Tag Archives: Quentin

Annotated Bibliography

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My essay will attempt to understand the connection between trauma and memory in The Sound and The Fury. More specifically the link between how a trauma psychologically impacts our memory and sense of time. I will also examine how the structure of the book emphasizes the narrative of understanding the past and present via memory. I am looking to understand how Benjy’s comprehension of the present frames his memory of the past. For Quentin, I am looking to analyze his obsession with time, and how his memories of the past have led him to determine the fate of his present self (i.e. his suicide). What I am looking to achieve is to somehow integrate both the psychological aspect of memory and the way in which the narrative is structured between Benjy and Quentin in their relationship to the “loss” of  Caddy. 

Brown, May Cameron. “The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury.” American Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 1980, pp. 544–553. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2924957.

Brown’s essay examines the Quentin chapter through the lens of time or the fixation with time. Brown alludes to the significance time plays in Quentin’s chapter considering he is planning his death. Essentially, this essay also examines how this sense of time is constantly being constructed and reconstructed through memories of the past and present. For Quentin, Brown argues how past events relating to Caddy cause Quentin to reshape the present only to realize that he’s made the same mistake twice; that he cannot save Caddy or protect her honor. I want to use Brown’s argument on how certain imagery and fixation on time, structures Quentin’s story.

Forter, Greg. “Freud, Faulkner, Caruth: Trauma and the Politics of Literary Form.” Narrative, vol. 15, no. 3, 2007, pp. 259–285. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30219258.

This article examines Freud’s psychoanalysis and its effect on trauma. From my understanding, Forter discusses the way in which historical moments are shaped and reshaped by those living through a trauma. Therefore, the mind/consciousness undergoes a “process” that would organize the trauma into coherency and this is done through the retelling of memories, which would allow for an individual to move between past and present simultaneously. Forter attempts to understand “systematic traumatizations.” Although Forter uses LIA and AA as example texts, I plan to repurpose his understanding of Freud’s psychoanalysis on systematic trauma in relation to TSAF.

Howard, Leon. “The Composition of The Sound And The Fury.” The Missouri Review 5.2 (1981): 109-38. Web.

Leon Howard’s critical essay examines the structural component of The Sound and The Fury. He discusses how Faulkner essentially created a narrative out of chaos, and this is represented through the stream of consciousness of Benjy’s idiocy and Quentin’s scattered consciousness. Each of their narrative  are centered around their relationship to Caddy. Howard ultimately investigates Faulkner’s creative process in order to understand how this unorthodox style of storytelling is arranged to construct a coherent timeline.

McGann, Mary E. “‘The Waste Land’ and ‘The Sound and the Fury’: To Apprehend the Human Process Moving in Time.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1976, pp. 13–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20077547.

Mary McGann examines the work of TSAF as a structural integration of both time and death. She asserts that the structure of the novel forces the reader to interpret the novel as an anomaly they must decode. That the structure plays an integral part of the overall narrative. What she claims is that the structure of the novel and the point of view of each character, lends itself into the complexities of the human mind. Importantly, she focuses on how time shifts are essential to the meaning of the story. As well as, how time in the novel functions as an emotional aspect, rather than chronological, which is similar to the  argument I am presenting.

Porter, Carolyn. William Faulkner (Lives and Legacies). N.p.: Oxford UP, 2007. 39-54. Print.

Carolyn Porter examines how Faulkner experimented with point of view in The Sound and The Fury, constructing the story as a puzzle. Porter explains how Faulkner had “no plan” at all for the novel and had originally wanted to open the book with Quentin’s chapter, but instead the opening of the book is told via Benjy’s perspective, which sums up the complexity of the novel as a whole. I plan on using Porter’s argument through the lens of how Benjy’s chapter is formulated and how his recollection of the past is triggered by moments from the present. What makes Benjy’s chapter so extraordinary and unique is that he is a character that suffers with a disability. He is unable to express his emotions verbally, so Porter examines how Benjy’s “stream of consciousness” is not linear but jagged. Benjy’s narrative mimics his thought process which is complex and paradoxical. It provides an alternative lens to understanding  the past and present.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Digital Chalkboard.” Jean-Paul Sartre: “On ‘The Sound and the Fury’: Time in the Work of Faulkner” :: Resources :: Digital Chalkboard. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 May 2017.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s opinion of TSAF is a negative one. He deconstructs the structural component of the novel only to claim that it reveals no real story. He claims that the story does not “unfold.” What Sartre tries to convey is the absence of time (i.e – Quentin breaking the watch and Benjy’s inability to comprehend time; past or present). In essence, what he argues is arrested development. The characters Benjy and Quentin are not functioning within the past or present, they are merely suspended in past events. I plan on using this article as a possible counter-argument for how time/memory is essential to understanding past/present.

Final Project Proposal

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My final project will focus on TSAF. When reading TSAF I was most interested in the way in which the story was told, but more specifically how memory is constructed and reconstructed over and over again, mainly by Benjy. His chapter was the most interesting because Benjy is considered a “retard” and he is unable to verbally express his emotions over the loss of Caddy. I had spoken about this in my first blog entry on how even though Benjy is unable to verbally express himself, the only way he is able to cope is through memory. Therefore, memory and time become skewed. This idea of time and memory is then seen in Quentin’s chapter. I want to somehow tie in the psychological aspects of how time and memory affect the way we perceive and cope with loss, but in this instance it would focus on Benjy, Quentin, and maybe Jason. I have been having a hard time finding articles, but I was thinking of perusing through JSTOR, Project Muse, data bases outside the field of English, and Google Scholar.
I don’t know if this would be better as a long wiki or a research paper.

Women in Faulkner

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Absalom Absalom! begins differently, compared to his other three novels, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August, as the readers are quickly given a narration as to how the downfall of a family came to be.  Coldfield’s story of Sutpen, can easily be Ms. Burden, from LIA, or Hightower’s story, a story related to the Civil War that involves slavery and isolation. I found it quite interesting that Faulkner would situate a story prior to Quentin’s travel to Harvard and death. As told in The Sound in the Fury, the interpretation that Quentin’s death was primarily due to Caddy’s actions may be false. Absalom Absalom! Travels before the birth of Quentin, to a period that may explain why the once Aristocratic Compson family lost their wealth and reputation. The usage of “ghosts”, involvement of Mr. Compson, the non-present father figure in TSAF, and a female’s voice, may explain why Quentin was so heavily affected by Caddy’s actions and with his conversations with his father. Though Coldfield tells Quentin her stories due to his Ivy League education, “So maybe you will enter the literary profession as so many Southern gentlemen and gentlewomen too are doing now and maybe some day you will remember this and write about it…” My interpretation of Miss Rosa Coldfield’s reasoning as to why she chose Quentin to tell her story is similar to Ms. Burden’s forcefulness and want to control Christmas’s life and future in LIA. Miss Rosa Coldfield expects Quentin to join the literary profession, get married, own a house, and publish stories in magazines, yet she knows nothing about Quentin. Mr. Compson states, “Do you want to know the reason why she chose you… It’s because she will need someone to go with her- a man, a gentleman, yet one still young enough to do what she wants, do it the way she wants it done…” It seems Faulkner expresses each female in his novels as a demanding, emasculatory, and dominant figure in comparison to males that are easily manipulated and insecure with their own identity and inability to grasp control of their desires and futures.  Also, the analogy of ghosts to ladies “Years ago we in the South made our women into ladies. Then the war came and made the ladies into ghosts.”(AA!) , may implicitly tune into the ability of  women playing drastic roles in males without their presence being significant such as the lack of Addie’s presence in AILD, yet memories of her still allowed her to play a significant role in her son’s life through animal magnetism, a fish and a horse. However, due to Quentin’s naïveness, “Quentin thought, long ago when she was a girl—of young and indomitable unregret, of indictment of blind circumstance and savage event; but not now; only the lonely thwarted old female flesh embattled for forty-three years in the old insult; the old unforgiving outraged and betrayed by the final and complete affront which was sutpen’s death…”, in comparison to Mr. Compson’s belief of Miss Coldfield’s intentions, this leaves a question as to why did Faulkner decide Quentin be told this story instead of Quentin’s father or perhaps to another person who is more aware of Sutpen’s identity. By reading TSAF, LIA, and AILD, we are able to have a better grasp on how women, men, and the setting /town play a role into each person’s life through manipulation and interpretations.

A family Led on Seperate Roads

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Quentin and Jason Compson both have very different ideologies towards their past and present lifestyles. Quentin obsesses with time and indulges in past failures as his narration is hindered by retrospective memories of his father and sister, Caddy. In contrast, Jason Compson reflects on his past experiences as a method to bring reassurance and to motivate him for future success. Both narrators approach their past in very contrasting ways, Quentin in a crippling manner while Jason in an empowering manner, but ultimately they are unable to escape their past.

Raised closely by different parents, Quentin by his father and Jason by his mother, Quentin’s obsession with time represents his desires to escape his father’s ideals of time and sexuality but gain his acceptance. But as his mind constantly fluctuates between the past and the present it becomes obvious, he obsesses with his father’s ideals while Caddy is used as a scapegoat to deviate from his father’s principles and for Quentin to gain his own identity. From the start of the chapter, Quentin’s father warns him to separate himself from time but contradicts himself and hands Quentin a watch.

Quentin’s father tells him, “to forget time… try not to conquer it because no battle is ever won. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair” (76).  As Quentin tries to separate himself from the past, the constant ticking of clocks and watches haunts Quentin indicating its not Quentin’s sense of time that is crippled but it’s the memory of his father that Quentin can’t forego and separate from. Many memories that arise, are often focused in on Caddy but they are all reflected off of conversations between Quentin and his father. “I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames” (TSAF 79). Quentin calls upon incest relations with Caddy as a way to propose the idea, Caddy’s child does have a known father and Caddy is not ruining the reputation of the Compson name through her promiscuous actions. However, on page 78, the conversation between Quentin and his father states, “In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to a women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women….Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said that what that’s sad too.” In this passage, the idea of losing virginity as a male serves as a passage from becoming “a boy to a man.” Quentin who is still a virgin, is looked down upon, and grasps at the concept of, if he mentions to his father he had sexual relations with his sister, he will gain his father’s approval as well as save the rest of the reputation that is left of the Compson name, that has not been destroyed by Caddy’s pregnancy out of wedlock.

Another moment that brings Quentin to arrest at the thought of his father’s memory is when Quentin is accused of spying on Caddy, “The street lamps would go down the hill then rise toward town I walked upon the belly of the shadow. I could extend my hand beyond it. feeling father behind me beyond the rasping darkness of summer and August the street lamps Father and I protect women from one another from themselves our women Women are like that they don’t acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil…”(TSAF 96-97). Faulkner incorporates this passage to implicate several things. Mr. Compson, Quentin’s father is the primitive source that haunts Quentin. While his sense of time and Caddy represents the disorder that builds within Quentin as he tries to gain his father’s acceptance but gain his own identity.

Lastly, the Italian immigrant girl depicts Quentin’s last attempt to separate himself from his father. He calls her his sister and does not try to take advantage of her as he is able to lose his virginity to her making his father proud he is no longer a virgin. Instead, he tries to lead her to her home. The Italian girl may be representative of purity and as Caddy untouched. He views her as his last attempt to separate himself from his father; allowing himself to bring her home without memories of his father clouding his judgment. Though memories of Caddy and Natalie arise during this moment, this represents a struggle he has with his morals versus expectations he has as a man (134).

Jason obsesses with money and social status like his mother and unlike Benjy and Quentin he does not respect women. He views himself superior over all others, authoritative, sees himself as a person who should command respect and attention, and is extremely cynical of everyone’s actions. In contrast to the views Benjy and Quentin had for their mother, Jason’s narration views Mrs. Compson as a very emotional and caring mother whose actions are controlled him Jason. Mrs. Compson constantly repeats the words “flesh and blood” as she pleads Jason to allow Caddy to return for Quentin, “I’d gladly take her back, sins and all, because she is my flesh and blood. It’s for Quentin’s sake.” Jason’s relation to time is blended with jealousy of Quentin’s Harvard education but also biased as each memory he has is propelled through blame and misery while he is a spectator. Jason is constantly comparing himself to Quentin’s Harvard education by stating the education is completely unnecessary as he is doing fine without it (196,197, 206, 235,). However, he also mentions Quentin is the reason for the downfall of the family due to selling property to pay for his education (206) and him having to be a father figure for the family. In this narration, Jason does not have flashbacks of Caddy instead his memories are targeted at Quentin and moments of his superiority. He views black people as inferior to him and him having to install a method to control and put fear into them so they know their role in society (207).  Jason’s relations to economics are very derogatory as he is fueled with hatred towards Jews and black people (234). He constantly remarks on their laziness and incompetency but on the contrary he is dependent on them (186), dependent on Dilsey to make him his meals, and the Jewish people who run the market.  Jason is not only racist but he is also sexist. On page 247, he states he does not need any more women in his life as she may “turn out to be a hophead”- a drug addict. Basically, women are virtually of no use to society.  His authoritative persona brings about his insecurity. He does not allow Caddy to return home probably because he’s afraid she will be favored, (on page 220 he forces his mother to burn the check) as well as the constant reminder of Quentin’s Harvard education he carefully attempts to show was a pointless education (235).

Racism and Southern Perspective

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The differences in the racist perspectives of narrators in The Sound and The Fury generate a dialogue on race that points towards a pessimistic position on progress. Specifically in the juxtaposition of Quentin and Jason, the two new potential heads of the family, Faulkner uses racism and the close relationship between race and the South to show two modes of male impotency.

Quentin has an obsessive nostalgic appreciation of the black man. He imbues the black man with the timelessness and nobility of the south, but also the south’s stasis and immobility. In his memory of the black man and mule parked on the train tracks he recollects his “quality… of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity” derived from the “childlike incompetence and paradoxical reliability that… robs then steadily and evades responsibility and obligations” (87) This sort of racial archetype stands in for a post-slavery south that has no method of progress. Quentin’s racism points to a south in a slow decay of poetic timelessness.

Jason’s more antagonistic racism corresponds to the separatist vein of southern decay. His anti-semitic theories about northern Jews and his slave master persona in the town depict a southern maleness that is in opposition to the advancement of genial liberal ideas, and reinforce the fissure between the south and the rest of the US. Jason’s bitterness is quite different from Quentin’s dreamy nostalgic sense of laziness… just as Jason drives himself further and further into embarrassment, his racism illustrates the embarrassing realities of a racist south. His complaints often point to the expansive collective of black workers, and the white perception of the laziness and ineffectiveness of this working class. On 186 he complains that he “feeds a whole damn kitchen full of niggers to follow him around, but if I want an automobile tire changed, I have to do it myself.” This quote highlights the sense of reliance of white landowners, and the antagonistic relationship of racism and codependency.

Faulkner offers counter-perspectives to the white male despondency in the final section of the novel during the church scene, illuminating the spiritual community of the working class with a social unity that is missing from the incestual individualism of the white landowners. Jason and Quentin, however, show how race, class, progress and space, are intertwined in a portrait of decline.