Novel Reading The Girl-Meridel Le Sueur - Class: American Novel from 1900 - Essay Example

not have a future, and are thus ‘determined by their pasts rather than as being the source of their own future possibilities.’ Jean Pouillon, however, thinks that the characters exist in a present “that is ‘eaten up’ by the past, but with different results, and that they” are not determined by their pasts because they are the past” (cited in Skirry (Para.6)). Benjy, a thirty-three year old man, who is unable to speak, is mentally retarded and possesses the intellect of a three year old.

For him time does not move; he is unable to discriminate between past, present or future; (Wicks 1) he remains living in the past, wherein his present being, constantly relates back to his past being; he is inept of comprehending the world around him. The majority of Benjy’s recollections are to do with his sister Caddy, who is the only member of the family that seemed to care and was happy to help him. Different incidents and feelings occurring in the present direct him to revert back to the past, illustrating his failure to forget the love he feels for his sister.

When he becomes caught on a nail crawling through a hole in the garden fence with Luster he hears the golfers shouting ‘caddie’ (Faulkner 23) he exhibits his incapacity to move on and forget his love for Caddy. The event evokes images of when he and Caddy did the same thing, and are as real to him as the present (Wicks 2). It seems that Benjy’s relationship with the past is debilitating for him; he observes and perceives things, but is unable to relate in a way that other people do. For instance, when seeing some schoolgirls at the fence he repeatedly says that he was “trying to say” something and then “the bright shapes began to stop and I tried to get out.

I tried to get it off of my face, but the bright 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 couldnt breathe out again to cry, and I tried to keep from