Benjy Compson: A Diagnosis

The Sound And The Fury's first section is told from the point of view of Benjy Compson, youngest Compson child and mentally incapable of anything beyond a three-year-old's mental reach. Faulkner does not say much about Benjy's mental handicap. Faulkner might have done this so that we just focus on its existence rather than its details. Or, Faulkner may have written The Sound and the Fury in a time when not much was known about mental disabilities. Either way, Faulkner has not talked much about Benjy's medical condition, and it was one of the first things in the novel that intrigued me. Benjy displays symptoms of both mental retardation and autism.

Benjy's biggest disability is his peculiar way of grasping the concept of time. His narration is told non-linearly—it's interrupted by many flashbacks. Mentally retarded children have trouble thinking logically, therefore, chronologically. Mental retardation diagnosis fits in this characteristic of Benjy, along with many others.

Another interesting quality about Benjy's mental disability is that he is not able to understand cause and effect. To him, people do not take items, items merely "went away", and he certainly does not understand why. Having trouble discerning cause and effect is a key diagnosis for mental retardation.

Benjy Compson cries when he senses change, remembers Caddy, or becomes confused. His tuned sense to others around him signal not mental retardation, but autism. The brain has shut down most of itself, but the parts that are still working, are working in overdrive.

But Benjy’s problem could be someone’s fault. Mrs. Compson could have consumed alcohol during the pregnancy, caused fetal alcohol syndrome with Benjy. The main effect of fetal alcohol syndrome is permanent and nonsubsequencial central nervous system damage, especially the brain. The developing brain cells and structures are underdeveloped, creating a myriad of cognitive and functional disabilities. Fetal alcohol exposure is the leading known cause of mental retardation in the Western world. If Benjy had fetal alcohol syndrome, he would be severely physically underdeveloped. This coincides nicely with Faulkner’s lack of physical description about Benjy. His brain would be structurally a lot smaller. His functional impairments fit those of fetal alcohol syndrome: learning disabilities, distorted social perception, lack of communication skills, memory impairment.

Benjy Compson could also have Down syndrome. Faulkner does not physically describe Benjy’s appearance or his mental disability. Perhaps he wants to leave the extent of the disability to the reader’s imagination. Down syndrome would make sense in terms of Benjy’s mental retardation and his limited perception of the world. Down syndrome is influenced by maternal age. While there is not a large age range between Quentin and Benjy (four years), perhaps Mrs. Compson had Quentin when she was 31 and Benjy when she was 35. However, Down syndrome has a specific facial appearance—the eyes are closer together, the face is generally fatter—that makes it easily diagnosed at birth or very shortly later. It is specifically pointed out in The Sound at the Fury that the Compson family realized Benjy was different when he was five years old. Even though the literature, technology, and general knowledge of diagnosing mental disabilities was not as good in the late 1800s, Down syndrome is a disease that one can definitely detect by age 2. Also, Down syndrome is mental retardation only to an extent. Most people with Down syndrome can talk and function to a greater extent than Benjy.

Benjy’s retardation is unusual because though he can only absorb visual and auditory “cues” from his surroundings and not interpret them, he does have an acute sensitivity to order and chaos. He is so used to the order of things that he knows when anything is wrong or out of place. So, as bizarre as it sounds, the mentally retarded character of The Sound and the Fury is one of two characters that can really notice the Compson family’s decline, through he cannot understand it.

Benjy Compson’s disability is probably nothing particularly specific. William Faulkner has it this way partially so that Benjy’s made-up disability will serve to the plot and the storytelling of the novel, but also so that the reader can interpret the mental disability for himself or herself.

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Love is a Disease

Some thoughts:

- Love is a sickness. Or so Gabriel García Marquez convyes in Love in the Time of Cholera. The protagonist, in his sickness, becomes his own antagonist. Florentino Ariza is sick with love, and the symptoms are dangerous. His mind is crazy with his longing for Fermina. He is no longer rational, he acts solely on his feelings. He is literally plauged by his passion for Fermina. He stalks her, watches her house, even when she’s not there. No rational person with intelligence like Florentino would exhibit such obsessive behavior unless they were under a serious illness. He can think of nothing else besides her. Though he is smart and successful, at work he cannot even do the simplest of tasks, such as writing a business letter. He is spending so much energy and drama on the person who might not even be the right one for him (though he is convinced differently). Florentino becomes so physically ill from lovesickness that his godfather at first thinks Florentino has cholera. His madness caused by his undying passion for Fermina transcends from psychological to physical when he eats flows and drinks cologne, then vomits it, all to know the scent of Fermina. He is sick in his heart (figuratively) which becomes sickness in his stomach. His emotions have made him lose rationality, and make him mentally disturbed.

- Other symptoms include his susceptibility to love poetry and romances.

- However, he thrives on this sickness. He loves that he’s suffering for her, even when he’s thrown in jail for serenading her. He takes satisfaction when Lorenzo Daza threatens to shoot him.

- Florentino’s drug to help his sickness is sex. While he is plagued with love, he sleeps with many women to forget his heartache and desire for Fermina.

- While cholera often affects the poorer classes of society, lovesickness affects anybody.

- Florentino’s passion has persisted like the plague of cholera. Florentino is literally plagued by love.