Benjy the Man Child!
Having heard many discouraging remarks regarding the level of reading in "The Sound and the Fury" I was dreading reading it. But when I opened up the very first page till the middle of the second section I couldn't stop reading. Now, don't worry I won't spoil the book for you but I just couldn't stop. This story of a decaying Southern family broken by strife, misery and each other is heartbreaking and at the time very intriguing.
I question I ask today is do you think that Benjy is at all dangerous? Surely we all know that Benjy is severely mentally handicapped and has no responsibility for his actions but does that exempt him from containment? Benjy roams free on the Compson property yelling, crying and making a genuine fuss but did anyone ever stop and think if this is really the right place for him? His mother abhors him, his sister ruins her own life with decadent promiscuity and his brother Quentin goes insane.
The point in the novel that caused me to ask this gloomy question is when Benjy is screaming for Caddy as schoolgirls pass the property, he gets loose and runs after them frightening them half to death. Could he have hurt them? Is he capable and would he know that he had done something wrong? Is the Compson property the right place for him or would he be better in an institution where people know how is take care of an individual like himself?
12 comments:
Benjy has an adult body and is capable of physically harming others. Yet, this alone does not make him dangerous or a threat to society. Rather, it is his physical maturity coupled with the fact that he is severely mentally challenged. Similar to a three-year old boy, he does not understand the implications of his actions or the capacity of his strength.
As to the question regarding Benjy in an institution, one must keep the novel in its historical context. During the early 1900s, mentally challenged people did not receive the same care as they do today. There was a certain stigma about them, and it was seen as a very negative reflection on a family if one of its members was placed in such an institution. Hence, Benjy is better at home, where he is guarded by those who truly care about him.
Just as a sidenote, Benjy's figure reminds me of Lennie from Steinbeck's _Of Mice and Men_, which was published less than a decade after _The Sound and the Fury_. Lennie was also mentally challenged, although not as severely; he tried to do the right thing, but he always ended up hurting something because his naive mind could not comprehend his physical capacity to do harm. Anyways, it's interesting to compare the two figures in regards to their mental capacity and setting in which they live.
Although Benjy has basically no control over his actions, I don't believe he is actually harmful. He has come to be used to his home environment, and it is the separation from Caddy that makes him act the way he does. Placing him in an institution would only further the anxiety he currently feels and would not be the best option for him.
I also couldn't help but be reminded of Lennie from Of Mice and Men. The same kind of innocence seems to follow them both, however there is some part of them that seems rather alarming.
As much of a burdon as Benjy's family takes him to be, they are still bond to him because he needs their care in order to survive, and whether they know it or not they need Benjy's role in their family dynamics. I think Benjy does have the power to committ a violent act, especially because you see how upset he gets over the smallest thing. However in this novel I don't think Faulkner needs to portray Benjy as violent because that is not the theme he is trying to get at. He is writing about a family and in Steinbeck's novel there was more of a focus on two particular characters;George and Lennie, so he could expose that part of Lennie's life.
Mentally disabled people are rarely harmful. The vast majority of disorders result in a very docile person. Mentally insane individuals can be far more dangerous to themselves and others. So, Benjy is probably harmful only to himself if anybody (he burns himself on the candle). As far as institutionalizing him goes, this would only be a good idea if they were exceptional facilities. However, at the time this book was written, such places did not exist and his time spend roaming the country side is almost certainly better than any sort of an experience he could have in a home.
Although it is true Benjy had a tendency to follow the fence along his house in order to stay near the neighborhood girls I believe this action was more influenced by brotherly love rather than darker intentions. We can easily see throughout the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury that Benjy is very fond of his sister. During numerous occasions when Benjy is close to his sister, we see him take comfort because he thinks that "Caddy smells like trees." In my opinion, I think Benjy simply hopes that the girls passing remind him of the comfort he took from Caddy.
Even one of the neighborhood girls feels comfortable after encountering Benjy from different instances.
"He won't hurt you. I pass here every day. He just runs along the fence" (53).
Benjy does pursue the girls after he is let out, but no harm comes to them when Benjy catches up with them.
There's more to Benjy than we know at this point, but there does not seem to be enough evidence to suggest he is a risk to others as of yet.
Despite Benjy's disabilities, I don't see him harming anyone on purpose. As a 33-year old, Benjy is taunted and upset by Luster, yet his reaction is to cry. He does not hit him, and given the amount to which he is taunted, I wouldn't blame him. Yet he reverts to a baby-like state each time, in which crying is the only reaction to being upset.
The incident with the girls on the street did seem odd, but given the events, I never thought he would hurt those girls, because he would never purposefully hurt Caddy either. They reminded him of Caddy and as the readers, we know that's why he ran for them. I think one of the biggest problems of that situation was that knowledge of mental disabilities at that time was in no way close to what we know today. Now children do have a degree of knowledge, even if its only a small one, on the idea that some people are "differently able." Present day children would have had a much different reaction in my opinion because it may have been frightening at first, there are typically seminars and skits in grade school explaining the difference of some people therefore a child would have more easily identified that the man was not well and not trying to hurt them.
Although I don't think Benjy is a threat, the only reason I would see in having him live somewhere else like an institution is that it may increase the quality of his life. The family is quite cruel to him. Even Luster loathes having to take care of him. The only person who was ever truely there for him is no longer a part of him life. Living somewhere else might be a nicer way of living. However, by living somewhere else, Benjy would lose the familiarness of their home. He knows the land and he's lived there for 33 years. It is an extremely tough decision, but when all is said and done, I think it would be best for him to stay where he is. The idea of the torment he receives his disgusting to us, yet Benjy does not realize it in the same way we do. His only reaction is to cry. He doesn't realize that they are being cruel to him or even understand the complexities of this relationship. All he knows is when he is not happy, he cries. It is a fleeting reaction that does not seem to stick with him in the same way it might with you or me.
Well, I learned to always read other people's comments before formulating a response to one of these blogs.
I, as the third or fourth person to say so, was thinking of Benjy in terms of Steinbeck's Lennie. Lennie's grasp on things and his single mindedness led him to disaster, the way it could for Benjy. Do I think Benjy would have hurt anyone? No, not intentially, but then the way people react to him in fear could cause them to harm themselves.
And as for the institution, which I think somebody also may have hit on, Benjy more than likely would have been locked up or heavily sedated. I think especially at that time he would have been better off with a family that cared for him. However since no one did, it makes me wonder how worse off he was after Caddy left. For that matter, why didn't the Compson's send Benjy off to the institution? I remember Jason or one of the servants making a comment about it, but once Jason III is head of the household he never does anything about it.
I feel that, although Benjy may have, at one point, had the capacity to harm the girls, his castrationn removed, both literally and symbolically, his potential for harm. It is important to note that Benjy remembers a plethora of events leading up to and including his forced castration. However, after the events of his castration, Benjy remembers only the events of Quentin's and Jason's deaths, not the normal minutiae that he normally recalled prior to his castration. The loss of masculinity ultimately resulted, perhaps even more so than his mental disabilities, in the stagnation of Benjy's mental and sexual development. The castration rendered him both physically harmless and incapable, mentally, of further growth or character development.
In response to your question of whether or not Benjy "belongs" in the Compson lifestyle, I think he is no different from his siblings. None of the Compson children belong in the South, except for perhaps Jason. Caddy belongs in the North, a place where there are more modern values; she's too rebelious and headstrong for the South's old values. Quentin wants to hold onto southern values, but he cannot, because as time moves forward, he must also move forward, away from the south. Benjy belongs somewhere, where exactly I'm not sure, but he does not belong in the south on the Compson plantation.
A grown man is not a threat to society because he has the muscle power to do so unless he is unable to control is aggression. Benjy is able to control his. I feel Benjy does not belong in an institution because the job expected of you there is to look after you. Benjy's family is very capable of doing so. It makes three of us who thought of Lennie! Lennie could not control his strength so he should have been put in a mental hospital.
At the time this book was written, a mental institution would probably one of the worst environments for Benjy to be in. Its very likely that the conditions would be awful and the change alone could cause him to become irreparably damaged. What Benjy really needs is the love and support of his family. Unfortunately, Caddy seems to be the only one in the family who could ever fill this position and the effects of her leaving are visible for years to come. If he were to be put into an institution, Benjy would probably not survive long.
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