Using all five senses in writing is the best way to accomplish deep point of view in storytelling. I knew this. But my recent revisit to Faulkner gave me new perspective. I internalized it in a way I never had before.

Consider Benjy in The Sound and the Fury, a beautiful character type you may never have cause to write. Benjy is mentally disabled to the point of being almost non-verbal and incapable of coherent thought. His whole chapter is stream-of consciousness, made more difficult by its popping-bubbles-like expression.

The interesting thing about a character like this is his complete immersion in his five senses. He cannot be told anything complex with words because he doesn’t understand language, so everything he knows is the result of what he sees, what he hears, what he tastes, what he smells and what he touches. Likewise he cannot tell us his story in coherent sentences so we have to piece it together for ourselves based on the way he experiences his environment.

I couldn’t feel the gate at all but I could smell the bright cold

[Benjy’s sister] Caddy was all wet and muddy behind, and I started to cry and she came and squatted in the water.
“Hush now.” she said. “I’m not going to run away.” So I hushed. Caddy smelled like trees in the rain.

Caddy has been chased up a tree by bullies, but that’s not how Benjy sees it: I saw them. Then I saw Caddy, with flowers in her hair, and a long veil like shining wind. Caddy Caddy

Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.

Not Benjy’s mind, but his reaction: Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets

The narrator’s description of Benjy: His skin was dead looking and hairless; dropsical too, he moved with a shambling gait like a trained bear. His hair was pale and fine. It had been brushed smoothly down upon his brow like that of children in daguerrotypes. His eyes were clear, of the pale sweet blue of cornflowers, his thick mouth hung open, drooling a little.

Benjy has one truly coherent thought. When he’s in church with Dilsey, the family cook and maid, he thinks: Dilsey sang. The sound of her voice represents safety and love, so she is the one person who quiets his mind enough for a easily recognizable thought.

So much more to unpack in this book and all of his others. A true exercise in ‘show don’t tell’ by a master of the skill.

I guess that’s one of the reasons Faulkner won the Nobel Prize.