Faulkner titles the first section of The Sound and the Fury "April Seventh, 1928." It is often referred to as "Benjy's section" because its stream of consciousness narration is from the perspective of Benjamin Compson. (The three subsequent sections, titled by Faulkner only with dates, are commonly called by their central character's name as well: Quentin, Jason and Dilsey.) Faulkner's decision to head the sections by their dates is an indication of the novel's obsession with time, and of its subordination of character to time. 
     The novel deals with time on many levels, and none of its other aspects has received as much critical treatment. The first section represents that concern with time through an intricate narrative manipulation of chronology. Benjamin's present day, April seventh, 1928 (his thirty-third birthday) consists mostly of his routine daily activities -- walking around the Compson property, being spoken to, eating, remembering, preparing for bed and falling asleep. It is the remembering that comprises the bulk of the narrative. The other activities of his present day, minimal by comparison to the remembered events, are represented sequentially throughout the narrative. When the remembered events are extracted from the narrative, what remains is an intact, relatively short narrative of Benjy's routine activities that progresses in a sequential manner from the beginning of the day to its conclusion. In the form Faulkner wrote the section, however, that straightforward narrative of Benjy's "present" is surrounded by and interspersed with his many recollections. These recollections form the majority of the section; their intensity and frequency obscures the traditional structure of that internal narrative and creates the impression of a random, unrelated series of events.
     There are eighteen recollections in the novel's first section; they do not appear sequentially in the section, but occur in an apparently chaotic fashion. Too, most of the eighteen past episodes are recalled more than once, and some many times. As critics have shown, however, beneath that apparent chaos there is a kind of order: each recollection is triggered by something that occurs to Benjy during his routine daily activities or by something within an event he is recalling. Hearing a word in the present reminds him of hearing it some time in the past; experiencing a sensation such as touch or smell can recall a similar past experience. As a result, the section appears to dispense with sequential chronology (with the exception of the embedded short narrative of the present day's activities) and replaces it with emotional, imagistic and acoustic connectors. The impression of randomness is somewhat misleading, however, as will be discussed shortly.
     This hypertext edition displays Benjy's section in two versions. One is the version Faulkner wrote (designated by a book icon: ). The other version reorders Benjy's recollections and present activities into a chronologically sequential narrative (designated by a clock icon: ). Three stages of revision were involved in creating the chronological narrative. 

1. identifying which of the eighteen past events each passage in Faulkner's version was part of; 
2. arranging those eighteen past events in chronological order; 
3. placing the present activites after the most recent recollected event.