As noted above, the date, April 7, 1928, is also Benjy's thirty-third birthday. All of these facts have a certain symbolic importance. April, as a month, is symbolic of growth and also decay, of life and also death. It is the month in which Christ was crucified, and the Saturday between the Friday of Crucifixion and the Sunday of Resurrection is, by tradition, one of the figuratively darkest days in the history of Christianity. April is also the month when all things begin growing again — the beginning of the cycle of life. Thus, Benjy is placed in the midst of greenness and fertility of April, and his moaning becomes the hopelessness of all the voiceless misery represented by the death of Christ. The flowers that Benjy loves are a contrast to the ugliness of his own appearance. In this month of rebirth, however, Benjy is conscious only of death — many of the things he remembers are associated with funerals and with deaths.
Critics have often characterized Benjy as a Christ figure because he is thirty-three years old, the age of Christ when He was crucified. Benjy has been castrated, which implies that the modern Christ is impotent against all the evil present in the modern world. Benjy also suffers as Christ did, but Benjy's suffering is to no avail. He cannot intervene, as did Christ, because he is, Faulkner says, an idiot. The implication through all these Christ images is that the Christ figure in the modern world is reduced to an impotent, moaning, mindless being who cares only for his own personal comforts.
