Dilsey Chapter: April 8, 1928

What is the note at the end of the chapter about New York, N.Y. supposed to be? The last passage mentions the same Confederate statue that was at the beginning of the book. Which, along with everything else I've been reading, makes me believe that the New York note has nothing to do with the setting of the scene. So then what is it?
Other than that, the last scene had a lot of images from the first chapter. In my book it was page 8. The images were so similar I wondered if it was the same scene, but in the last scene the driver is Luster, and Mrs. Compson is not in the carriage. Re-reading the first scene also made it clearer why Benjy started sobbing. He says, "Then those on one side stopped at the tall white post where the soldier was. But on the other side they went on sooth and steady, but a little slower." Then at the end of the page he says, "The shapes flowed on. The ones on the other side began again, bright and fast and smooth, like when Caddy says we are going to sleep." Benjy starts sobbing when Luster drives the carriage to the left of the statue. But once the carriage goes back to the right side and starts moving,"...Ben hushed...as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place." My first reaction was surprise. Why would Benjy care about order, "from left to right?" He doesn't even see time as linear. But visualizing the scene helps a little. He would be driving on the right side of the road, looking over his right shoulder. He says he could see "Facades," faces of buildings, no doubt well cared for. And these buildings would be the same buildings he has seen for his whole life. If the carriage suddenly lurches to the left, the Confederate soldier interposes itself between Benjy's field of view and the buildings. This could easily be taken as the old south pushing itself between Benjy's and the life and people he loved. And in keeping with this, Jason cannot shut Benjy up until the carriage gets back on the sight of the road. After that nothing Jason does, not breaking his flower or beating the horse, or even hitting him can do anything to perturb him. Because on this side of the road, Benjy is literally living in a time when he can still see Caddy and Quentin. It makes Jason's last words seem meaningless, "If you ever cross that gate with him again, I'll kill you!" And ironically enough, the flower Jason broke was a Narcissus, which in classical mythology came to be because of a man completely obsessed with his self image. Of course, Jason's image has just been completely destroyed, and like the broken flower, he has nobody but himself to blame.
Thanks for reading

Jason Chapter: April 6, 1928

Reading sentences with punctuation has been so much fun I decided do this whole post after I finished reading the chapter. My biggest issue after reading is about Benjy. Quentin's chapter focused all on one event, his suicide, which I assumed took place on the day the chapter was titled. After reading Jason's chapter I assumed that Benjy's castration took place on April 7, 1928, the title of the first chapter. But then I glanced at Jason's date, and turns out we just read about April 6, 1928, one day before Benjy's chapter. But Jason already refers to Benjy as, "...the Great American Gelding" (pg 164). This tells us two things. First, Jason thinks of his brother as worse than a horse, and second, the incident has already happened. So here's my question: If the incident has already happened by the time Benjy narrates his chapter, why don't we hear about it at all from Benjy? An event like that is not something anybody would forget, least of all Benjy.
My next big question is about Jason. Everyone agrees he is not likeable, not friendly, really bitter, racist, sexist, has a complete lack of respect for Benjy, and ready to take advantage of whoever he can. I don't intend to be the devil's advocate, but I do think he has several very good reasons to be bitter. A good portion of what he had was spent to send his older brother to Harvard. He himself never got an education, he never had an opportunity to make something of himself the way Quentin did. Now he's stuck as the breadwinner for his sister's child, his mother, who's burning most of the money that Jason doesn't steal (assuming I read that bit right) and who also spent Jason's inheritance on his older brother, his brother Benjy and the staff both of which Jason sees as subhuman. Quentin was the family line, he's gone, so is Benjy, leaving Caddy's illegitimate child and Jason. I don't know exactly what Faulkner was trying to communicate with all of this, but it does speak measures to what happens when people try and force an outcome that wasn't meant to be. It also does a lot to discredit societal expectations. If the family hadn't married Caddy off, Quentin would be alive and supporting the family, Benjy would not have hung around the gate and been castrated, and Jason would not be so bitter. Then, his inheritance would have at least had meaning. It's not hard to imagine Jason seeing burnt checks and Quentin's suicide as nearly identical acts. But instead, Caddy is now an outcast, Quentin is dead, and Jason, the last connection to the family line is ready to tear Caddy's child apart. And the only person in between the two of them is Mrs. Compson, the person who started the whole plot. I'm not sure I agreed with everything Sartre said about the story, but right now the story appears, like Sartre stated, "...an invasion of the past."
If I think of something really important or obvious, I'll make another note, but until then bye and thanks for reading.