On Paths Unknown discussion

So far this novel seems to me to be, even if one were to start with the title alone, to be a rather existential novel, since it takes it's title from one of Shakespeare's more nihilistic/fatalistic passages: (as already mentioned by other members)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

There are a few things to be noted about this passage; first, its preoccupation with the passage of time, (tomorrow and tomorrow; day to day; recorded time; yesterdays; brief candle; his hour). Besides that, it seems pretty fatalistic in it's acceptance of nihilism: "signifying nothing". What immensely bleak words! No wonder Shakespeare is so timeless.

So yeah, fitting then, that the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a piece on this novel where he comments: "...it is immediately obvious that Faulkner’s metaphysics is a metaphysics of time.
Man’s (humanity's) misfortune lies in his being time-bound.
..... And if the technique Faulkner has adopted seems at first a negation of temporality, the reason is that we confuse temporality with chronology. It was man (humanity) who invented dates and clocks.

And yes, indeed, the first complaint people seem to have about reading this novel, is the confusion. ..and what is the initial confusion caused by? It would seem, by two factors:

Firstly, the initial narration is told from a child-like point of view which necessitates interpretation by the reader, and secondly, this narration jumps around wildly in the chronology of events.

So let us, dear reader, try to tease out the structure of the storyline from these confused bits. I would really appreciate if all of you would participate in this, I really don't enjoy posting in an echo-chamber.

So I will start the ball rolling by making a few observations:
Like I've already mentioned in the Benji thread, the novel starts off with 2 or 3 milestones in Benji's life. It might be a good idea to mark these episodes in time by noting Benji's age in each of them?

1. We start off with Benji's present. He is crying about something, but we don't know what, so let's save that thought to figure it out later. Here he is 33 years old.

2. His thoughts then jump to a scene where the kids are playing, Caddy, his older sister gets her dress wet, the kids go home, and are told to be quiet. We soon find out what the reason is that they had to keep quiet - something of consequence was going wrong that changed their young lives; and the adults are trying to shield them from that by not immediately telling them what is happening. Here Caddy mentions that she is 7 years old, and (ok I'm cheating) since we know that Benji is a few years younger, here he is about 4 or 5 years old – readers who have progressed further and know the exact age difference, please correct me on this.

3. Then we jump to a scene where Benji gets drunk at a wedding and we deduce from what the servants say, that he is now 15 years old. This scene is also of great consequence in the storyline, and we can flesh it out later. (I'm just putting the bare bones now).

4. I do know there's another milestone or two; one of them happens close to the wedding where Benji is 15 years old.

Ok, so how about you guys help me flesh it out from there? As the narration unfolds, what do we learn more about each of those situations, and perhaps milestones in time that I have missed in the initial barebones structure?

Oops, I forget the scene where Benji and mother get into the carriage to go somewhere - there is a Quentin baby present here, but I'm not too sure if it's Benji's brother Quentin (which would mean Benji is still very small there), or, (I'm cheating here) it might be another Quentin. (I don't feel bad cheating about mentioning the name, because I feel Faulkner is a bit unfair in all the devices he uses to sow confusion - as if the time-jumps and weird points of view aren't bad enough, he messes around with names as well).

Hm. I was thinking that the presence of Luster would indicate a time that Benji is close to being an adult, since Luster is Frony's son, and Frony is around Benji's age. See? Faulkner DOES leave clues, but admittedly, one does have to do at least a modicum of side-reading to know about those clues in the first place. XP

Anyway, so the event where he rides in the carriage with their mother must be with an older Benji, since it is mentioned that Quentin is playing with Luster.

Traveller wrote: "Hm. I was thinking that the presence of Luster would indicate a time that Benji is close to being an adult, since Luster is Frony's son, and Frony is around Benji's age. See? Faulkner DOES leave cl..."

The wiki character list helped me. Versh takes care of Benji when he's young, then the younger of Dilsy's boys when he's a teen, the her grandson, Luster, once he's an adult

Linda wrote: "The wiki character list helped me. Versh takes care of Benji when he's young, then the younger of Dilsy's boys when he's a teen, the her grandson, Luster, once he's an adult.."

Yes, indeed, thanks, Linda, that is a good guide to use - when Versh is there, Benji is small, when T.P. is with Benji, they are both teenagers, and when Luster is looking after him, he is an adult. Thanks for pointing that out!

Oh, and the Versh clue helps with the Patterson letter incident - Caddy and Benji must have been reasonably small then when they took the letter to Mrs Patterson.

EDIT: Apparently Versh looked after him until he was around age 13, so they could have been teeny-boppers.

What makes this difficult is the fact that he's working with three time periods. What I have seen done in other books is using italicized text to refer to one time period, and plain text to the other. But since he's working with three, he tries to use the italicized text as a signal for a time change, as you pointed out. The thing is, sometimes the text following that time change is the same time. And sometimes it's a break between the other two. So, for example, let's say time period C, with Luster, is italicized. It is sometimes used as a break between time periods A and B, and other times, it's used as a transition into time period C, but then he switches to plain text. I'm skimming back through to see if the italicized text is only used for time period C. Don't think so

Linda wrote: "What makes this difficult is the fact that he's working with three time periods. What I have seen done in other books is using italicized text to refer to one time period, and plain text to the oth..."

Yes, the italics are often at the beginning of a time period, and sometimes it encompasses an entire flashback (or flash forward) because his memories are so terribly jumbled, and as already mentioned, seem to be triggered by sensory input - for example a certain smell/feeling (like cold) will throw him back to a time where he also smelled or felt it, and so on.

You are right in that there are 3 overarching periods, but scholars who have studied the book, have identified as many as 16 separate events that are flashed back to. One or two of them are in dispute, for example, there isn't consensus about how many separate times they took a letter to Mrs Patterson that Benjy remembers.

Ok, since all participating in the discussion seem to have finished reading the Benjy section by now (since you've skipped on to the Quentin section - perhaps I should have made more threads; mea culpa), I'm gonna let loose with all the time periods we can distinguish from the Benji section: so to build on my initial little structure, let's do it chronologically this time, and this time, I will use outside help and try to marry it with how I myself progressed through the section:

Let's start with the birth of each of the Compson children (and this I got from an outside guide on the novel, and are derived from Faulkner's own notes) :

1890 : Quentin born (WF notes).
1892 ; Caddy born (WF notes).
1894 : Jason born (WF notes).
1895 : 7 April Benjy born. (7 April 1928 minus 33 years = 1895)

1899-1900 : Damuddy dies and young Maury's name is changed to Benjamin (Benjy)

1906 : There a scene where Caddy is 14, wearing a "prissy dress". 1892 plus 14 would then make it 1906.


Ok, and remember that we already figured out that Benjy must have been around 4 or 5 on the night that Caddy got her dress wet, which is also the night that Damuddy died - Caddy was 7 there, so that was around 1899-1900.

I've not come to the section in my re-read yet of where Benjy's name was changed from Maurice to Benjamin, but apparently that happens soon after Damuddy's death, so I'll come back to the schematic once I have reached that point. I think I'll keep editing this message maybe to keep it all together, we'll see how it goes.

I'm afraid I am late to the table here. I have not yet found my hard copy of the book, so I went looking for an online copy that would work on various devices. Just got started this morning! I am so glad to find out that I mostly got 2 of the 3 timelines in Benjy -- Yippee!

Saski wrote: "I'm afraid I am late to the table here. I have not yet found my hard copy of the book, so I went looking for an online copy that would work on various devices. Just got started this morning! I am s..."

Saski! Yaye, welcome to the party! Well, it must be mental telepathy, because I had just been thinking of sending you a message and asking if you're still going to join us!

Hmm, this thread might become a bit spoiler-y, so maybe I should stop posting until you've caught up. But please join in in the Benjy thread, I'm only halfway through Benjy myself at this point, so there aren't many spoilers there yet and still time to join in!

It's here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Shall do, though still moving slow....

Saski wrote: "Shall do, though still moving slow...."

No problem, I'll put the rest of my Benjy comments on a Word document as I go along and wait a bit before posting them.

hey Traveller - I'm here, perhaps a little late - as I've now dropped the proverbial bombshell under the Benji thread. I hope it is seen as more of a guide than a spoiler .

btw. none of the threads you post the URL work for me. Even if I copy/ paste, they take me back to the GOODREADS main page with no reference to this work. Ce' la vie! I trust most of the material is unfolding on the other pages where we are in group discussion mode?

Bonitaj wrote: "btw. none of the threads you post the URL work for me. Even if I copy/ paste, they take me back to the GOODREADS main page with no reference to this work. Ce' la vie! I trust most of the material i..."

But Bonitaj, you should not be copying and pasting, because that wouldn't give you the entire link; does simply clicking on the link not work? And what does clicking on the big green title that says "FAULKNER'S SOUTH- SOUND and FURY" riigght at the top of this page do if you click on that?

Okay, not that I need to know the gender of any particular person I meet (I keep reminding myself), but maybe it is okay to ask such a question about characters....

Quentin? There seem to be clues leading to them as both male, and more often, female. Are there two Quentins?

Saski wrote: "Okay, not that I need to know the gender of any particular person I meet (I keep reminding myself), but maybe it is okay to ask such a question about characters....

Quentin? There seem to be clue..."

Hey Saski, nice to see you popping up. Please have a look at our Benjy thread; the Benjy section is so jumbled anyway that there aren't really spoilers to pick up, so basically you can read that entire thread from scratch. The big spoilers start in the Quentin section, the second section of the novel, and in that thread, I did put up a spoiler notice especially for you, to warn you past which point the thread becomes pretty spoiler-y.

The answer to your Quentin question is hidden here under the spoiler tag: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thank you! :D I had just found that (trying to catch up on all the threads at once). I also had a look at the Wiki character list -- whoa, so much stuff I missed; and here I had thought I was doing pretty well, LOL!

Saski wrote: "whoa, so much stuff I missed; and here I had thought I was doing pretty well, LOL!..."

I would venture to remark that The Sound and the Fury is a gift that keeps on giving! 😀