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"All you need is the story..."- Tim O'Brien
"Literature has been the salvation of the damned, has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair, and can perhaps...save the world." John Cheever
39 comments:
Well, I had an easier time reading Quentin's part. But I couldn't help but think Quentin is a very weird person. His obsessive ness over Caddie and the clock/time frustrated me. Get over it; you are not going to marry your sister. Also, when he kept bringing up his confession of incest, I was freaked out. I can't see Quentin ever being a strong character (especially when he fainted before even fighting with Dalton Ames). However, I found his memories more intriguing. The Italian girl reminded me a little of death; she stalked him everywhere with a blank and dark stare. Quentin was unable to get rid of her or find her a home. I also wondered why he decided to drown himself. I'm guessing it was a way for him to cleanse himself and start new (in the after life). Quentin is bizarre.
Damn, I'm not first this time. Anyway, just finished reading Quentin's section and I must admit that, despite have little to no idea what's actually happening, I might seriously love this book. Quentin is, quite possibly one of the greatest literary figures of all time. He's painfully human. He's beautifully desperate. I remember, back in sophomore year in American Lit, we were talking about some author, Emerson I think. So we were talking about him and how, when he gave speeches, people said "I don't know what he's saying, but I know it's beautiful."
That just reminded me so much of the Quentin section. He's such an indescribably conflicted character. His obsession with time, how it controls him and how aware he is of its control over him; it's just amazing. Even in his memories, he completely neglects punctuation and quotations, almost as if he lacks the time for them.
Don't even get me started on the watch. It's his connection to his father, a man he goes to for guidance and possibly the man he admires most. Yet it's also a reminder of the whole Compson family. The mother he might as well have not had, and, more importantly, Caddy.
I guess that leads us to Caddy. His relationship with her is almost sickening and yet concurrently noble, as if he does everything to protect her. She's basically the only female figure he has ever loved because his mother never cared enough. He didn't have enough time for anyone else.
The thing that's amazing about Quentin is that he KNOWS. Just the concept is so powerful.
Then there's the water imagery. The shadow in the puddle. The drowning. I thought water was supposed to be baptismal but here, with Quentin, it changed. It took on a darker quality. He IS water though, so he IS the shadow. Maybe the whole point is that he finally breaks through to what makes himself tick (yahoo! pun!) but he can't make sense of it all. It sort of drives him crazy. It's like knowing you don't know something. It's a horrible understanding, or maybe a horrible inability to understand himself that ultimately leads him to end his life.
That's another amazing thing about this book: they always allude to these big things happening (like his suicide) but never show it. Like Quentin plans the whole thing, he even mails a suicide letter to his father and his roommate. He goes to get carpenters weights (carpenter=significant imagery...?). He just plans it. He counts every second.
Well now, I'm just rambling, later I probably won't even be able to understand what I just wrote. I guess I should just sum it up with this: I don't really even understand what happened but I know it was amazing and it made me love this book.
I really enjoyed the opening monolouge of the chapter, who doesn't like the word "reducto Absurdum"? It also drills in that time motiff.
Faulker's punctiatuion was really interesting in this chapter. Quentin's conciousness was more abstract then Benjy's, his thoughts would go on with no breaks and dialouge would also have no punctuation at times. I found this interesting because if you think of the way people talk sometimes, conversations dont always have puncutation. A thought can simply exist in the air when it is said and the brain processes it when it is heard. Faulker introduces an idea I don't take any time to think about, and that is the process of my own mind. Faulkner's dialouge is the sentencing of all the words the brain is taking in; there is no order or structure to them, for the most part. Scenes and memories that Quentin becomes the most submerged in, such as his plotted suicide with caddy back at the compson house, have no formal structure.
Then at the end of the chapter (where I'll assume Quentin goes out to kill himself) there is no formal structure. There is no capitalization or punctuation. I think Faulker is establishing Quentin's tone of voice, which is an interesting thing here because what is the voice inside your own head? Quentin loses his empthasis for life, why should he break a thought or empthasize any words? He refers to his own being as "i". He no longer cares about continuing his life and I think the use of lower cases puts a very somber mood on the finale.
Right, so Quentin's stream-of-consciousness reflects who he is as a person, too caught up in his own thoughts/memories and out of touch with reality. Or something.
Quentin's section was certainly unlike anything I've ever read before. It was kind of... drifty? There were points where I was completely lost, when Quentin was probably totally lost in his memories too. Then it would snap back to the present and the clocks would start ticking again and the reader is wondering why Quentin isn't pulling his hair out by now at the sound.
But I suppose he's used to it. Which says enough by itself. He's accustomed to it, lived with it for years, that dependency, almost addiction to time. It's mildly creepy, but Faulker truly does an impressive job with it, and of course the way Quentin thinks. The Sound and the Fury is probably one of the only books I've read where the character is really thinking - like the reader is really looking into his mind, not abstractly putting it into sentences.
Quentin's section was very different than Benjy's, and it made me really sad and subdued to read it. I'm not sure if I enjoyed it though, it's almost painful to read. I was sucked in, but when I stepped out again, the world spun a little.
Unlike Jessie, I found Quentin's part harder to get through than Benjy's. Although his stories and memories were more interesting than Benjy's, his intellectual and sophisticated language made me have to go back and read the same section more than once to really understand what was happening. And I thought Tom and Louisa Gradgrind had a sick relationship-Caddy and Quentin were so much worse! There was obvious sexual frustration between the two, and it was just bizarre how obsessed Quentin was with Caddy's virginity and promiscuity. This behavior is not ok between siblings!
Quentin's section was a nice break from the Compson family and as Ashish said, a "beautifully desperate"look into Quentin's character. Quentin is such a frustrating and peculiar character, such that he makes you hate him and be intrigued by him at the same moment. I could not help but sympathize for Quentin's lack of, well, something! He walks in and around Harvard as if he desperately is seeking to quench some unfulfilled desire, with the constant reminder of time ticking way. This desire could very well be his sexual relationship with Caddy.
As Eric said, Quentin is detrimentally caught up within himself to ever reap the benefits of the world around him. This is exactly what makes you hate him. But once I stepped back from the book and looked at it in my own context, I realized how vividly real this chapter was. Every one of us can probably remember a time when we looked down at our shadow and merely engaged in its changing shapes and sizes. It is fascination with the details in life, something we rarely do, but that makes us think about our life in a deeper context. Quentin does this often, reflecting HIS fascination with not only himself, but also the permanence of this phenomena. I felt a little part of myself identifying with Quentin's walks around town, and although it was only a small part, it nonetheless made the book more real and enjoyable.
With Quentin being a Harvard student, I expected this section to be much easier to understand than Benjy's. I thought that Quentin would be able to express his memories and emotions more clearly than Benjy did. I was wrong. Quentin's section to me was similar to Benjy's section. Quentin doesn't seem to be any more a part of the family than Benjy does. He also doesn't understand his family members any more than Benjy does. He and Benjy also share a common obsession with Caddy. They both rely on her entirely and describe her in similar ways (both talk about how she smells Benjy-She smells like trees Quentin-She smells like honeysuckle). Quentin's section is different from Benjy's in that he knows more about things that were going on in the family that Benjy was completely unaware of. By having Quentin share these memories it shows just how awful the Compson family has become.
I've started to get used to the style that this book is written in, but I'm sure that I missed close to half of the things that happened. The thing that I found most annoying as I was reading is the lack of punctuation, which made it even more confusing than it already was.
Quentin's section is so beautifully written.
Before I get into Quentin himself, I just want to take a moment and appreciate what Faulkner has achieved. He has created something so internal that it couldn't possibly work with the conventions of prose. He has entered Quentin's mindset on the day of his suicide, and he has created this litany of thoughts and ideas that shows us everything about this character and his experiences.
I can't really say which of the two sections was harder to read. They were so different to me because Benjy and Quentin have vastly different perspectives. Quentin's an intellectual with a nervous personality, and I think he resents the fact that he is unable to do anything about his situation. He can't save Caddy when he feels he has to, and he has this idea that time will run out if he doesn't do something to defend himself and his sister. I think this is where the time and the water imagery interweave-- the water first appears as a raging force that can drown, and like time, it is something Quentin must fight. But at the end of the section, when Quentin has given up, the time stands still and the waters grow calm. Both seem to be connected to the inevitable: Caddy's disgrace, the fall of the family, and it all culminates with the suicide.
I like Quentin. It is not something I think I can explain. He is fighting a losing battle against things that are so much bigger than he is, and the reader knows from the beginning that he'll never get out alive.
And he brushed his teeth before he killed himself. I love that detail. It's so perfect for him.
I found Quentin’s section more difficult to get through, mostly because the sentences became a lot longer. Sometimes, he was just ranting on and on about the scenery and other details that seemed irrelevant, but I think it shows how depressed he really is. He’s “a walking shadow” (quote from MacBeth) because he is very detached from his present, but immersed in the past. Clearly, he is haunted by what happened (the number of times he repeats “Dalton Ames” proves that, I think).
I agree with Carly that his obsession with Caddy's virginity is a bit creepy, but the concept of the innocent, demure, servile female is part of the old Southern, aristocratic values, which are an integral part of Quentin's beliefs. He has faith in it. And of course, Caddy's promiscuity and pregnancy shake and shatter that faith.
I think we can all agree that Quentin has issues with time. He’s constantly thinking about time, and it’s symbolic that he breaks his watch, but the watch keeps on ticking. It emphasizes the fact that time keeps going while his thoughts and values are still stuck in the past.
I liked Quentin's section a lot. I found it a lot easier to relate to, because his memories ran in longer passages than Benjy's. I felt there was also a lot more connectedness between his memories.
The dialogues were the most interesting for me to read, because they revealed much more than just his memories, such as Caddy's frustration and wish to die. I was also shocked when I read that he was ready to slit her throat and his out in the field, because so far Caddy has only been represented as very alive and strong and passionate, and I would have imagined she would fight the misery in her life the hardest she could and not want to give up.
I also noticed that yellow reappeared over and over and over--does anyone have any idea why?
And I couldn't understand WHY he committed incest. He kept on talking about it, but it seems that he loves Caddy and tries to protect her, and incest just becomes another sing that would just hurt her more...
I can't wait to talk about all of this in class.
Quentin's chapter was definitely easier to read than Benjy's chapter. However, I actually enjoyed reading Benjy's chapter a lot more...probably because I find him to be a far more enjoyable character. For some reason Quentin bothers me. Throughout his section, I pictured him as a selfish individual who completely disregarded the needs and feelings of his family. When I think back to Cady and how she named her child after him, I can't find a good reason as to why she would want to honor her brother through her child. Quentin seems to go against the most important aspects of Cady's life such as Benjy's happiness and familial stability. I think I may have such harsh criticism on Quentin because his section, unlike Benjy's, provided mental thoughts and processes so I grew to know his internal character more than any other character we had previously met.
I found Quentin's section a lot more difficult to understand because Quentin is a much more detached person. One memory leads to another which leads to another, so on and so forth. This makes the section extremely difficult to read.
There is unusual sextual tension between Caddy and Quintin. Quintin is obsessed with Caddy's virginity and i believe his uneasiness with Caddy's virginity reflects his own virginity. He is ridiculed by a fellow Harvard student about his virginity and this makes him extremely uncomfortable. Quintin hates almost all the men who slept with Caddy. It almost seems as if he wishes he had slept with Caddy.
Quentin's past haunts him. He is submerged in the details of his past and is unable to get over his family's history. He is unable to live in the present and always seems as if he is searching for something, or trying to fulfill some previous goal or desire.
I will begin by saying that I love Quentin. I absolutely love his character. (I wonder whether this will change as I begin to further understand his book, but it seems unlikely.) I loved, as Ashish said, Quentin's human element, and I found his feelings toward time-which included both fascination and fear at the same time-intriguing. One of my favorite parts of Quentin's book demonstrate these qualities that he possessed. It was the part where he gave the young Italian girl a coin and then ran away from her. He wanted to help her, he tried to help her... but the had his own agenda to attend to that day, and she was a distraction. Of course, she reappeared under his elbow not long after that, which symbolized Quentin's inability to always be in control. The incident shows his human qualities: he was faced with a very difficult situation and eventually felt lost of all ideas but to simply run away. As human readers, we can relate to this. None of us can truthfully say that we have never felt like running, leaving it all behind, trying to escape things that control us, such as time. Quentin's section, as much as I enjoyed it, also... (can you guess what I am about to say, Miss Seigel?) made me sad. It saddened me to say goodbye to a character that I grew to love in a matter of minutes.
I have to say that I thought Quentin's chapter was a lot more difficult to get through than Benjy's. I guess it was partly because I was expecting something easier, Quentin being a Harvard student. In Benjy's chapter, the memories would come in fragments, but they would also be triggered by his senses or from something similar in another memory. But, reading Quentin's, all of his memories just seemed jumbled together. In comparison, though, Quentin's chapter was definitely more interesting because we got to see feelings and emotions that Benjy could not express.
I think I agree with most people when I say that Quentin is weird. He just had this completely distorted sense of what was right and wrong. To him, falsely confessing to his father that he had committed incest seemed perfectly rational. And then when he got arrested for something he didn't do he seemed completely normal with it. When he was going by Mrs. Bland, he was like, "good afternoon. i've been arrested" like nothing had ever happened. weird.
The creepiest part of this section for me was the italian girl who followed him around. I agree with jess, I think she definitely does represent death. Quentin obviously can't escape the notion of death, just like he can't get rid of the girl. At point when he's with her, they stop by the river and he says he wishes he could swim but that he doesn't have any time and then he says that he will have time for it. this entire time that he spends with the girl represents the amount of time left before he dies.
Quentin’s character, although partially creepy (in reference to his obsession with Caddy), is interesting and genuine. Quentin, unlike Caddy, or his Mother, searches for the meaning of life and seeks desperately to find some kind of order. In addition, Quentin searches to discover reason to his family’s disorder. In doing so, by analyzing his father’s philosophy, Quentin tries to contradict his father’s caustic opinions on humanity. Unfortunately, as Quentin tries to be positive, he is reminded of his father’s negative statements. His father's opinions on girls,and their predisposed behaviors upset me, as I knew it also upset Quentin.
In addition, A particularly interesting philosophy by his father, pg. 85 “He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” I found this resonant to the entire theme of the chapter, with the obvious symbols of watches and the concept of time, leading up to his death.
It is also undeniable that Quentin loves Caddy. However, at least at first, I did not find his obsession with her indicating the desire for incest, but more of the fact that Caddy has given Quentin love where he cannot find it from anyone else, (his mother, his father..etc.) His infatuation with Caddy’s virginity is because he longs for something pure and innocent.
So Quentin..I don't think I like him. First of all, the sense of paranoia that he developed about time, clocks, etc., drove me crazy. On the other hand, it also enabled me to sympathize with him; the idea of time demonstrated just how lost Quentin was and how he was desperately searching for something to cling to. I think Quentin is selfish; where as I understood Benji's love and bond with Caddy, as he truly needed to be nurtured by her, I did not feel that genuine vulnerabilty from Quentin. It really bothered me how while Caddy was trying to make sure everyone in her family was alright, Quentin was putting this incredible pressure on her to run away. Quentin's section further developed my admiration for Caddy. It seems that Caddy is the only Compson who has any grip on reality and the only one who has the courage to deal with it. I also got the impression that Quentin harbors tremendous jealousy-towards Jason, Herbert, Benji. However, even though I don't care for Quentin as a person, I respect him as a narrator. His narration was able to effectively portray this feeling of torment and despair. I also have to comment on Mrs. Compson-she has no right being a mother. No decent human being refers to their children as "punishments." She should have sunk to the bottom right along Quentin.
PS- Carly your so right: Tom and Louisa Take 2. How many times did Caddy have to tell Quentin "Don't touch me"? And Quentin was going on about how he was really the father of Caddy's baby, not Dalton Ames. Hmmm..maybe the reason Caddy named her daughter Quentin was more scandalous than we thought.
I love how Quentin's mind goes from the present to the past and to completely complex concepts about life and the human experience. And although sometimes I wasnt really sure what he was talking about, I kind of got sucked into the flow of his thoughts in a way that was very different from Benjy's book.
The obsession with time connected everything together, it was almost as if the ticking was in my head as i was reading. Quentin was so caged in by time and so tormented by it, even when he broke the watch it kept on ticking. He could not break the cage so to him, suicide was the only choice left.
Im not completely sure if Quentin claims to have had "relations" with Caddy because he desires her or because he wants to protect her or the family's honor.
When I first started Quentin's part, I thought it would be much easier to read because he is supposed to be a Harvard graduate. I expected all events to be in place and cohesive. However, after reading the first couple pages, I realized I was entirely wrong. Quentin seems so disturbed and seems to have so much conflict in his mind that he too (for a different reasons) seems unable to express himself. I think Faulker does this to try to convey how Quentin is so consumed in his inner turmoil that he is impossible to connect with. I noticed the symbols in Quentin's section much more quickly, like the clock and water. I know the smell of honeysuckle is also a really important symbol, but I'm still kind of confused exactly what it represents (I know it has to do with darkness and suffering). I am also a little freaked out about Quentin's obsession with Caddy. I'm not sure if Quentin is just completely ashamed with his sister for sacrificing the family name, or really does love Caddy on a more intimate level. I do overall enjoy Quentin's section more than I did Benjy's because it definitely provides more meaning and insight into the characters and hopeless situation of the Compson family.
I had such high expectations for Quentin's section. I dismissed my difficulties with Benjy's section because he is, after all, mentally ill. Quentin, as a Hah-vahd (I visited Harvard this summer and that's how the pretentious tour guide pronounced the school name) student, should at least have a firmer grasp on sanity and his thought process. Hardly so. I died three times over before even finishing the section.
While I do think Quentin's fascination with Caddy is disturbing, it is also inexplicably cute. It's like a child, who never learned how to grow up properly, clinging to his mother. Does anyone else think it strange that the father thinks nothing of Caddy's promiscuity? He doesn't hover and hyperventilate like Mrs. Compson, but rather dismiss virginity as a mere vocabulary term. Pretty chill father, eh?
Though Quentin's section seemed like a frenzy at first, it gets more structured as I read onward. As the day of his suicide unfolds, he tells of his physical actions in detail and with coherency. It is only when he is alone and has the time to muse, does his mind launch into a whirl of memories. The memories become more and more panicked and jumbled as he gets ready to jump.
Quentin is adorable, though I wouldn't like to have him as a brother. It would be a little too much.
I prefer Quentin's section to Benjy's, no question. And I don't say that because his section is easier to read, but because it is more interesting. There was more to it. It wasn't just page after page of random, incoherent images. Quentin's section actually let us in on his thoughts and feelings. He had conversations and a concrete sense of time. I could relate to and understand him better.
As for Quentin as a character, I'm not sure how I feel. I don't hate him. I don't love him. Basically, I just feel sorry for him. He strikes me as confused and sort of helpless. He seems to be trapped by his family's expectations of him - guilted into attending Harvard becasue it is his mother's dream and they sold Benjy's pasture so he could go. His love for Caddy is weird, but I don't think he understands it any better than we do.
Once again, we encounter a character who has a detrimental relationship with time and an obsession with Caddy. What I found about Quentin is that, while clearly intelligent, he's fixated on concepts that he cannot act upon in a reasonable or practical way. He finds it important for the Compson name to retain its honor, so he finds it reasonable to suggest that he and Caddy commit suicide. Caddy's promiscuity devastates him because he's so hung up on the idea of female purity, but it only amounts to a few embarrassing confrontations. He is cripplingly obsessed with time, and he sees suicide as the only way to escape it.
What I found most harrowing about Quentin's section was my realization that Mrs. Compson's neglect destroyed Quentin and, to a lesser extent, Caddy. Towards the end of the section, he repeats, "If I’d just had a mother so I could say Mother Mother." Quentin and Caddy bonded over their status as excluded children. He is obsessed with Caddy's virginity for reasons already mentioned--he feels that all females should be pure and virginal, so Caddy's promiscuity makes him feel like he has less of a grasp on the one person he truly loves. We all need to get over that whole "incest giggle and/or gross out factor" and discuss it because it's crucial to understanding Quentin.
One thing that seriously bothered me about Quentin's character was his idea of what was honorable and what actions would protect the honor of his family name. Quentin is obsessed with how Caddy's promiscuity as disgraced the family and is willing to do anything to protect the shame on the family's name that will result from Caddy's actions. The "solution" he comes up with is to tell his father that he has commited incest and is the father of Caddy's bastard child, not Dalton Ames, thinking that this would salvage his family name. I do not understand why Quentin would think that admitting to his father that he commited incest would be any less damaging to the family resputation than Caddy's promiscuity, in fact to me it seems as if incest would be an even greater sin than being promiscuous. Quentins logic makes not sense to me, infact i think that this thinking is seriously disturbed and he is way to quick to say he had sex with his sister. No wonder he is suicidal! Although he may be harvard educatecd and his section seems to be written way more indepth and sophisticated than Benjy's section, I think Quentin's thinking process lacks just as much rationality as Benjy's thinking thoguht process.
I can't really explain why, but I can't seem to feel sorry for Quentin. The scene that probably stuck with me the most throughout his section was when he was helping the little Italian girl. He seemed like such a nice character at that point who just could not seem to escape the "Compson curse." I found that a lot of the recurring symbols in Benjy's section also appear in Quentin's section. I think Faulkner overemphasizes the clock. It became obvious after the first paragraph of Benjy's section that there was an emphasis on the struggle to fight time and its restraining effect. Two other images/symbols that occur in Quentin’s section are the color yellow and the constant presence of shadows. The shadows probably represent the constant "shadow" around the members of the Compson family. The constant use of the color baffled me. Red can be anger or love and blue can be calmness, but I never read a novel with yellow as an important color in it. I guess we'll just discuss that during class if it's that important. The last thing that I found interesting in between the two sections was the relationship between the narrator and Caddy. Caddy is obviously a central character in the novel and is portrayed somewhat differently by both Benjy and Quentin. Benjy's only good relationship seems to be with Caddy (who smells like trees of course...). Quentin’s opinion of Caddy seems to be one of constant embarrassment. He goes to Caddy because he feels she is a problem in the problem (like they don't have enough of those). Quentin’s character is actually very comparable to Benjy even though Benjy is severely mentally retarded while Quentin is a Harvard graduate.
So, I thought Quentin's section was going to be much easier than Benjy's because he went to Harvard. I was so unbelievably wrong. This section made me want to pull my hair out even more than the first one. I found the section much more difficult to understand because Quentin's thoughts seemed to jump around much more quickly and much more briefly.
I'm not sure how feel about Quentin as a character. I definitely don't love him, but I don't completely hate him either. He's a very complex character, and for a Harvard student I didn't think he was that smart. He sounded almost childish, but I think this may be because he is so confused about his emotions. While Benjy's obsession with Caddy his sincere and sweet, Quentin's is just plain creepy. It goes back to the incestual love idea we found in Hard Times. What I did find interesting about Quentin was obsession with time. I loved what Faulkner did with that and how he portrayed.
I look forward to discussing this section in class so I can understand it better, because right now it makes very little sense.
And once again I find myself posting a comment at seven in the morning. It must be a curse.
I was puzzled by the role of the little girl (to show Quentin's warm fuzzy side?) until I read Jesse's comment. It makes perfect sense to me that she represents death - Little Sister Death, as Quentin kept repeating at the beginning; he calls her "sister." Plus, she's always watching him with flat dark eyes. I've never heard of a normal little girl described that way. And so you could definitely say that her shadowing Quentin (and his acceptance of her) is a portent of his suicide. And, in a weird way, it even makes sense that she's Italian. Italians weren't accepted into that society at the time, and suicide isn't a particularly acceptable act.
I also found the relationship between Gerald and his mother (and Quentin's preoccupation with it) interesting. It goes back to what someone wrote about Quentin being destroyed by his mother's non-presence; you can sense that, although Gerald's mother is bizarrely fixated on her son, Quentin still finds that relationship desirable.
In answer to what Anna said about the scene where Quentin's ready to slit Caddy's throat - I think that goes along with the extant tension between them. She's basically daring him.
And, finally, can someone please tell me why everything important (in Benjy's book, too) is yellow?
I found Quentin's section slightly easier because it wasn't quite as difficult to figure out what or when things were happening. But actually understanding it was harder. His thoughts seem so irrational and erratic at times that they feel almost impossible to keep up with. Despite this, I really enjoyed the stream of consciousness section (though I had a tough time understanding a bunch of what was going on). Through this format I found it easier and more interesting to put myself in a his shoes and think and visualize things the same way he did. Overall, I guess I've got love/hate feeling with this section...some parts are enjoyable, but others are difficult to understand and somewhat tedious.
After reading this, my opinion of Quentin himself is rather conflicted. I started thinking that Quentin was simply totally delusional and obsessed with his sister, but despite these facts, the book also delves into his inner feelings, ones that are much easier to relate to or feel sympathy for (and the part where he helps the little Italian girl was nice...but still a little creepy). Sure, he's seriously messed up (he thinks and acts so irrationally it's scary), and his relationship with Caddy should be raising red flags all over the place. However, he still maintains very human emotions and reactions that the reader can connect with. Even though his story's over, I'm still not sure what to think of him.
I'm also seeing the representation of death thing of the little girl, and the only thing I can think of in relation to yellow is its symbol of cowardice that everyone in the family seems to possess, perhaps except for Caddy. I don't know...just a last minute thought.
Quenin was...interesting definitely. What do the Compsons have against punctuation?? As the chapter progressed and we came to know him better and got more used to his section's style, I became more comfortable with him. I think we're supposed to be comfortable - the same way one of his friends mentions how dogs and little children attach themselves to him. So why? I would have to say it's the reality, the humanity of his suffering.
His obsession with time was followed really interestingly throughout the chapter, watching his shadow move. Can you even stand in the belly of your shadow? Isn't that impossible? He keeps thinking he's tricked it (his dark side) in the water, but no such luck I think. And the broken watch, so it can't lie to him....
But the part I found the most interesting was when he remembers being with Caddy at night, both of them wet in the branch. It's such an intense scene! Time chasing them as it gets darker, her lover who she doesn't love, and when he almost killed her...!
In class we were talking about how "creepy" Quentin was, as if he were some chemically imbalanced mass-murderer. Although Quentin may be a little unstable, I think that he is perhaps the most valiant and admirable character that I have encountered so far. As Margaret said in class, he does remind me of Haulden Caufield in the sense that he wants to preserve everything that he sees as pure and true. Like Caufield, he is a thinker; he analyzes every event in such detail that even through the fragmented structure of the section you can see the meticulous examinations of an almost fanatical mind. He is young, I'm guessing late teens to early twenties, and he is still wonderfully innocent, I find. The fact that he is a virgin exemplifies Quentin's purity, and I think that this frustrates him; he wants to break free of this binding nobility of character, because it separates him from Caddy--many times in the novel he probes her, tries to understand why she soils herself continually. Of course, Quentin asks her whether love propelled her relationship with Dalton Ames, and he doesn't understand why Caddy won't answer him. There is also a part of the novel after Quentin is released from custody, where Shreve says that it wasn't Quentin's fault that the girl followed him, that children, dogs, and other solitary beings always follow him. Quentin's uncorrupted gentleness and sense of right and wrong attracts these miscreants to him. It is also interesting to note that unlike everyone else who encounters the little girl in the bakery, Quentin treats her with kindness, and calls her "sister." Coincidence? To me Quentin is an inherently pure and humane character, but his introspective and thoughtful nature is so shaken by the world in which he is presented, that he struggles against "time" to make sense of it.
In class we were talking about how "creepy" Quentin was, as if he were some chemically imbalanced mass-murderer. Although Quentin may be a little unstable, I think that he is perhaps the most valiant and admirable character that I have encountered so far. As Margaret said in class, he does remind me of Haulden Caufield in the sense that he wants to preserve everything that he sees as pure and true. Like Caufield, he is a thinker; he analyzes every event in such detail that even through the fragmented structure of the section you can see the meticulous examinations of an almost fanatical mind. He is young, I'm guessing late teens to early twenties, and he is still wonderfully innocent, I find. The fact that he is a virgin exemplifies Quentin's purity, and I think that this frustrates him; he wants to break free of this binding nobility of character, because it separates him from Caddy--many times in the novel he probes her, tries to understand why she soils herself continually. Of course, Quentin asks her whether love propelled her relationship with Dalton Ames, and he doesn't understand why Caddy won't answer him. There is also a part of the novel after Quentin is released from custody, where Shreve says that it wasn't Quentin's fault that the girl followed him, that children, dogs, and other solitary beings always follow him. Quentin's uncorrupted gentleness and sense of right and wrong attracts these miscreants to him. It is also interesting to note that unlike everyone else who encounters the little girl in the bakery, Quentin treats her with kindness, and calls her "sister." Coincidence? To me Quentin is an inherently pure and humane character, but his introspective and thoughtful nature is so shaken by the world in which he is presented, that he struggles against "time" to make sense of it.
Alright, I felt the need to post again... mostly because I got home and, for some unknown reason, this site feels the need to e-mail me anytime this blog gets commented on. Simply put: there were like 30 e-mails from one place and I got curious. Also I was listening to "Somewhere Only We Know" followed by "A Bad Dream" both by Keane, both of which I listened to while posting yesterday. Coincidence? No. iTunes playlist.
So anyway, weird thought (If anyone already posted this... well... I don't really care. I have no intention of reading through 30 comments, 20 of which I heard in class already.): This is probably a huge stretch, but Quentin's section "flows" better than Benjy's because Quentin is the water element. There, I said it.
In class today, someone said something like, "If you knew you were going to kill yourself later today, you'd probably be acting that strange too." This is a state of mind that, hopefully, very few of us have anything to do with, but even the psychologically healthy can imagine how disorienting and emotionally taxing it would feel. Quentin's entire section takes place under these conditions, which are, to say the least, abnormal. So it is not fair to judge what kind of person he has been in the past by how he is acting as he narrates the section. A few details, like his conversations with his roommate and his relationship with some of the other students, suggest a more or less normal life. If one of us were to have a conversation with Quentin at any time up until the day he dies, he would probably just strike us as a shy intellectual, but a person perfectly capable of living a normal life. His wrenching guilt and emotional chaos are hidden. It seems to me like he has been worn down, as Caddie slips away from him, from a relatively normal state into madness, and only right before he kills himself does it manifest itself as insanity noticeable to the people around him.
Sorry I didn't post yesterday, Ms. Siegel.
Mostly in response to Jesse here, I can't imagine that someone who planned on killing themselves was a terribly normal or engaging person, even on their best day. While reading Quentin's section, I never questioned the credibility of it, in the sense that this was how things really were for him on a day to day basis. If we saw Quentin talking to a roommate or a family member say five, ten years ago, or even more recent than that, it is my reading that it would be the same distant, far off, Steinman-ly philosophical Quentin that we are shown during his section of the novel. Is there an erosion of Quentin that occurs in conjunction with the erosion of the Compson's and more importantly his relationship with Caddy? Of course, but he was always frailer than that.
After discussing the book in class and understanding it more and more, I decided that I really like and enjoy reading this book. That being said, Sartre's abstract ideas about time in Quentin's section kind of lost me. However, a few of his points hit the nail on the head for me- it was like he was communicating my thoughts that I couldn't seem to put into words. Quentin's haunting section consisted of "frozen time." It seemed like even though all of the events were happening, as a reader, I was standing still, unmoving. The "fleeting and unimaginable immobility" supports Sartre's idea of clockless time, specifically represented by his watch, because even though there is the constant ticking of the watch, there is a lack of progression and no real future, just images of the past. He even refuses to fix his watch and insists that the store owner not tell him the time when he asks about the clocks in the windows, as if time was taboo because "the present moved along in the shadows." I think it was important that Sartre pointed out that Quentin "interpreted his present in terms of his past" because it was clear by the end of the section that his over analysis of his family's past is what ultimately lead to his suicide.
After today's discussion, I definitely developed even further insights into Quentin's troubled state of mind. I have to say that I do in fact like Quentin as a character. He is so extraordinarly conflicted, yet so intelligent, as he analyzes his family's misfortunes in excruciating amounts. Quentin can not move on from his past--a world lacking order and love. He picks apart each individual step that ultimately leads to the Compson downfall in such a manner that the past consumes him. As Sarte explains, he forever lives in the past.
I really agree with and appreciate Carly's points of view regarding the images of "clockless time." Quentin's obsession with time marks his own inability to live freely. He is a prisoner of the past in the way. Faulker demonstrates Quentin's seeming imprisonment through his unique style of writing--a clever mix of orderly present situations and random, incoherent past memories. Quentin can not function in the present world without the turmoils of his past leaping onto him. Every situation reminds him of something else--something that either saddens him or that he needs to avenge. His impulsive fight with Gerald shows how every figure in his present eludes a painful, inescapable past memory. Caddy shows up everywher the, most vividly through the helpless young Italian girl, a symbol of confusion and misplacement.
After reading Sartre's critique, I realized, like carly, that while I was reading it felt like time was frozen because there really was no progress or future in the events that the characters were recounting and living. I think its symbolic of the family's situation: they've come to a certain point, where all these bad and shameful events have accumulated to ruin the family name, and there's really no hope for a better future. The Compson family is stuck, frozen in time. They're situation is a macrocosm of Quentin's story. Quentin is so obsessed with time, but he isn't actually moving forward. His clock might keep ticking, but as carly mentioned before Quentin's present is his past. He's so stuck in the past that he can't actually move on and create a future for himself. This obsession with time, as Sartre says, eats away at him and "prevents him from fulfilling his human character." Sartre's claim that Quentin is already dead puts this entire concept of a lack of progress and living in the past into perspective. It does make me question, however, if Quentin is dead, where and how is he actually recounting these events?
I also found Sartre's explanation of the lack of chronology in the novel really interesting. Sartre states that Faulkner's "metaphysics is a metaphysics of time." But, he later goes onto mention that Faulkner's characters don't base their memories on chronological order, but emotional signifance. The ones that are most significant, he says, "are our closest memory." It just seems to me, after reading this, that Faulker's metaphysics is centered around emotion over time.
I agree with Cara that Quentin lives in his past and I agree with Sartre's explanation for why that is. All of the most important events in his life occured in the past and remain in his memories. Present time has no impact on him because it holds no personal meaning, and so he keeps going back to those times that do.
Also, I think it is kind of ironic that this idea of "clockless/frozen time" is so heavily connected with Quentin, considering that with every new present time section in his narration, he gets closer and closer to the timeof his suicide. He keeps waiting for that three quarters bell. He may not be moving toward the future, but time is definitely moving him forward to his end. Even with a broken watch, time still looms over him. It is impossible for him to truly forget it.
I don't know if this is the right place, but I can't help myself. After leaving class and talking to Jasper about time and the world and reality and existence my head is spinning. What is reality? Who are we to judge reality, whether it be Quentin's reality or anyone else's. Reality is something that is different to everyone, time is different to everyone, it runs your down, it oppresses you or it is nothing, just a product of your reality.
Also, I got thinking about what the metaphysics of Faulkner are/were. In class I said that time is his reality, but then I got thinking that maybe it is fear. When Ms. Siegel said that Parla had mentioned something about emotion governing metaphysics, I thought well then why couldn't fear be the overbearing power in someone's reality. Is everything done out of fear? Fear of what might happen if they don't do this, or don't wear that, or don't carrry that, or could it even go so far as to question someone's thoughts. Do someone's metaphysics seep so far into their being that they are subconsciously governed by those very things that make them tick (no pun intended).
I know this is very delayed but I wanted to post anyway. I felt that Quentin's section was not as confusing as a lot of people are saying. The only thing I found confusing was what he was doing. I knew it was all leading to his suicide but I tried to read his section without that knowledge. Without knowing that, it is very difficult to understand what he was doing.
Besides that, I really liked this section. I kind of feel bad for Quentin because he felt that all his life he had all these pressures on him. His family sold their land so he could go to Harvard, so now there are the pressures of succeeding- for them. But I also felt that, and have always felt, running away from your problems is no way to find a solution. Suicide is equivalent to running away. It is the easy way out instead of dealing with what life gives you. It is a very selfish act, and his self-pity is what ultimately made me dislike him overall.
Quentin's suicide is paralleled to his trying to stop time. When he breaks the watch (clock?), he cuts himself, bleeds, breaks the hands, but the clock keeps ticking. When he washes his cut out, it stings. This pain is a reminder of his failed attempt to stop time. No matter what he does, there is always something that reminds him of the continuous progression of time. By stopping time, it is Quentin's way of stopping the past from haunting him. His shadow that he tries to trick and at one point wants to drown, is a symbol of his past, he can't escape his shadow- time- his past. The only way to officially end time, he feels, is to end his life. His suicide is a defeat to time and his past.
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