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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
34 comments:
I guess that you haven't had time to post yet. There's a whole lot of weekend left!
If we consider the present like Quentin does, then the weekend is already gone, Ms. Siegel. And I'm not in the process of typing up a blog entry, but have already done so.
Putting the events in order for the Quentin section does not have the same effect as putting the events in order for Benjy. Time for Quentin does not exist, and so trying to put it in mathematical terms defeats the purpose of his character. When we discussed time in conjunction with Quentin's mind on Friday, I walked out of class a bit frustrated. What does time mean? It is open to each individual's interpretation? Though clocks divide days into hours and hours into minutes, time really doesn't pass in segments. The flow of Quentin's mind is like the flow of time, always pressing forward regardless of its surroundings.
Sartre describes Quentin as a being steadily backing up until he hits a wall. But I don't feel like Quentin hits a wall at all. Death is not a wall--Quentin hit his "wall" well before he committed suicide. Quentin's memories, like time, carry on after death; he lives through his memories. To Quentin, the present means nothing at all compared to the past.
Quentin’s section, composed of stagnated thoughts, was interesting in that the motif of time was expanded from Benjy’s section. Where Benjy has no concept of time, and in his narration, time is completely disregarded, Quentin tries to understand time, and then escape it. The fact that time moves in circles, or is “suspended” indicates that there is no future. However, the fact that time is suspended in a single moment, and that Quentin is “dead already,” is an amazing but frustrating thought. In class we discussed the concept of a “flash theory,” (or flashback, while Quentin is already dead), but I cannot seem to grasp that theory. When Sartre writes that he is “dead already,” I do not think his words should be taken so literally. I think it means that before Quentin’s day started, and before his stream of consciousness narrative, he already knew that he was going to commit suicide, he already knew that time would be stopped, and he thought that this was the one way to stop time from passing.
Having not been on class on Friday, I'm hoping what I have to say will still make a LITTLE bit of sense.
While turning through the pages of Quentin's section, it is heartbreaking to see just how Quentin cannot escape time until his suicide. Through the section, there are the recurring symbols of the clocks, his watch, water and most important of shadows. The shadows that Quentin sees seem to be a constant indicator of time. Shadows do not surface at all times of the day, but only when the sun is in a particular place with regards to a person. Therefore, even though Quentin breaks his watch, and makes an attempt to remain unaware and confined by time, he can't escape it. Quentin cannot escape Caddy's promiscuity or the shame that he believes she has brought to his family, which thereby tarnished his family's name. Ultimately, at the end of the section, Quentin realizes that no matter what he does, he cannot change the course of actions from the past. The only way to escape them, to escape what time has done, would be to take his own life, and this demonstrates his deteriorating state of mind through the entire section.
I'm not so sure that I believe what Sartre said about Quentin already being dead. I agree with Linda in that Quentin was just speaking in the past tense. To Quentin, time doesn't mean anything because he already knows he is going to commit suicide, so why not speak in the past tense? What Quentin doesn't realize when he breaks his watch is that time will always occur, no matter what form it takes. Even if it is not broken up into minutes, a shadow and where it is, can tell the time. Hypothetically, if you are blind and deaf and cannot hear clocks or see shadows, a person can still know that time has passed/is passing because of memories. Either way, Quentin is trapped. He focuses so deeply on the past and what has happened, that there is no way for him to create a new future or even live in the present because all he thinks about is what happened.
I think if Quentin had lived, then he would turn out like his mother: a self pitying, hypocondriac, crazy person.
Whether Quentin is dead or alive when the section starts isn't that important, in my eyes, because both can be substantiated. The key element is time and that time as we know it, seconds, minutes, hours, is all abstract, just made up by humans. This section really shows you how time is a force much greater than the tick tock of our watches or clocks. Time is racing by us, and we live things as the past. There is no present, it is too fast to see it or conceptualize it, there is no future, we believe things will happen based only on what we know has happened before, there is only the past. I believe that Sartre hit the nail on the head when he said that it is as if Quentin is in a car that is driving forwards and he is just looking out the back window. There is no present in this section, the future and what the reader may think is the present is only a collection of things that have already happened. Even if I was telling you a story now, now, now, the time is past, past, past. And when one looks at this section, what Faulkner really sees time as is something that is greater than the humans that it governs, it is too fast to be the present, time goes by too fast for one to know that they are in the present until it has become the past, and the future, well, that doesn't exist.
I also wasn't in class friday (but only because i remember it that way?) but here goes -
I thought Sartre's ideas were really interesting, particularly his thoughts of an "unspeakable present, leaking at every seam". For Quentin, the "present" and recent past are irrelevant, completely unimportant in the face his passion for Caddy and her suffering. abawds - I don't think Quentin is trying to escape the shame caddy brings to the family, but her suffering, as shown by his willingness to protect Caddy by falsely admitting incest.
But Sartre also believes that Faulkner is wrong in assuming the nonexistence of a future. I noticed that Quentin talks several times about having considered killing both Caddy and himself so that they can be in Hell together. Though he destroys his watch, he still PLANS to kill himself; even if this is told by a dead Quentin, that past had a future.
(Hey! Look. I got my password back. Anybody miss me? Didn't think so.)
As a rule, I never disagree with Linda (because she's usually right,) but I disagree with Linda. Time definitely exists for Quentin. Time (as Ms. Siegel has said) is the reason Quentin commits suicide. If Quentin could have stopped time in any of the moments we see, he would not be dead. Time is the barrier that is keeping him back. It is present throughout his narrative. I would say that his relationship with time is unique. In most books we read, chronology is accepted. Quentin struggles against the conventional concepts of time. I think that is the purpose of the "technical oddity." Of course, I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about (and Linda is usually right.)
One of the major themes in the Quentin section, evidently, is Quentin's inability to escape and control time. It is interesting to investigate the motif of time in context of the past, the present, and the future for this reason. The past is uncontrollable; it is impossible for us to take back events that already happened. Yet this is the element of time that drives Quentin mad in his obsession with past events. The future, to an extent, is also uncontrollable. Sure, we can try to mold it as much as possible, but it is inevitable that unexpected events will occur. It seems from this analysis that the present is the only element of time that we can control. But does the present even exist? It is a scary thought that the answer is no. But as Myles said, time is racing by us, and before we know it, the past becomes a larger compilation of the events that we thought were in our control.
In class, we discussed Faulkner's metaphysics, including the possibility that his metaphysics was not time, but emotion instead. When we accept the fact that I and many others eluded to above- that time, the past, present, and future, is not in our control- our emotions seem conquerable in comparison. Quentin's flaw is that he is trapped in his emotion. I am not denying that emotion is a difficult part of us to control. But it can be done. Was Faulkner's emphasis on time in this section used in order to show us what cannot be controlled? Or was it used to show us what CAN be controlled? Did he use it to further exemplify Quentin's helplessness, portraying him as a character who obsesses over what he cannot control (time) and neglects to move on from what he can control (his emotion)? Is time really that important? Perhaps it is jumbled in The Sound and the Fury as a signal to us that our interactions with our emotions- whether we let them drown us or learn and move on from them as best as we can- are more important than time.
I wrote my entire blog in the way in which Quentin wrote his section, in past tense. To show that i thought that Quentin was not narrating his section while he was dead, but more on a one second time dealy from when things actually happened kind of like i did in this blog. The reasons why i thought that Quentin was not already dead was becasue in his section he never mentioned being dead. I saw in other books i read, such as the Lovely Bones, that the characters who narrated and are already dead always spoke in some way about their deaths, either how they died, or who killed them, or how they feel about being dead. Quentin mentioned nothing like this, he did not even menion that he wanted to die or he thought about committing suicide. This is why i thought that Sartre's theroy that Quentin narrated his section while he was already dead, was improbable. Also, the fact that Quentin chose to focus so much on the day he died adds more to prove my "one second dealy" theory. If Quentin was already dead it would not have made much sense if he spent half of his section talking about the day he died, I thought that if Sartre's theroy was true Quentin would have spent more time refelcting on the events of his life rather than specifically the day he died. I was not dead while i was writing this blog post, i merely wrotge down my thoughts the second after i thought of them, which seemed like the probable explanation for the way Quentin narrated the day of his suicide. Although it seemed like a strange concept for most of the people in the class, especially Jill, when we discussed this theory on Friday, i thought it was important to take into account the fact that Quentin was a strange character, he was not a typical person, he took all of the burden of his families shame on his shoulders and this burden ruled his life.
I was more confused than I was convinced by Sartre's argument that Quentin was already dead while writing his section. I disagree with Linda and others who say that the present doesn't mean anything. The future, to Sartre and me, is the time (out of the past, present, and future) that means the least. The past is probably the most important. In Quentin’s section, his memories about the past fill the gaps about his present. I do agree with Myles that Faulkner writes the novel as to show that time is more important than the people it governs. Time does not control people, the people control themselves (a novel thought, I know). Quentin is doomed to die from the start of the chapter. This does not mean that he was doomed to commit suicide as soon as he was born. We can't control time but we can control what we do in time. I also kind of disagree with Maddie that we can't control our past. In various moments, we make decisions. Instead of writing my post now, I could have written it earlier today. We control who we are and what we do, even if time is an overlying and overpowering force.
First off, I don't agree with Jess when she says that time doesn't mean anything to Quentin because he knows he's going to commit suicide. I think time means everything to him. I think that reason he commits suicide is because he has no control over time and as it goes on, he's stuck - his family is stuck. The only way to actually get somewhere for his is to kill himself. But, even when he's dead, he still i stuck in the past. This just goes to show that there's no future for Quentin, or his family, they're just completely oppressed by time. Time is holding them back, when it really should be pushing them forward.
I mentioned earlier that Quentin is dead. If we're agreeing with Sartre's point that there is no future in the lives of the Compsons and that they are only capable of living in the past, Quentin just has to be dead. To me, Sartre is perfectly clear on this- he is dead or he isn't. I don't think there's any flash theory to it. If Quentin was alive while narrating his section that would mean that his suicide is in the future, but if all the narrators are in the present narrating the past and do not implicate their future actions, then Quentin can't be alive. It just seems more logical for Quentin to be dead if every narrator follows the the same structure.
I don't think it's a question of whether or not the future is important; what matters is that, in Quentin's eyes, it doesn't exist. In answer to Rachel, I don't think Quentin's plan to kill himself implies a future - because I don't think he ever planned it. He never thinks "I'm going to kill myself." He never thinks about his impending death at all, which leads to the conclusion that he must already have accepted it as fact. It is not what will happen, but what might as well have happened already. So to disagree with Linda as well - I feel that to Quentin, his death is a wall, and that he is looking into the past (backing up) because he KNOWS that hitting it is inevitable and therefore, because there is no possibility of any other outcome, he has already hit it (died).
I think it's important to note that we, as readers, have no real conception of Quentin's time. We are aware of time itself, but we have no idea when all of Quentin's memories are occurring (unless we put a lot of effort into it.) They all exist in this nebulous past that Quentin can't escape. The past, for Quentin, is the only thing that is concrete because the present is chaotic (in theory, anything can happen at any moment) and the future in only what we believe it will be. Time will keep going no matter what happens to us, regardless of the decisions we make. We have a measure of control over our lives, but once the past has happened, it's over and we cannot change it. And whatever we do today will not change the fact that there will be a tomorrow, and we do not know what will happen then.
So, I'm not sure what to think about the nonexistence of the future. There appears to be no hope of Caddy returning to her family, but how do we really know that? Isn't the future just as unpredictable as the present? Faulkner's characters have no conception of the future because they have no conception of hope. That brings us back to the metaphysics of emotion. Does the future exist only because we project our own ideas and hopes onto a point beyond the present, say, next Tuesday or five years from now? I could be dead five years from now. I have no way of knowing.
Readinq Quentin's section, we cannot put things in a kind of order right away. We can only sense that Quentin is trapped, and we can sense Quentin's fantasies about what could be and his agonies over what has been. Quentin does hit a wall. He realizes that he will have to live with his past for his entire life, and he kills himself because he cannot bear that.
Memories, or the rememberance of past events, is the most prominent aspect of Faulkner's metaphysics of time. Memories, after all, are all we have to grasp on to. The future is a false idea that is very irrational since it never actually comes, and the present is likewise unbelievable since human brains must process events after they have happened. Therefore, we are left with the past and our collection of memories to guide us and lead us.
This point may have been what caused Quentin to kill himself. It is not that he could not control time or stop it, but rather that all he had to grasp onto was his own history, which will be forever unalterable. Quentin's attempt at changing this - breaking his clock and observing the world as a stranger- was a backlash at the notion that it is impossible to escape one's memories. Maybe he was attempting to break the clocks in order to destroy his memories of himself, of Caddie, and of Dalton, or maybe he was doing it to prove to himself that something could be changed. It is also possible that Quentin was attempting to escape himself by committing suicide, so that, when he had come to die, he could last remember himself taking control of his last memory.
I am remembering that quote "Time is no man's friend". Well, now I understand why.
After our discussion about time on Friday, I have developed a greater sympathy towards Quentin's character. Because as Linda commented, Quentin "hit a wall" before his suicide, he died when his life became consumed by memories of the past. I think that Quentin harbored an incredible sense of guilt and regreat and therefore, he could not grasp a future without the torment of these memories following him. I thought it was interesting how Maddie commented about time being out of our control; I was thinking about it, and time is really one of the only aspects of life that is completely permanent. In this case, maybe the present doesn't exist. Because even when you are living in the "present", every action and spoken word quickly crosses over the line between your free will and the locked vault of memories. The past is all that is tangible-we cannot predict what is going to happen in that moment of the present, or grasp the reality of the future, but the past...the past takes on a life of its own. I think this is what drives Quentin crazy. Faulkner emphasizes the shadows-perhaps to show how the past is haunting Quentin? And you can't lose your shadow. Maybe this is why we are told to "never look back."
In response to Dan, I didn't mean that time doesn't exist for Quentin altogether, but that time in terms of how we think of it (via clocks) is not how Quentin thinks of it. If we think of time as in the present, then it doesn't exist for Quentin at all. Time as it relates to Quentin only means things-that-are-gone, also known as the past.
And I don't know what I'm talking about either. So, Dan, if you think I'm usually right and reality dictates that I don't know what I'm talking about, then you must be wrong thinking that you don't know what you're talking about when I'm the one not knowing what I'm talking about.
Now I really don't know what I'm talking about.
As Sartre noted, time is clockless in Quentin's mind. Quentin has clearly given up on trying to measure time in a precise, numerical manner. Thus, time becomes a hazy and ambiguous blog known as "the past."
In previous posts, it was mentioned that Quentin employs past tense as if everything has already occurred. This provokes the idea that maybe Quentin is speaking from the grave, and sharing his thoughts from his last day on earth. Yet if this is the case, it is strange that he remembers so many details about his surroundings and activities on that particular day, especially when his thoughts are clearly rooted in his past and Caddy. It seems more likely that we are hearing his thoughts right after they happen. Either way, he is speaking as if he were already dead. In this sense, he is preparing to die. He doesn't think about dying because he has already made that decision (whether consciously or unconsciously), but the fact that he goes to purchase weights definitely indicates that he is preparing for his suicide.
Random comment about clockless time--the first time I read that phrase, I immediately thought of RENT because it states that a year can be measured in quantitative ways, like minutes, and not-so-quantitative ways, like love. That probably had nothing to do with the blog prompt, but oh well.
Like Elaine, I disagree with the "flash" theory because it seems more reasonable that Quentin relates events as they occur, which creates a perpetual past. I doubt that in the instant before my death I will focus on the relatively meaningless events of that day, rather than focusing on the most influential events in my life.
I found Maddie's point about emotion as very insightful, and I agree with her in that Quentin emotion's dominant him. He is an extremely passionate character, which causes him to have unreasonable thoughts that he will obviously never attempt to fulfill. He is helpless to his emotions, like Bigger, but instead of attempting to "blot out" the thoughts that trouble him, he allows them to force him into a sort of coma in which his memories mirror the emotion that he is experiencing.
I agree with Ken in that I don't think the "flash" theory we were discussing in class fits Quentin's narration. I also don't think Quentin is narrating as a dead person. As he goes through his last day on earth, quentin knows that it is going to end in his suicide. He has been planning it for a while. Just because he is narrating in the past tense does not mean he is looking back on the events. As Sarah demonstrated, it is quite easy to just speak on a one second delay, and as far as I know, she is alive and well.
I also like elaine's RENT reference. Time in terms of minutes, hours, and days is not as important as the emotions and memories it leaves you with. Quentin remembers some events that happened years before as if they happened yesterday. These memories are so clear to him because of the emotional impact they had on his life, not because of the time when they occured.
Im going to start of by quoting past comments… Myles- This section really shows you how time is a force much greater than the tick tock of our watches or clocks. Maddie- Quentin's flaw is that he is trapped in his emotion.
I see Faulkner’s main intention as describing that fact: time is dictated by emotion. Sartre talks about Faulkner’s depression: For Faulkner, the past is never lost, unfortunately; it is always there, it is an obsession. I agree that we can cling to the ticking clock, but when it comes down to it our individual times are based upon feelings. Although I am only seventeen, I remember my past based upon certain memories and how I felt. Some years seem to slip away in my mind, while I can remember almost every moment of a day when I was 10 years old. Faulkner captured that concept of time. Sartre talked about how the only present was the suicide, and everything else was past. I think we can agree on that point. But it can be interpreted in many different ways. Its hard for me to think of Quentin as telling this from the grave, I don’t think the tone really fits that. It is more as if it is all being told in one stretched out moment. As if Faulkner is trying to capture the feeling as Quentin is committing suicide, and to Faulkner, the only way to capture that feeling is to follow Quentin’s mind through the moments that define him. After all, to Faulkner, we are all merely a sum of our experiences.
Back to previous comments--Although Sarah agrees with me that Quentin is not dead, I don’t think that using lovely bones as an example really works to prove it. I think Faulkner is too complex to show Quentin in heaven deciding talking about his life. What Laura said : There appears to be no hope of Caddy returning to her family, but how do we really know that? Isn't the future just as unpredictable as the present? Faulkner's characters have no conception of the future because they have no conception of hope. Its more that Faulkner has no concept of hope, he believes that we are what has happened to us and everything we do is based on our past emotions. That’s why time is so odd to him because we are forced to continue and to continue to be controlled by our past.
I think one of the most interesting things in Quentin's section is the paradox of time. On one hand, Faulkner is implying that time is meaningless, that chronology has nothing to do with the human experience, that it is emotion that matters, that it is a superficial human construct. On the other hand, he seems to be fascinated/obsessed with the idea of time passing.
Following up our discussion in class, I am even more confused than I started out being. The flash theory is very appealing, especially following the tradition of Occurrence at Owl Creek bridge. However, I agree with ken that if it were that 'infinitesimal' moment before his death, he wouldn't go into such detail; i think there would just literally be no time for all of those thoughts, especially the elaborate ones such as the Italian girl. The theory that he is already dead is completely mind boggling, because I cant escape my primitive belief that dead things can't think and talk and remember. Sorry Quentin.
The only reasonable explanation for me for the past tense seems to be that he is narrating sometime later that day, before his suicide and before the instant before death. And what is most frustrating is that there is really no way to truly prove one or the other, because there aren't clues that are substantial enough. I wish Faulkner was still alive so we could ask him.
In analyzing exactly how time functions in Quentin's section, I really agreed with what Maddie made reference to--this concept that metaphysics is not time, but emotion. Yes, time itself is uncontrollable. Everything is stated in past tense to reflect how Quentin lives in the past; the memories of his family and the shame he feels are inescapable. Yet, all of his memories are linked together by his emotion. It is truly his emotion that he can not control. The memories he recalls are not random, or designed solely to show how Quentin cannot operate in the future. Instead, Quentin's memories represent his current state of emotion, his inner conflicts, rages, and burdens with himself that he cannot escape. As Maddie eluded to, Quentin's emotion is "timeless" in a sense, something he can not and will never overcome. The concept of time is used to reflect how Quentin always will remain a prisoner in his past memories because the emotion of his past will not leave him. He is completely a part of the past.
With regards to the "flash theory" as brought up in class, I do think the idea is a little far fetched. Mainly, I think that what is considered the present is actually happening, and I think his attempt to experience the world of Harvard serves an important function. He has tried to lead a normal life. Yet, every element of every day brings back some painful memory of his past. I think his last day on Earth is used to reflect this overall concept--his past, and thus his emotion, can not escape him. Gerald epitomizes Dalton Ames, his hated rival. The little Italian girl is a symbol of Caddy, representative of past innocence and how it can be so easily corrupted. Clearly, the scene with the Italian girl was used more to show how Quentin is a pretty nice guy, deeply concerned for this girl's well being. Simply, the characters present in the "present" sections are blatant symbols of Quentin's past. Therefore, I don't know if I can automatically assume that Quentin is reliving such memories from the grave. I think that the odd occurences of the day before his death simply reflect how he is unable to move on. The past is everywhere, and his emotion can not be subdued. Therefore, he takes his own life.
I think there exists a great irony here. Normally, death symbolizes a stop in time; all past conflicts are put to rest. Nothing exists anymore. Here, Quentin committs suicide to ESCAPE from this stop in time. Then I find myself questioning, what does death represent? Is it a solution to this "clockless time?"
I liked the idea Quentin already being dead that the Sartre paper brought up. It brings a new perspective to the book that, to me, makes Quentin seem somewhat less insane. I think it also adds to Quentin's definition of time.
I'm still having trouble defining what Quentin's definition of time is. While he clearly has a sense of it, especially compared to Benjy, his sense of time is incredibly unrealistic. He thinks there is no present and he doesn't seem to believe in the future either. The present and the future are much scarier than the past, because you don't know what's going to happen, but Quentin's section proves that not having a present or future creates an even scarier situation. I think we would all like to be able to live in the comfort of our memories, but withou a present or a future how would these memories have been created in the first place? For me, Quentin's section proves the necessity of the present and future.
Quentin's section makes the reader think about what time means, how we define it, and how entangled it is in our lives. The sense of time in Benjy's section simply makes the reader want to put things order, but Quentin's section really makes the reader think about time and its meaning.
Ok, I'm done.
P.S. I really like what Elaine said about RENT.
I thought that alot of what Sartre said about Quentin's section made alot of sense. His idea that the past doesn't have to be in chronological order, and that it has more to do with the "weight" of your memories, helps explain why Quetin's section is so jumbled. Sartre says that once something is in the past, time doesn't matter anymore, and the only thing that is relevant is the actual memory. I think that Quentin's story is told completly based on how his memories come back to him, which means that they are unreliable and in an order that doesn't make sense to us. He thinks of one thing and it reminds him of something else and that reminds him of something else, which is if you think about it, how your mind works. Reading the article helped me alot because it allowed me to understand why the book is written in the confusing way that it is and it helped me to appreciate it more.
I also don't agree with some of my classmates who think that time and his inability to control it was what lead Quentin to committ suicide. There is no question that Quentin is obsessed with time, but I think that his mental state and the state of his family is what drove him to kill himself. I think time is used to show how helpless Quentin's situation is. Even if Quentin could control time, travel back and change the past, or see the future, he wouldn't be able to fix his family. He is obsessed with his past, but there is no specific event that he could change to make everything better. I think that time is what allows the reader to see the past and think about the future of the Compson family, but that it is not what lead Quentin to kill himself.
Note: I've decided to leave in all my rambling. It'll maybe be useful one day.
In true AP Lit fashion, I used middlebrow culture to advance my understanding of classic literature, but in true Ethan Spielman fashion, my understanding is still vague, my point is half-realized, and everything seemed much better before I started to actually write it down. In this case, I used the film American Beauty. Before going on to remind us that life is really, really short and that, beyond the white picket fences, well-groomed poodles, and overbearing clichés, the suburbs are a dark, dark place, Kevin Spacey, a depressed father undergoing a mid-life crisis, serves as a limited-omniscient narrator who says he'll be dead in a certain number of days (although I don't remember the specific number). When his death comes, he assumes that same role, reflecting on all the beauty in the world and what he loved about his life and family.
And although American Beauty is praised for being brutally honest and real, the viewer still has to suspend some disbelief, at least to accept a character's narration from the dead. Similarly, in accepting Sartre's theory, Quentin is already dead but still has a voice. As his suicide marks the end of his section, death is the only point from which he can narrate the past. While we can narrate the present with a short delay, (for example, I typed), that's not how we experience it. Narration like Quentin's cannot be done while the present is constantly moving. It requires being dead and only having memories.
I'm still having a tough time wrapping my head around this whole discussion of time, especially with the ideas that Sartre brings up. I feel like I agree with most people that Quentin's inability to control time was ultimately what drove him to kill himself, and that his section was him "looking out the back window" while driving forwards idea. At the same time, other views such as time not making a difference in his fate, also have strong reasoning and support. It seems much too ambiguous to be able to decide on a definite explanation for Quentin's book. I think time does factor into it, but the main problem is that Quentin is still too obsessed with his past and his memories...even if he had an extra day, extra month, or even a year or two he'd still end up committing suicide.
Or would he? Would he possibly be able to recover from these feelings? But then again, maybe this idea is totally wrong since Linda was correct in saying the passing of time is based on the perceptions of the individual. Yeah, I know I'm going in circles...the only thing I can definitively say is that I don't support the flash theory, I'm not a big fan of the "speaking from the grave" idea, and Quentin is definitely going forward while looking backwards. Whether his demise is because of a time bomb in his car (running out of time) or that his steering is stuck (fate would be the same regardless of time) is up in the air, I suppose.
Sorry for the incoherency.
They say morning is the best time to complete work because that is when one's brain functions at its peak.
Speaking of brain function, Quentin's brain seems only to function in the past. Quentin is obviously haunted by his past and is unable to move forward with his life. It seems that instead of moving forward with his life, he moves backward. He is so emerressed in his past and as a result, loses touch with both real time and watchless time. He is unable to communicate with the people around him and is unaware of his current state. It almost seems that time has not affected Quentin in that he remains a child. Quentin is never able to escape his childhood mentality, wishes, and desires. Instead of time allowing his memories to fade, time makes his memories stronger; hence, his mental state continuously deterioates.
I now want to discuss what time symbolizes in this section. I beleive time represents Quentin's state of mind. Time (in this section) is unorganized, jumbled, and random. The reader is unable to follow time, just like the reader is unable to follow Quentin's thoughts. But what i found incredible is how time, a usally logicial, progressive, and easily understood concept is successfully crafted into this incoherent concept. Furthermore, i believe time represents the downfall of man. Usually, man deters physically as time progresse but in this section, Quetin's mind, not his body, rapidly deters. I believe
Faulkner is trying to say that time is one of the most overlooked and underrated threats against man. Time causes insanity. A man who dwells in the past too long will lead to his demise. Man, who can control so many things in the world, is unable to control time.
In response to Ari G, I guess my comment on the clock should have been left out, because in regards to time as is shown on a clock, the only point I really wanted to make is that it is abstract. That time that "ticks" is made up by man and doesn't represent the greater concept of Time as goverened by the sun and the earth and our minds.
And Ethan, Luster Burman will be dead in a year.
word - what Myles said back on November 18.
The concept of time is very abstract because our planet has it's own unique time, and the human being has a biological clock that runs on a seperate time from the earth, and my dog runs on the strangest time and he wakes me up in the middle of the night.
So does time really exist? Our only tool to keep track of it is a watch, and as Faulkners simply puts it; watches tick off dead seconds.
Quentin is absolutely caught up in time and this is exemplified by his obsession with the sound of his watch and the idea that although it has no hands, it still can kill the seconds.
And maybe it's to possible answer one of Maddie's questions, time cannot be altered becasue it is dead and it is not a device to change the past, but keep up with the future. The present is the tick of a watch, but that sound we hear is it's death ring.
But Quentin cannot seperate himself from time, his father warns that one shouldnt get caught up with time, i think he was warning Quentin to focus not on a watch's ticking, but what comes next. I agreed with Anna in class today when she said that timeless time was emotions and memories that make our past. That is all we can take from the past, but Quentin relives those dead moments, he takes nothing from them becasue he is still in them.
breaking the watch is no liberation for Quentin, it concretes his footing in the river, olny reminded that time is dead, he loses track of the future.
i've jsut confused myself with abstract motiffs.
wow...i did not realize there was a new blog topic already...i'm not even kind of first with this one...
i'm a bit behind on this one so i guess i'll just paraphrase what i was thinking about near the end of class today:
last year in lang we talked about time when we were reading 'longitude' (mostly just to go off topic since it was kind of a bad book). anyway, we basically discussed how time was something that man couldn't actually control, yet man still tried with inventions like clocks and watches and whatnot. essentially man still wanted some semblance or illusion of control so time was measured. still, if a clock stops, time keeps going.
maybe that's the point of the book, to create this sense of 'clockless' time, to break down the barriers and conventions we made. to tear down the walls because that sanctuary, that safe haven with our false sense of control, that 'time' was really a prison all along.
the only way to have time without measurement is to simple exist, emotion to emotion, feeling to feeling, memory to memory. maybe quentin realizes this in his 'insanity' but can't live without time anyway. or, at least he can't contemplate a life without measuring it. he's too...intellectual. so he decides that he's gotta end it. it's the only way to live without measuring time: not to live at all.
its definitely a stretch and i don't believe half of it but it's all i have right now.
The existentialist crisis of time was fun to discuuss in class on friday and a good subject for the orgy of intellectual speculation that takes place on this blog, but it is not the most important part of Quentin's section. It is there and it is definitely on Quentin's mind, but not in as esoteric and philosophical a sense as our discussion suggests.
It seems unlikely that the chronology of Quentin's memories is out of order because Faulkner is trying to make an abstract point about the nature of time because there is a much more obvious explanation. This randomness, with scenes years apart interrupting one another, is how a person's memory works. The reader is seeing into Quentin's memory, and it would not be realistic for him to narrate everything that happened to him in a clear order because that is not how he is thinking. It seems more effective to look at it this way.
The image of the cigarette falling "in slow motion" off the bridge, for instance, also does not necessarily have to do with the debate about the nature of time. It is enough to say that it characterizes Quentin because of how unusual it is that he would notice something like that in the middle of a fight, and that it is a simple literary trick to give the reader a sense of the speed of the action.
There is a deeper and darker theme to Quentin's section than time: his tortured sexuality. The Italian girl is, rather than a symbol of death, a representation of Caddie and all of the girls Quentin has been involved with. This explains why the memories that interrupt the part of the narrative in which he is trying to find the girl's home are sexual ones, either from his own experience or from observing Caddie's with horror.
This is one way to look at time in relation to Quentin's section - as a simple symbol and not the underlying source of everything. It is just one of many debates in Quentin's memory, and the others deserve some attention too.
While I had just as much trouble understanding Sartre as I do Faulkner, one line from his essay exemplified one of the main aspects of Quentin's section for me. Sartre said that time exists...but there is no progression. It took me a while to actually process what he meant by this, but when I was finally able to relate this line to Quentin's section, everything made sense.
Quentin's world exists, and his section tells a story. With that being said, the narrative isn't in a conventional form. While the reader does gain an understanding about his past and present emotions and actions, we gain them by putting together discontinuous pieces of a broken mind.
If I had only one question to ask Quentin to understand such a "broken mind" I would ask, why? Quentin's struggles appear to deal with trying to stop time and the experience of time running out...I don't really understand what drove him to kill himself. As a reality TV Junkie, I was watching re-runs of "The Hills" and I took special notice to the way that Lauren handled her situation with Heidi. While I thought that time cures all, and eventually the two would end their fude because time would show them just how stupid and immature they were acting. However, Lauren refused to pay attention to Heidi and instead told her she wants her out of her life. It became apparent that time wouldn't solve their problem. I tried relating Quentin to this (yes, I'm ALWAYS thinking of Lit =) ) and if time doesn't solve all problems, then why does Quentin have such a fixation with it? It may seem stupid that I'm relating amazing literature to a dumb reality television show, but let's be honest...we're all have our guilty pleasures and sometimes they actually help us think about greater situations in life. I'm still thinking about answers to this possible question. I also hopes this make sense because I feel like that was a total stream of consciousness explosion...I meant well though haha. Happy reading!
ok. I know that everyone has already heard my hypothesis on time much more than they would like to... Hopefully I in fact, am on the path to brilliance (haha) and not redundancy.
Right now I am typing this blog. This act of typing is going on at the present moment, but the sentence that I am forming has been already formed in my head. As you are reading this, there is a moment where the words that you are reading are being read, that the future is becoming the past, is blending together. Once you finish this sentence, the moment will be gone, and you will have already made the past. How does this make you feel? Anxious? Overwhelmed? Or just confused. Apply this to Quentin's chapter. Quentin's struggle with time has to do with that limbo which links the past and the present-- it doesn't exist! It is like the edge of a cliff, the past being the land, and the air where the land stops is the future. Either you're on the cliff or you're off of it, there is no inbetween. This is just the kind of theory that Quentin would have come up with, and it becomes an obsession. It gives him a sense of futility; that he cannot take control over time, that the past is his only present since both are equal, in that they are the same. This is the reason why the chapter is jumbled between past events and "present" ones. Quentin's shadow is the sense of his own mortality, the ticking of the clock that he cannot break; he cannot stop. He will die, as does every human being. With that knowledge Quentin transcends time-- his life is a flash, the actual living has no meaning, in that it is already made for him. Notice how all of Quentin's life has been dictated by others: his going to Harvard, the command which the little girl imposes on him, his lack of control over Caddy, the decline of his family. This loss of control is emphasized through the idea of time. Also, everything is told in the past, because there is no present, only a making of the past. The only future that is definite is death. And so, Quentin takes control of his life, of time. By killing himself, he is triumphing over time, it will never steal his death away from him. He finally stops the clock.
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