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Contents
The first narrator. Benjy has a severe intellectual disability and experiences time as a jumble of sensory memories. He cannot speak, cannot lie, and cannot judge. His love for Caddy is the purest thing in the novel, which makes his section both the hardest to read and the most emotionally direct.
The second narrator and the oldest Compson brother. Quentin is brilliant and completely unable to function. He is obsessed with family honor, specifically with Caddy's sexuality, which he cannot accept. He kills himself at Harvard in 1910. His section is the most fragmented and the most lyrical.
The third narrator. Jason stayed in Jefferson while Quentin went to Harvard and Caddy was exiled. He is bitter, petty, and cruel. He steals money meant for his niece and blames everyone around him for his failures. He is the easiest narrator to follow and the hardest to like.
The emotional center of the novel who never narrates. Caddy is rebellious, warm, and eventually exiled from the family after her pregnancy and failed marriage. Every version of her in the novel is filtered through a brother who distorts her. Her absence drives the plot.
The Compson family's cook and housekeeper. Dilsey narrates nothing directly, but the fourth section centers on her. She is patient, enduring, and morally clear in a way no Compson manages to be. She holds the household together while the family collapses around her.
Caddy's illegitimate daughter, raised by the Compsons. She is wild, resentful, and eventually runs away with a carnival man, taking the money Jason had stolen from her. Her escape is the closest thing to a victory in the novel.
The Compson patriarch. He is intelligent and completely defeated. He drinks, philosophizes about time and futility, and does nothing useful. His nihilism shapes Quentin's worldview and contributes directly to the family's collapse.
The Compson mother. She is self-pitying, hypochondriac, and emotionally absent. She favors Jason, ignores Benjy, and mourns her lost social status constantly. She is one of the main reasons the family has no center.
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