Faulkner's Brilliance

After reading the beginning of Sound and the Fury, I am more than merely impressed at the way Faulkner enables the reader to feel like he/she is right there in the novel. Sure, most authors' goal is to use literary devices to put the reader right into the novel themselves, but Faulkner might achieve this goal better than any author I've read before.

Although the first chapter is hard to follow to say the least, I understand that it has to be this way. Faulkner really captures the thought process of a person with disability like Benjy better than I've read before. If I were to imagine how a person with Benjy's disability would write or think, it would be exactly how Faulkner conveys it.

I believe the key to Faulkner's brilliance lies in the message he sends in his review of Sound and the Fury. The fact that he is not trying to tell a story the whole time is extremely important in his efectiveness. Instead of worrying about following the story, or focusing on the plot, the reader is able to merely experience the text through Faulkner's style of conveying events. Benjy's actions and cutting flashbacks of the past perfectly portray what I had imagined it to be like for a person with a similar disability; having one's thoughts skewed/scrambled seemed extremely plausible. I'm excited to continue reading further chapters from the novel because if Faulkner can pull off Benjy with such greatness, there is no limit to what he can do with the other characters' narratives.