—needs a vocabulary if
he is to express himself at all, and his working vocabulary would signify that it is very limited indeed. While
not always following the rules of grammar, he does not speak gibberish, nor use baby-talk; sentences flow
naturally, if often idiosyncratically, but with the effect of a sound track whose editing has lacked key transitions,revealing an openness to listen and absorb the language of the people around him. “Things seem to reveal
themselves of their own accord,” Noel Polk remarks, “unchosen, uncontrived, as if to an innocent eye unwillingor unable to impose any imaginative pressure on them…” (New Essays on “The Sound and the Fury,”79). In
addition, as Ineke Bockting points out, when Benjy speaks without transitive constructions (“‘Here, caddie.’ Hehit.” [3]), it is easy to sense that most, though sometimes not all, of the linguistic elements convey meaning,
usually devoid, however, of notions of responsibility, authority, incentive, submission or cause and effect (45).
Finally, because of the haphazard nature of his discourse, one that repeats words from the past, but which do
not originate from Benjy’s memory (can we say he really has one?), the reader is beckoned to reread his section
after completing the entire novel to rediscover what has always been there—thus intensifying his or her
appreciation of the novel’s brilliance.

Some examples of Benjy’s autism based on his language:
1. Benjy’s use of echolalia can be linked at times to the difficulty he has in expressing needs, particularly hisneed for Caddy.
Benjy has a remarkable ability to repeat almost unconsciously exactly what others have said. He canrepeat Latin correctly (“Et ego in arcadia” [44]), something Quentin had difficulty doing (“reduct[i]o [ad]absurdum” [76]) and write the Mississippi dialect with convincing authority: “ricklickshun” (recollection),

10“gizzle” (gizzard), and “rinktum” (rectum) (295, 65, 70). The most striking example of echolalia occurs after
his name change, when Benjy started sleeping alone. Mrs. Compson insisted that her side of the family was asgood as the Compson side, and that Uncle Maury suffered from bad health, to which Mr. Compson replied:“Bad health is the primary reason for all life. Created by disease, within putrefaction, into decay” (44). Benjy
could not have either initiated this type of thinking nor chosen and structured this type of vocabulary. Though
there is likelihood that Benjy might have overheard Mr. Compson speak these words to Quentin when Quentin
returned home for Christmas in 1909 from Harvard (and subsequently associated them with Uncle Maury’s
sickness), it is more likely that he recalls them and places them in their original context where they fit.
Though Benjy’s ability to repeat words and phrases exactly without distortion can be disingenuous, hecannot make distinctions even with fairly ordinary words, such as associating the action of the golfers with thegame of golf itself. Although golfers and golf balls have distinct identities, Benjy does not favor one over theother. Rather he allows a word he repeats to be as it is. Since he does not understand the difference between“caddie” and “Caddy,” uncontrollable floodgates of emotion are released when he hears the word “caddie,” ashe once again longs for his missing sister, a response beyond Luster’s comprehension: “‘Hush up.’ ‘What hemoaning about now.’ ‘Lawd knows.’ Luster said. ‘Hush up.’ ‘He just starts like that. He been at it all morning.
Cause it is his birthday, I reckon’” (16-17). Elisabeth Hill and Uta Frith note that when a group of autistic
people were tested using homographs (words with one spelling but two meanings, such as tears in the eye or ina piece of fabric), the results were that individuals with autism “did not appear to integrate the sentence context
when performing this task…” (285).
2. Benjy repeats words or phrases in place of normal, responsive language.
When Benjy and Caddy were delivering Uncle Maury’s letter to Mrs. Patterson, Benjy repeats a phrase
rather than replying directly to Caddy’s concern about the grunting pigs: “The ground was hard. We climbed
the fence, where the pigs were grunting and snuffing. I expect they’re sorry because one of them go killedtoday, Caddy said. The ground was hard, churned and knotted” (4). In two other examples, Benjy resorts torepeating certain words in staccato fashion, rather than giving a full response to the nature of the situation at
hand: “She was trying to climb the fence. Give it to me, she said, Give it to me. Mr Patterson climbed the fence.
He took the letter” (14). “When she got up she began to splash water on Quentin and Quentin splashed water

11
on Caddy…and then Quentin and Caddy began to splash water at Versh” (18). Later, when Caddy and Fronyare discussing death, Benjy does respond to them, but deals with the topic obliquely and repetitiously: “Thebones rounded out of the ditch, where the dark vines were in the black ditch, into the moonlight, like some ofthe shapes had stopped. Then they all stopped and it was dark, and when I stopped to start again I could hear
Mother, and feet walking fast away, I could smell it. Then the room came, but my eyes went shut. I didn’t stop.
I could smell it” [repetitious words: ditch/ditch; stopped/stopped/stopped/stop; dark/dark; smell/smell (33-34)].

Some examples of Benjy’s autism based on his behavior:
1. Crying and having tantrums for no apparent reason.
Countless critics have commented on Benjy’s habit of crying, since it is one of his dominantpersonality traits. André Bleikasten has written, for example, “His cries and whining—made haunting throughthe repetition of ‘crying’ , ‘wailing’, ‘whimpering’, ‘slobbering’, ‘bellowing’—supply what might be called thebasic soundtrack of the section. Never articulated as speech, scarcely human, Benjy’s cries are the abject andpathetic expression of his nameless and unnamable suffering” (The Most Splendid Failure, 189). When asked
what he does when Benjy starts “bellering,” Luster simply replies, “‘I whips him’” (15). Two other examples
give a good indication of this pervasive trait, which can be triggered at almost any moment, though, admittedly,in these cases there are extenuating circumstances (alcohol and fear). Yet, Benjy seems out of control in bothcases. The first occurred during Caddie’s wedding reception: “I wasn’t crying, but I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t
crying, but the ground wasn’t still, and then I was crying” (20). The second when he sensed that Charlie was
Caddy’s boyfriend, and thus a potential threat to him: “Charlie came and put his hands on Caddy and I cried
more. I cried loud” (47).

2. Little or no eye contact.
First, there is never a suggestion in the novel that Benjy cannot hear others speaking or addressing him,
as is evident when he follows Caddy’s directive to put his hands in his pockets as they deliver the letter from
Uncle Maury to Mrs. Patterson at Christmastime. Second, he seems comfortable looking at certain individuals,
such as Caddy, and having Caddy look at him. “Caddy was still looking at me….She stopped against the wall,12
looking at me and I cried and she went on and I came on, crying, and she shrank against the wall, looking atme” (69). On the other hand, he is alienated from his mother and takes no direction from her, especially when
she directs him to take the cushion away from her bed. “‘Look at me.’ Mother said. ‘Benjamin,’ she said. She
took my face in her hands and turned it to hers” (64).

3. Obsessive attachment to objects.
Benjy has collected a number of objects that remind him of Caddy, such as her slipper and a cushion.
In addition, he carries around a jimson weed, here associated with death. Like many autistics, he takes notice offire and brightness: bright grass (3, 4), bright shapes (11, 53, 57, 64, 75), and the box full of jewelry (“stars”[41]). Finally, certain repeated objects or places serve as facile metonyms: bird, fence, flag, flowers, garden,
grass, mirror, pastures, shadows, table (where the golfers sink their balls), trees.

4. Extreme passivity.
There is hardly a moment on April 7, 1928, when Benjy is not led around by Luster, who lethargicallycomplains that his role in life is to shepherd Benjy about. Benjy acquiesces for the most part, never presenting
an alternative on his own. Dilsey is so upset about Luster’s apparent inattentiveness that she even considers
having Versh strike Luster with a stick (57-58).

5. Non-responsive to verbal cues.
Tired of the monotonous routine, Benjy at times does not respond well to authority or quasi-authority
figures. “I kept telling you to hush, Luster said. What’s the matter now, Jason said. ‘He just trying hisself.’
Luster said. ‘That the way he been going all day’” (65). “Hush” becomes such a constant refrain in the novel,
as Ted Roggenbuck noted in the title to his essay, that the reader might feel that it is addressed to him or her,suggesting that one needs to quiet down in reading this novel, and not speed through it.
6. No real fear of danger.
Benjy never really shows fear as he delivers the letter from Uncle Maury to Mrs. Patterson; he justbecomes upset and cries, even though Mr. Patterson thought a murder might take place. “‘Maury said he’s

13going to shoot the scoundrel.’ Father said. I told him he better not mention it to Patterson before hand’” (43).
Another time, he touches the hot oven door, never realizing or fearing that it might burn him. “I put my handout to where the fire had been,” he says (58). Similarly, he does not sense he will get frostbite if he does not
put his hands in his pockets, though Caddy might have slightly exaggerated the effects of a Mississippi winter(12).
While Benjy does not fit neatly into every category for judging whether or not a person is autistic—as if
Faulkner knew himself—there is sufficient linguistic and behavioral evidence to begin considering a positive
judgment.
A Medical Evaluation of Benjy Compson
By the time of Benjy’s 33rd birthday on April 7, 1928, he appears, from all accounts in the text,
abnormally large compared to his family and others with whom he comes into contact. According to theCompson Appendix, Benjy, born in 1895, is described as three times Luster’s size and twice his age, though
Luster is more likely 17 or 18 (1141).5 Benjy recognizes his size when he says matter-of-factly (and in a
fashion the reader will soon realize has important symbolical overtones), “My shadow was higher than Luster’son the fence” (4). Dilsey presents a softer, more sympathetic image of Benjy’s adult composure: “Ben sat in
the chair, his big soft hands dangling between his knees, moaning faintly” (285). Yet, the most startlingly
image of Benjy is recorded in the fourth section of the novel by the narrator who relates what Dilsey perceived(a writer-within-the-observer): “She heard the feet cross the dining room, then the swing door opened andLuster entered, followed by 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 andhairless; 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 daguerrotypes. His eyes were clear, of thepale sweet blue of cornflowers, his thick mouth hung open, drooling a little” (274). The narrator uses two exact
words he had employed in depicting Dilsey in the opening of the first section (“particles” and “dropsical”),
which show an authorial identification between these two characters, implying perhaps that both have somehuman qualities within them that should not be overlooked or discounted (265).

14
Since it should be remarked that Faulkner rarely feels comfortable allowing one image or one
identification to carry the full weight of an observation, he sometimes shifts or transposes one image to another,thus revealing ongoing relationships whose realities exist not in some external world rooted in objective
metaphysics but in the evocative power of language. From his perspective, Jason says that Benjy looks like acow (253), in this case reminiscent of Dewey Dell Bundren in As I Lay Dying, though one should not discountIke Snopes’ amorous fascination with a cow in The Hamlet. The narrator states additionally that Benjy
resembles a “trained bear,” an animal that would assume more and more cosmic mythological importance in“The Bear,” thus linking, in curious ways, the fates of these two creatures (274). In general, however, Benjy’s
physical appearance in the present has little variation. On her way back from the Easter services, to cite but one
example, Dilsey describes Benjy as shambling behind her as they return to the Compson residence (297, forother descriptions of Benjy, see 9, 285, 315). Benjy’s hulking physique serves to make his movements
awkward and plodding, so unlike what is taking place in his mind.
In describing Benjy’s body in the Dilsey section, François Pitavy notes that “here is obviously anemblematic body, whose coherence signifies that of the subject possessed solely by itself—and thus, ultimately,
dispossessed” (100). In brief, Benjy appears on his birthday as a hulking, simple-minded, not evidently
schizophrenic, aging Neanderthal with a drooping mouth whose saliva he cannot control; he has the appearanceof an obedient and trained animal whose blue eyes, at times, reveal an unplanned, tranquil inner peace. One
might fear Benjy’s bulk, but be charmed, at the same time, by his apparent timidity whenever a blank, dazed,
and melancholic expression stretches across his face. When his need for routine is respected, Benjy’s
cornflower-blue, tranquil eyes reveal an untroubled existence: “The broken flower drooped over Ben’s fist andhis eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left toright, post to tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place” (321). When order, based onfamiliarity and repetition, is re-established, in this case as the surrey’s goes to the right around the monument,
Benjy’s world finally returns to the familiar, “as cornice and façade smoothly once more from left toright”(321). One can almost see Benjy looking into a distance that will remain, for him, marvelously static,
providing the novel with a type of closure that could, alas, erupt again should his “normal” world change in theslightest. (Winthrop Tilley suggests that the carriage might have gone to the left of the monument when Benjy

15
was taken earlier to Jackson to be castrated, providing an explanation of his horror of going in this direction
again [376]). The basic question needs to be asked: can we find medical answers that explain Benjy’s
abnormally psychological behavioral patterns?
As a starting point, it is worth asking what accounts for Benjy’s general physical appearance,
especially his dead-looking, hairless skin, unusual for a 33-year-old male, unless his body had undergone
uncharacteristic hormonal changes. In addition to a seamless parade of traumatic familial situations in his life,
which undoubtedly had psychosomatic effects, two medical episodes in Benjy’s life, possibly linked to fetal
alcoholic syndrome, provide some insight into his physical appearance: a possible bout with measles and his
castration.6 One can discount Versh’s description of Benjy as a “bluegum,” here a metaphorical reference to
Negroes whose blue gums give them strange characteristics, though there could be an underlying hint that
Benjy at birth lacked sufficient oxygen in his system, thus partially accounting for his mental retardation (69).
Caddy infers that the only childhood disease Benjy might have had, along with his siblings, as well as T.P. andFrony, is measles (38):“This is where we have the measles” (73; emphasis ours). Caddy probably would nothave mentioned this unless she thought that Benjy had some recollection of having had this illness.
Later, after her wedding on April 25, 1910 (she was 18 then), Caddy goes away on her honeymoon.
Benjy, thinking she is still attending school, desperately searches for her by the fence along the Compson
property. While some in Jefferson believe that he was actually pursuing the Burgess girl, with the unlikely
consequence of raping her, he is subsequently sent to the Mississippi State Insane Asylum and castrated. In his
section Benjy describes the episode, although it is very hard to tell what exactly is going on; we do know
however that he was preoccupied with searching for an explanation for his actions, which are directly linked totrying to his efforts to remove the ether mask during the 1913 castration operation: “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 to stop and I tried to get out. I tried to get it off of my face, but thebright 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” (53). Rather than focusing on Benjy’s surgery in this passage, Arthur Brown

16
would have us focus on the boundary situations in Benjy’s life: “The fence acts as a necessary boundary not
only between Benjy and the pasture but between Benjy and us. As a physical reality for Benjy and a fictional
construction for us, it establishes the difference between his world and ours. At the same time, it is the point ofcontact between his dramatic condition and our own. We make this contact in the presence of death. The
shadows on the fence, the exclusion it marks from the garden, the nail Benjy snags on the instigates thesubstitution of the past for the present—disrupting our ability to follow along and at the same time
materializing Caddy’s absence—everything to do with the fence intensifies the agency of death” (414). Years
later, on Holy Saturday 1928, Benjy, using the “I” pronoun, which shows his primitive form of self-identity, isaware of his bodily change due to the castration: “I got undressed and I looked at myself, and I began to cry.
Hush, Luster said. Looking for them aint going to do no good. They’re gone. You keep on like this, and we aint
going have you no more birthday” (73). With less psychological interpretation, Jason describes what happened
to Benjy, linking it directly to the gate scene: “I often wondered what he’d be thinking about, down there at thegate, watching the girls going home from school, trying to want something he couldn’t even remember hedidn’t and couldn’t want any longer. And what he’d think when they’d be undressing him and he’d happened
to take a look at himself and begin to cry like he’d do” (253). Clearly Benjy realizes that his body—andspirit—have undergone diminishment, though he, unlike the community, will never suspect its full impact.
Gary Taylor and others have observed that eunuchs, with a decrease in levels of testosterone, often
experience a regrettable transformation of their bodies, notably in their metabolism and a reduction of muscle
mass, which means a concomitant increase in weight, so evident in Benjy (174). Sometimes body hair
becomes softer and finer after castration, with the illusion that it has disappeared altogether. Curiously
castration can prevent male pattern baldness, if it is done before the hair is lost; it does not, however, decrease
hair growth once male pattern baldness takes place. Bone size does not shrink, which partially explains why
Benjy has not diminished in size over the years, though eunuchs can experience a decrease in bone density. Nordoes the voice loose it pitch and go higher, if castration is done after puberty has set in. With a dash of cruel wit,
Jason calls Benjy the “Great American Gelding,” after having thought previously of the Army’s need ofgeldings, or perhaps mules (263; see also 196). Jason reinforces a definite connection between the gate incident
and the castration. “I’ll reckon you’ll send him to Jackson, now. If Mr Burgess don’t shoot him first” (52), an

17
observation echoed by his brother Quentin: “He needs to be sent to Jackson, Quentin said. How can anybody
live in a house like this” (69)? Jason also sardonically notes that he cannot afford “a kitchen full of niggers tofeed and robbing the state asylum of its star freshman” (230). Undoubtedly, castration would have altered
Benjy’s physical appearance, but other than what has been noted, determining the specific degree isproblematic, because Faulkner has not supplied us with any of Benjy’s recorded medical data.
At the time that Faulkner was writing this novel in 1928, the State of Mississippi, after years ofdeliberation throughout the entire South, passed statutes concerning sterilization. Earlier in the century, during
the “Golden Age of American Eugenics,” as it was euphemistically termed, Mississippi gradually built
facilities for those it thought might benefit society by some form of eugenics, especially for whites, though not
exclusively, since white governmental officials, aided by strict anti-miscegenation statutes, felt that the black
community should take care of its own feebleminded (see Larson, 93, 116-18, 123; subsequent references will
be to this book). Because of the focus on segregating whites from black, the total patient population in suchmental asylums in the Deep South by 1922 was only 345, as compared with 45,000 in other parts of the nation(91). The aim of the eugenicists, contrary to those who advocated personal freedom and equality, was toprevent by sterilization and vasectomy, for the most part, certain individuals from reproducing and thustransmitting their immoral, and sometimes criminal, behavior.7 One mental health expert in Mississippi
declared in 1912: “The societies of eugenics are trying to teach us, under the Mendelian law, how we may dofor the human race…what stock breeders are doing in evolving thoroughbred horses” (2). The sterilization
debate became so heated, with many constituents adding their disparate views, that in 1927 the U.S. Supreme
Court approved the procedure, leading to the enactment of new or revised sterilization statutes in 17 states(119).
In 1848, the Mississippi Legislature appropriated funds for the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum,
which opened in 1855 at the present site of the Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson and which was
subsequently renamed in 1900 the Mississippi State Insane Hospital. (It was relocated to Whitefield in 1935
and renamed the Mississippi State Hospital.) Unfortunately, the archives in the Mississippi Department ofArchives and History in Jackson have only the hospital’s admission records, but no policy books. (The archivist
could provide no further information about the hospital’s holdings.)8 But one can gather a definite impression

18of the vision behind this movement. Alabama was the first of the states in the Deep South to engage ineugenics. In 1901, John E. Purdon, a spokesperson for a local medical group, reported in his address to theMedical Association of the State of Alabama on the “proven fact” that criminals, the insane, and epileptics, inaddition others having any manifestations of inherited and degraded nerve tissue, should become the charges ofthe state in order to restrain the procreative powers of the unfit. “Emasculation,” he declared, “is the simplest
and most perfect plan that can be adapted to secure the perfection of the race” (50; see also 116). When
Theodore Bilbo resumed the governorship of Mississippi in 1928, he made sure that his state enacted the firstcomprehensive eugenic sterilization law in the Deep South, though castration was forbidden by Section 6957 of
this statute; by the middle and late 1930’s, this law affected 500 patients per year (115, 122). Section 6907
states that “mere idiots” shall not be accepted into Mississippi’s institutions for the insane (Tilley, 377). As
compulsory sterilization became a service to the state in the same year that Faulkner was writing The Soundand the Fury, he would have been aware of its impact on the political atmosphere of white Southerners.
Even if he had no specific evidence that castrations were occurring in Jackson in 1913, Faulkner could
easily have imagined so in retrospect, and, as a result, put Benjy’s operation into what he would haveconsidered a proper time framework. (Faulkner’s depiction of the castration of Joe Christmas by Percy Grimmin Light in August [1932] is undoubtedly the most horrific scene in the book.) After Quentin took off with her
boyfriend from the carnival, Jason persuaded his mother to send Benjy to Jackson a second time. At his
mother’s insistence, Benjy was brought back home and in less than two years he burned down the family homeand died in the fire (see The Mansion, 322). Since the final disturbing image we have of Darl Bundren in As I
Lay Dying is of him being taken by train to the mental asylum in Jackson, one can only imagine, had they met,
what Darl would have said to Benjy and how Benjy would have reacted. An incredible interchange! Whenentering into the white/black world of sleeping on the operating table, Benjy, in one key moment in his life, losta tremendous source of his masculinity, about which he could not articulate, but one he terribly missed.

Non-Supportive and Supportive Interventions of Benjy by the Compson and Gibson Families
The Autism Society of America acknowledges, in order for an autistic person to grow developmentally,
there is an intimate link between the time one is diagnosed as being autistic and time when an autistic person

19
receives supportive intervention: “Research indicates that early identification is associated with dramatically
better outcomes for individuals on the autism spectrum. The earlier a child is diagnosed, the earlier the childcan begin benefiting from one of the many specialized intervention approaches to treatment and education.”
Time and time again, physical therapists and physicians stress the importance of early intervention for someone
learning to adapt to this disorder. Without such intervention, both physical and moral, the individual often
declines into a world that is sometimes impenetrable. Benjy’s two families, one white and one black, initially
coexist with each other, though by Easter week of 1928, and it would seem for many years before, the Gibson
family has almost totally embraced Benjy, as the fading aura Southern aristocracy becomes a long-forgotten
memory. While the Compson-Bascomb family can trace its roots back to the Civil War and before, they
cohabitate in the present time with a black family who perform their menial tasks of survival.
Mrs. Compson, narcissistic and hypochondriacal, is absolutely ashamed of having a five-year old sonwhom she believes to be mentally retarded. It would seem that Mrs. Compson had denied Benjy’s lack ofintellectual development for a number of years after his birth, perhaps praying that it would change with time.9
For her, Benjy is a two-fold “punishment”—for her sins and for putting aside her pride and marrying a man
who held himself above her (103). Likewise, Frony, Dilsey’s daughter, is embarrassed by Benjy. As she walks
to the Easter service, she says to her mother: “‘I wish you wouldn’t keep on bringing him to church,
mammy….Folks talkin’” (290). The novel provides little professional or anecdotal evidence, either positively
or negatively, of the various stages of Benjy’s developmental growth, though we have first-hand evidence that
Benjy was incapable of speech; instead he resorts to primal bouts of bellowing and moaning, not expressive somuch of human need as of human loss. Roskus says, as Dilsey is trying to get Quentin ready for bed, “‘They
aint no luck going to be on no place where one of they own chillen’s name aint never spoke’” (31). “Justsound,” the novel’s narrator comments, “It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for
an instant by a conjunction of planets” (288). Except for his black companions, particularly Luster, Benjy has
no friends, has never had any formal education, and has most likely not traveled away from home. We neverfind out if he has ever seen a doctor, though we know from As I Lay Dying that Doc Peabody lived and worked
in the area. While the death and funeral of Damuddy temporarily change Benjy’s play time with his siblings, hemost likely thought of Damuddy’s funeral, as did Caddy, as a party of some sort. But more is at stake20
concerning Damuddy’s funeral: “The conflation of Damuddy’s funeral, Caddy’s muddying, the wedding and
Mr. Compson’s funeral confirms the fact that Caddy can be remembered only as already contaminated by theprocess of change and impending absence. So far as I can tell, Benjy never remembers a moment of untroubled,
blissful intimacy with Caddy” (The Play of Faulkner’s Language, 70). Certainly Caddy’s promiscuity
envelopes Benjy, though he cannot articulate or imagine its significance, except for a profound sense of loss
when she leaves home or disguises it by putting on perfume. In addition, Benjy seems oblivious to Quentin’ssuicidal tendencies and neurotic, incestuous obsessions, observing just the effects they had on the members of
his family. Jason’s flippant preoccupation with money and women and his disregard of his mother are only
tangentially present to Benjy as he goes about searching for some quarters to go to the local circus. Accepting
and unchallenging, Benjy, in the midst of incredible drama, dutifully does for the most part what is expected ofhim.
In short, except for the affection shown to him up to her late teens by Caddy, clearly a mothersubstitute, and the diligent care given him by Dilsey and the indifferent treatment of him by Luster, Benjy
remains emotionally marginalized from his family, who have given him barely more than a heritage marked byabsence and death, neither of which he cognitively grasps. Uncle Maury assures his sister that Benjy has noconcept of death: “‘It’s better so. Let him be unaware of bereavement until he has to’”—a variation of Mrs.
Compson lament: “Poor little boy. He doesn’t know. He cant even realise’” (197). Though the immediate
landscape of the Compson household has little impact on Benjy’s mindscape, three situations in this novel (atleast) reveal moments of familial non-supportive and supportive intervention that would have impacted Benjy’s
mental condition for worse or for better: his name change, sleeping alone for the first time, and listening toReverend Shegog’s Easter sermon.

Benjy’s name change occurs after his mother, overcome with guilt when she tries to explain its import
to Benjy and Caddy as they sit in the kitchen, refuses to accept her son as he is. Quentin, who died on June 2,
1910, vividly remembered this name change in a comment by one of the unidentified members of the Gibson
family: “‘What they change his name for then if aint trying to help his luck’” (89). Nor does Dilsey understandthis change of name especially as Benjy has not “wore out the name he was born with yet” (58). Names for her

21
do not either bring good luck or take it away. Still and all, Benjy is robbed of his identity as a member of thelarger Compson-Bascomb family and relegated to the last of the tribes of Israel. Benjy’s new name refers to
Benjamin, the 12th and last son of Jacob, whose wife Rachel died in childbirth. Fittingly, Jacob’s son was
called Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow,” but later Jacob changed it to Benjamin “son of my right hand” or “son of
the south.” When Joseph, one of Benjamin’s brothers, who became a political leader in Egypt, put his brothers
to the test concerning their love for Benjamin, all the brothers united in support of one another. What is worth
noticing is that Benjamin is the last of the 12 tribes of Israel and that it is through Jacob’s line that Jesus cantrace his ancestry (Gospel of Matthew: 1:1-2). Not only has Mrs. Compson denied her son, but she has abused
one of the important tasks of a parent, made all the more terrible because she did it to a five-year-old childwithout his consent. As the years progress, Benjy will be forced to accept the sound of his new name, but notinterpret its religious significance. In the novel, Benjy in fact never uses his own name. Ironically, his namechange, framed by childish squabbling between Jason and Caddy and as viewed by Benjy through a mirror, isenfolded into a conversation that takes place on his 33rd birthday. Mrs. Compson insists that her two children
with nicknames be called by their proper names: Benjamin and Candace. No younger members of the Compson
or Gibson families pay any heed to this rule.

By the time he is 13, Benjy starts sleeping alone, initially in Uncle Maury’s room, who is still alive,
though probably sleeping elsewhere because of a black eye he received from Mr. Patterson. In any case, most
likely these roommates had two separate beds. Because Benjy was traumatized by sleeping alone for the firsttime without his older sister, Caddy, wearing her bathrobe, jumps into bed with Benjy, though she lies between
the spread and the blanket—in effect not physically touching Benjy’s body. When the darkness of the room
came, Benjy notes “Caddy smelled like trees” again (44). His eventual separation from her deepened his senseof rejection and loss as the pseudo-mother/son bond was gradually weakened. “Caddy took me to Mother’schair and Mother took my face in her hands and then she held me against her. “‘You’re not a poor baby. Are
you. Are you. You’ve got your Caddy. Haven’t you got your Caddy’” (9). Caddy, indeed, has asked one of thenovel’s key questions. It is good to recall that, once married, Caddy ultimately abandons Benjy and denies him
her loving presence. He intuited this when she first lost her virginity, but could not give a name to it. Tragically,

22
Benjy never transfers his love for Caddy to her infant daughter, who grew up, at least in her teen-age years, in
the Compson household.

It should be said that Benjy’s world, however, is not one of total losses and rejections; a specificepisode in the novel beautifully indicates Dilsey’s enduring love and concern for Benjy. Unfortunately, it
comes late in his life, during the present time, and thus cannot serve as a concrete example of early supportive
intervention. At the same time, it shows that deep within Benjy is a place he has reserved for moments of peaceand stability, seen at times in tranquility of his blues eyes. The slow build-up to the Easter service, filled at firstwith a description of Dilsey, is as refreshing as the seemingly objective, almost shocking, description she isabout to give of Benjy. It reaches its fulfillment in the sermon by the Reverend Shegog, a substitute preacher
who had been imported, much to the chagrin of some of the parishioners, from Saint Louis. As Dilsey, whose“expression is at once fatalistic and of a child’s astonished disappointment,” steps out of her doorway to checkthe weather, we sense the world, at least her world symbolized by the five raucous jaybirds, is about to undergoa change, some recommitment to the values she hold so dear as she prepares for the Easter services (265).
While the plot-line advances with its mundane twists and turns, the narrator’s elaborate and brocade style at the
beginning of this section alerts the reader to be ready for some transforming moment. In fugue-like fashion,
her second exit from her cabin reveals her in “the maroon cape and the purple gown,” with elbow-length soiled
white gloves—her own version of the habiliment of a royal person (287). Once inside the church, theparishioners could not help but stare at the imported preacher’s “wizened black face like a small, aged monkey”(293). But his physique does not fool Dilsey, never deceived by outward appearance. The preacher’s voice
captivates the entire congregation, waking them from a collective indifference. Though supposedly an Easter
sermon, Reverend Shegog relates part of the Nativity story (alpha) with the life, crucifixion, and resurrection ofJesus the Christ (omega) but with such force and power that Dilsey sits bold upright with her hand on Benjy’s
knee. “Two tears slid down her fallen cheeks, in and out of the myriad coruscation of immolation andabnegation of time” (295). Benjy becomes at that precise moment like the suffering baby Jesus, whose “pomammy” needs “de salvation en de word of God” (296). Believers, the preacher maintains, will rise from thedead if they have “de blood en de ricklickshun of de Lamb.” And then the epiphany occurs: “In the midst of

23
the voices and the hands, Ben sat, rapt in his sweet blue glaze.” Dilsey says in a mystical vein, “I seed debeginning, en now I sees de endin” (297). As their normal patterns of life continue, Dilsey in the present
moment accepts the saving power of the words and actions of the person at the center of the Christmas andEaster events. In effect, she reaffirms for the reader that the voice of the preacher, like the voice of the novelistor the poet, provides an entrance into the holiest of mysteries that even Benjy, transfixed in this sacred space,might just grasp and repeat later to himself, as he is so capable of doing, recalling this moment as one ofsupreme happiness. Most of all, this episode symbolically suggests that Benjy, whom Frony infers has attended
church services with Dilsey in the past, has had similar experiences in the past, precisely because he knows
how to react to it.

From what we know from the text, Benjy did not have early supportive intervention that would haveallowed him to alter his behavior so that he could become more socially responsive over the years—in fact, theevidence is to the contrary. In addition, the church services he attended with the Gibsons no doubt gave himsome type of solace, but his passive participation in these services never sufficiently pulled him out of his
autistic world so that he could respond to others and comment one way or another on the nature of thisexperience. Most likely born autistic—and noted to be totally different from others when three years old andthen exhibiting the linguistic and behavioral traits of an autistic person as he grew older—Benjy incorporates
many character flaws and human deficiencies that render him of little consequence to the Compson family.
Dilsey, in her wisdom, judges otherwise, thus cautioning us to reflect on our understanding of what it means to
be a human being. Even if she had known the word autism and was consciously aware of the ways thisparticular neurological disorder affected Benjy, Dilsey probably would not have dealt any differently with
Benjy than the way she did. At the same time, she might have had consolation in knowing that individuals with
autism, though they suffer from a condition that affects their entire bodies, not just their minds, have insights,
feelings, and capabilities. These individuals are “trying to say” they are extraordinary. They want to speak out
and reveal their concerns and acumen, even when their behavior makes others in their company uncomfortable.

24
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___.

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“The Bear.” Go Down, Moses. New York: Vintage, 1990. 181-315. Print.

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25
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1

The authors are most grateful for the wise counsel of Michelle Rowe, Ph.D., director of the Kinney Center on
Autism Education and Support at the Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. They also wish toacknowledge the insights of two Saint Joseph’s alumnae, Lauren Barnhardt and Molly McCarthy, concerning
the possibility that Benjy might have autism.
2

As James B. Meriwether explains, Faulkner, for a new edition of The Sound and the Fury to be published byRandom House, wrote an introduction in the summer of 1933 that exists in several partial and complete
manuscript and typescript drafts, one of which was published in The Southern Review (Autumn 1972).
Meriwether then published in 1974 in A Faulkner Miscellany, a longer, quite different version, “and it is atleast possible that it was written later, rather than earlier, than the one that has been published” (156). See
also his The Textual History of “The Sound and the Fury.”
3

A form of autism, called Asperger’s Syndrome, also first recognized in the 1940’s, is not usually associatedwith delayed language, cognitive development, or social self-help skills. Those with Asperger’s Syndrome aresaid to have different, but not defective, ways of thinking, often expressed in various forms of creativity—
certainly not evident in Benjy.
4
Harold Bloom’s depiction of Benjy has elements of unacceptable and too-easy dichotomies that, nevertheless,beg for larger contextualization: “To be immersed into Benjy’s perspective, which reduces everything to an
unqualified opposition (Caddy and not-Caddy), is our proper introduction to the Compson experience of life.

27

As in the novel’s first scene, the mental landscape is without middle ground or nuance–there is only this sideof the fence or that side of the fence. Yet Faulkner consistently evokes a luxuriant polysemous wealth. Asidefrom Benjy’s lack of normal organic development, his mental processes differ from those of the rest of thefamily only in degree, not in kind of simplification. In a sense his schematic is larger than life, but it shows
what is in the life” (61).
5

We are following in general the time sequencing as determined by Polk and Ross in Reading Faulkner: “TheSound and the Fury.”
6

What triggers autism has been a subject of much controversy: “Many of the heated debates that occur inthe public domain relate to putative environmental triggers [for autism], among them the so far
unsubstantiated claim that measles, mumps and rubella vaccination is a contributory cause. Similar claims
relate to the measles virus in conjunction with gastric inflammatory disease” (Hill and Frith, 282).
7

At times, it is not always clear from general reports and comments in Sex, Race, and Science, a classic
reference text in this field, whether castration is assumed under the category of sterilization, though in someinstances it probably is, especially when murderers, pyro-maniacs, sexual perverts, thieves, the insane, and thementally retarded are lumped into a general sterilization category, though most likely those whose activities
threatened the common good were treated more harshly at times (45). Easily excluded were immigrants whoreportedly came from inferior stock.
8

Reported to us by Hunter Cole of Blandon, Mississippi.

9Mrs. Compson makes no reference to Benjy having the noticeable features of a Down Syndrome child or ofbeing deaf, as Luster says (49).

*********
Patrick Samway, S.J., is professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Gentry Silver is a graduate student in history at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.