Tag Archives: time

Unmoored from Time

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Light in August has a fixation on time similar to that permeating The Sound and the Fury, although perhaps not to the level of obsession present in the latter. This focus is apparent in the novel’s exploration of some of its outsider characters’ interactions with time as a societal construct, Gail Hightower being a prime example. The characterization of Joe Christmas and Byron Bunch allows for an exploration of time as it intertwines with nature. Both of these characters display an inability to align themselves with time as well as nature, in which there is an absence of society’s conception of time and in which one might speculate that these outsiders could create a space for themselves.

Hightower is able to create his own sense of time, albeit one based on society’s construction of it, a vestige of his time spent “in life.” He uses this internalized sense of time to maintain a thread to this past life, particularly his time spent as minister of the church that he maintains within his periphery. Although enclosed within his home, Hightower remains alert to the emanation of music from the church during services: “He knows almost to the second when he should begin to hear it, without recourse to watch or clock. He uses neither, has needed neither for twentyfive years now. He lives dissociated from mechanical time. Yet for that reason he has never lost it” (366). Furthermore, “Without recourse to clock he could know immediately upon the thought just where, in his old life, he would be and what doing between the two fixed moments which marked the beginning and the end of Sunday morning service and Sunday evening service and prayer service on Wednesday night” (366). These threads thus have a double nature: they add a ghostlike, haunting presence to Hightower’s existence but are also sacrosanct for Hightower, revealing the contradictions inherent in his supposed isolation from the outside world.

Christmas’s contentious relationship with time and nature is at its most apparent during his brief attempt at escape after the murder of Joanna Burden. Within this short period, during which he exists off the grid, traveling through forests and living off the land, Christmas becomes completely disconnected from time, his state reflecting his status in society: a position on the margins. As we are told during this period, “He is not sleepy or hungry or even tired. He is somewhere between and among them, suspended, swaying to the motion of the wagon without thought, without feeling. He has lost account of time and distance; perhaps it is an hour later, perhaps three” (339). The reader also loses track of time along with Christmas; I found myself surprised to realize he had only been gone for a week or so before his capture. At the same time, he is paradoxically unable to become one with nature. We are told that “For a week now he has lurked and crept among its secret places, yet he remained a foreigner to the very immutable laws which earth must obey” (338). Thus, Christmas is a “foreigner” even when alone in nature and far from other people, unable to belong anywhere.

Like Christmas, Byron, upon quitting his job at the mill and briefly leaving Jefferson to start anew outside the town where he never truly belonged (although, as with Christmas, this is partially by choice), he finds himself becoming unmoored from time and also unable to feel at home in the land that surrounds him as he begins his journey. From the crest of a hill, he muses on nature’s indifference to him, not unlike Jefferson’s indifference to him:

But then from beyond the hill crest there begins to rise that which he knows is there: the trees which are trees, the terrific and tedious distance which, being moved by blood, he must compass forever and ever between two inescapable horizons of the implacable earth. Steadily they rise, not portentous, not threatful. That’s it. They are oblivious of him. ‘Don’t know and don’t care,’ he thinks. (424)

He is only roused during the events that follow and brought back into time by the sound of a train whistle. After his fight with Joe Brown/Lucas Burch, the train that will provide escape for Brown/Burch approaches and startles him awake, causing him to think, “this is the world and time too” (440). But this awakening is only temporary. Perhaps in his wanderings with Lena he will find belonging through constant movement.

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.

Echo, Echo!

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“History repeats itself,” so the old saying goes. I was thinking of Thomas Hardy, in whose work characters often disappear, are assumed to be dead, and reappear dramatically, in what I refer to as a kind of “living resurrection,” and the technique is effective both in a literary sense and in an example of art reflecting reality. People come in and out of our lives, and the circumstances around the coming and going are often completely out of our control. Faulkner employs a similar device in his works, with characters reappearing in the same or even different novels. The major difference is that for Hardy it was a strategic move to enhance plot, and in Faulkner it is not. Faulkner is interested not in the reappearance of a character for sake of effect, but in the shadow that is cast on the primary object by its secondary appearance; in other words, the echo. In a single line of AA, I had the sudden insight that for Faulkner, it is the echo itself that, more than anything else, he is absorbed by:

Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let this second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it doesn’t matter: that pebble’s watery echo whose fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple-space… (AA 210)

The whole novel of AA seems to be a reverberating echo of a story that changes in meaning, implication, essence, and style. In the same way that the four gospels are each a variation or echo of the other three, yet all four are needed to gain a complete picture of the life and passion of Christ, so too do the looping stories about Sutpen, Henry, Bon, etc. depend on all of the narrators to give a comprehensive understanding of them.

The echo of an image, a character, or a word, is the thing that can retroactively modify itself, and serves as the proof of time. In fact, the echo may be Faulkner’s fundamental way of understanding time. We spoke in class of the circular motion of LIA, and I see clearly now that the circle is Faulkner’s central geometric, artistic, and designing principle. All action happens in anticipation of its own reverberations in the future, and those future reverberations serve to clarify the past action. This is why you so often see the ABBA technique in Faulkner’s writing. I first became acquainted with this while reading Hugh Kenner’s superbly didactic introduction to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist (Signet), where Kenner explains that this ABBA pattern is called a chiasmus, the literal definition of which is an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases. I found this pattern all over the novels we read.

Yet Faulkner also uses variations of the pattern. Sometimes, as in the case of the chiasmus, the echo is instantaneous, and sometimes it is delayed. Sometimes the echo is identical and sometimes is has changed. The title of AA itself is an instantaneous echo, with a comma providing the pause in time that allows the second Absalom to reverberate with exclamation what the first Absalom merely pronounced. An example of a delayed echo is in LIA, when a young Christmas says, “It’s terrible to be young. It’s terrible. Terrible” (81) followed 137 pages later by Hightower saying, “To be young. To be young. There is nothing else like it: there is nothing else in the world” (318). The pattern is made more complex (in typical Faulkner fashion) by each part of the delayed echo being an echo itself: the former a cropped echo: ABC-AB-B and the latter a double echo with a variation on the second part: A-A-BC-BD. Faulkner seems to be playing with the idea of time and decay here. In one sense, the primary echo – the older Hightower’s echo of the young Christmas’s remark – has been inverted: what the youth saw as terrible the elder sees as unparalleled and fleeting. Further, Christmas’s echo points to what we traditionally perceive as an echo (the refracted sound getting softer and more distant as it travels) and Hightower’s points to the way that sound changes, not just in volume, but in essence as it travels.

When we started this class, I blogged that reading Faulkner was like being in a dense fog that slowly dissolves as you keep reading. Now, if someone were to ask what reading Faulkner is like, I would paint a different picture: Imagine yourself standing on the edge of a canyon, and you shout a word. You hear it repeating over and over, yet each time it grows softer, farther, until there is silence again. Now think back to when you first shouted the word. Are you still standing in the same spot? Are you still you?

Similarities between the Compson and the Bundren Family

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As I Lay Dying has many analogous ideas and themes to The Sound and The Fury. Many of the contrasting ideas and themes are metaphoric representations of the protagonist through different objects, time unable to move forward, and similar character roles each family member play. In As I Lay Dying there are various accounts of human- animal interconnections that relate Addie to a fish and a horse. Similar to The Sound and the Fury, Caddie is symbolized to Benjy as fire, a caddie in golf, and a slipper. Faulkner uses these projections to symbolize that Caddie and Addie are always internally present within their family despite Addie’s death and Caddie’s lack of presence.  On pages 53, 67, and 84, Vardaman’s narrative focuses on the dead fish to embody Addie’s existence. Vardaman’s paranoia arises as he becomes unable to articulate and differentiate Addie’s existence from the fish’s existence and concludes someone killed Addie while she has been dead in her bed for ten days (54). Through Vardaman’s narrative, Addie is able to remain present in society only if the fish is devoured by each family member thus each family member will embody a part of Addie’s spirit (66-67), an example of animal magnetism;  “A magnetic charm or appeal” (Merriam Webster) towards the perseverance of Addie’s existence.   Furthermore, instead of an embodiment as a fish, Jewel perceives his mother as a horse. On pages 135-136, Jewel purchases a horse with his own money saved from “cleaning up forty acres of new ground Quick laid out last spring,” he also tells Anse the horse will never eat anything that belongs to him which shows Jewel’s separation in the family as well as his affection for the horse. By comparing his mother to a horse, we come to the realization Jewel isn’t cruel or mean hearted as Cora perceives him to be (21), instead he’s misperceived.

“Without stopping it overends and rears again, pauses, then crashes slowly forward and through the curtain. This time Jewel is riding upon it, clinging to it, until it crashes down and flings him forward and clear and Mack leaps forward into a thin smell of scorching meat and slaps at the widening crimson-edged holes that bloom like flowers in his undershirt” (222).

The movement of the river rushing the casket downstream compares to a wild horse attempting to thrust Jewel off it. From the beginning of the novel it is clear Jewel treats his horse with tough love, caring for it through derogatory movements (13), but for Jewel to risk his life to safe the casket would emphasis his care for his mother is a mere reflection for his care of his horse. Thus, for Jewel to state his mother is a horse only further indicates his feelings towards his mother is more personable and more profound which leads to the question if Jewel is not able to perceive his mother as a horse would he have rescued his mother from the river?

Time unable to progress forward is made clear from each family member’s inability to cope with Addie’s death. After Addie’s death each family member develops onset of problems: existence for Darl, sexuality for Dewey Dell, and the parallels of reality for Vardaman and Jewel. This exemplifies Addie’s death only hinders each family member’s ability to progress in life.  On page 146, “It is as though the space between us were time; an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between,” implicitly draws upon the burden of Addie’s death as an entropic effect not only on her children but on time as well. The idea that separation of Addie and her children is not a spatial factor but a temporal factor implies Addie’s death disrupted the continuous rhythm of time moving forward, instead, time is now hindered and doubling backwards into the past. A disastrous foreshadowing for the Bundren family once Addie died. This is very much contrasts to Quentin’s narrative in The Sound and the Fury; his constant battle to irrevocably attempt to escape time and his past leads him to commit suicide since the progression of time and the memories from the past are inescapable.

Lastly, from Addie’s narrative it is clear Jewel is the “black sheep” of the family due to an erroneous affair Addie has with Whitfield. Addie favors Jewel and firmly believes Jewel will be her salvation saving her from water and fire (168), similarly to Mrs. Compson with Jason in The Sound and the Fury, she believes Jason will rescue her from the downfall of the family’s name as she constantly reminds him he is a Bascomb and not a Compson. Dewey Dell relates to Caddy as they both are impregnated out of wedlock and is at a threshold between womanhood, Benjy and Darl would relate to one another due to their observant personas but Darl is able to comprehend what he sees, every character but Anse would relate to Quentin due to them repressing time and their inability to cope with their past, and finally, Anse and Mr. Compson are both not present/ active father figures in the story since Mr. Compson’s most indicative role in The Sound and The Fury is to leave Quentin at a threshold between time and the meaning of life in comparison to Anse who sells Jewel’s horse

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).