The Calm Before The Storm: April 7, 1928

This week, we dove into Faulkner's novel head first with the Benjy chapter. For some context, Benjy is the youngest of the Compson children and was born mentally retarded. Benjy tells the story of the Compson family through shifts in time. This makes the reader follow multiple timelines all at once. When I read this chapter, the time changes were at first hard to grasp, but by using Benjy's caretakers as a way to tell which time period I was in, it became manageable.

The Beginning: Getting To Know The Author

           After spending many of my years in school learning about the lives of authors outside of their works, I started to notice patterns among them. But that being said, I am still surprised whenever I read of an author having different ambitions previous to becoming a writer or finding out that they weren't an immediate success. William Faulkner, now regarded as one of the best American writers, is no exception to these patterns.