One of Faulkner's chief concerns in all his works is that of time and timelessness. Often this concern is connected with his view of how often and how much of the past intrudes upon the present. Faulkner's use of time in this novel is startling, new, and highly effective. Essentially, time concepts are used differently in every section.
In Benjy's narration, clock time is almost totally disregarded. Benjy is completely oblivious of time. Events of the past are constantly juxtaposed with various events in the present or some other time in the past. For Benjy, all time blends into one sensuous experience. He makes no distinction between an event that happened only hours ago and one that occurred years ago. The memory of the episode at the branch (1898) is as recent and as vivid as an episode in 1914 or the morning of April 7, 1928. For Benjy, there is no distinction between the past and the present and there is no such thing as future time. If he stands at the gate waiting for Caddy in 1928, it is because he has performed the same act since 1902. He is as anxious for Caddy to return in 1928 as he was years earlier. The many years that he has waited in vain are non-existant to him because he remembers basically only those events that gave him pleasure. Faulkner violates traditional time narrative in order to emphasize Benjy's rejection of the distinction between various times and, more important, to show how actions of the past are important to Benjy because they gave him pleasure. The involved use of time is highly stimulating when we realize that Faulkner is writing about Benjy in 1928, and the event that Benjy remembers in 1898 foreshadows events that occur in 1906-10. That is, in the present time, Benjy remembers a past event (Caddy's getting her drawers muddy) that foreshadows a future event (Caddy's promiscuity in 1906-10).
Whereas Benjy is completely oblivious of time, Quentin expends all his energy trying to understand time. As the section opens, he is remembering his father's comments about the futility of trying to keep up with time. One of his first acts is that of tearing off the hands of his watch. By this act, Quentin hopes to escape into a timeless world. But he cannot remove himself from time. At the jeweler's, he sees a whole window full of watches. He constantly hears his own watch ticking even though it has no hands. He asks the boys at the river if they know where a clock is. And in the midst of all these connections with time, Quentin is constantly remembering various cynical comments that his father made about time.
The time motif carries significant implications about Quentin's character. Whereas Benjy made no distinction between time past and time present, Quentin is more concerned with trying to understand how time in the past can influence time in the future. His major problem is that his father has told him that time will make a person forget all sorrow and remorse. But Quentin's problem is that he does not want to forget. He must remember his present feelings of bereavement because if he forgets them, the feelings will have no meaning and, as a consequence, Quentin's life will have no meaning. Thus, Quentin tries to stop time from passing, and the only way he can do this is by committing suicide, which he does at the end of his section.
For Jason, time plays such an important role that every second counts. In his section, we have Caddy returning for a five-second glimpse of her child, we see Jason watching the clock and timing his every act, and we have undelivered telegrams, wild chases, and various assignations. Unlike Quentin, Jason sees no importance to the past—except that certain events occurred that deprived him of a position in Herbert Head's bank. Jason's world is in the immediate present. He has rejected all ties and allegiances to the past; he exists only for his own selfish aims in the present moment.
The final section uses time by emphasizing the clock that Dilsey keeps on the kitchen wall. When the clock strikes five times, Dilsey knows that it is eight o'clock. She is able to bring order out of the confusion and chaos of the Compson world. When she takes Benjy to the church, she hears a sermon about the beginning and the end. She returns home, feeling that she has been with the Compsons since the beginning and now she has seen evidence that the end is coming very soon. Dilsey, therefore, is the only character who functions within the continuum of time. Her present care of, and loyalty to, the Compsons is a result of her past association with them.
Faulkner's use of time as a motif is probably one of his main concerns in the novel. Much of the meaning of the novel evolves through an understanding of each character's reaction to time.
