Traveller’s
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(group member since Jan 14, 2015)
Traveller’s
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from the On Paths Unknown group.
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Apparently when Herbert head mentions that what he cheated at was "no police crime" he refers to the fact Quentin knew he had cheated in exams at Harvard, though there is confusion about whether Quentin meant that Herbert had had sex with Caddy, but it is the cheating at exams that Quentin meant to convey he "wouldn't tell " on.I get the idea that Herbert Head is older than the Compson children because he's finished with Harvard and established in business. Oh duh, I see he's been out in the world now for 10 years, so there its spelled out...
...and just to add to Bonitaj's comment about the Father's cynicism depressing Quentin, there's more to be depressed about from the mother's side: the mother is also clearly rejecting Quentin along with Caddy and Benjy in her little tirade.Women do have ..... an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.
What, I find that last phrase laughable.
Anyway, you guys might also by now have figured out that the italics form one narrative, interspersed by the text not in italics, which tend to represent a different narrative, usually Quentin's immediate surroundings. It's like he's reminiscing, revisiting things in his head while his body moves around the physical world.
Saski wrote: "whoa, so much stuff I missed; and here I had thought I was doing pretty well, LOL!..."I would venture to remark that The Sound and the Fury is a gift that keeps on giving! 😀
Saski wrote: "And ... what's "the branch"?"Well, well, I'm glad you made me look that up, Saski, because I myself had been a bit puzzled, assuming it was a tree branch, but:
The branch is a small creek that runs alongside their property. Apparently its a local term to discern a small body of water. Well, now I also know and it certainly makes more sense! Seems then, that it's a branch of a river, rather than of a tree...
Saski wrote: "Okay, not that I need to know the gender of any particular person I meet (I keep reminding myself), but maybe it is okay to ask such a question about characters.... Quentin? There seem to be clue..."
Hey Saski, nice to see you popping up. Please have a look at our Benjy thread; the Benjy section is so jumbled anyway that there aren't really spoilers to pick up, so basically you can read that entire thread from scratch. The big spoilers start in the Quentin section, the second section of the novel, and in that thread, I did put up a spoiler notice especially for you, to warn you past which point the thread becomes pretty spoiler-y.
The answer to your Quentin question is hidden here under the spoiler tag: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Linda wrote: "My niece was in New Bern, NC for about 10 yrs or so, except the 2 yrs her hubby pulled off the sticks, they were sent to the desert of CA...."My BIL actually had a bad reason for wanting to get away from LA among other things; one of their sons got involved in drug culture and they had a massive struggle to get him off it. I suppose they felt Raleigh would be a bit more in the sticks (in a good way) than LA, (that was just a semi-joke, NCans please don't get offended) but anyway, back to Faulkner:
I don't know about you guys, but for me, in these pages where Quentin via his memories exhibits the mother's reaction, it just once again highlights for me this woman's selfishness, self-centredness and lack of maturity.
Bonitaj wrote: " Do point out where you find him coming across as an idiot. "Well, for the most of section 1, isn't he supposed to be sounding like an "idiot"? Everyone mentions over and over that Benjy is supposed to be an idiot. (So that was kind of supposed to be a joke) 😉 Though I must say that I do find the Benjy section poetic in it's own right, through its vivid descriptions.
In any case, apparently the "French Lick" that he mentions, is some kind of holiday resort where people go to look for marriage partners. I guess if you didn't have Tinder, you still had to make some sort of plan ... 😁
To me the defining passages that sort of lays out where his mind is at, starts on the Norton Critical Edition 2nd edition's page 65, starting with: Done in Mother’s mind though. Finished. Finished. Then we were all poisoned you are confusing sin and morality women dont do that your mother is thinking of morality whether it be sin or not has not occurred to her Jason I must go away you keep the others I’ll take Jason and go where nobody knows us so he’ll have a chance to grow up and forget all this the others don't love me they have never loved anything with that streak of Compson selfishness and false pride Jason was the only one my heart went out to without dread nonsense Jason is all right I was thinking that as soon as you feel better you and Caddy might go up to French Lick and leave Jason here with nobody but you and the darkies she will forget him then all the talk will die away found not death at the salt licks maybe I could find a husband for her not death at the salt licks The car came up and stopped. The bells were still ringing the half hour. I got on and it went on again, blotting the half hour. No: the three quarters. Then it would be ten minutes anyway. To leave Harvard your mother’s dream for sold Benjy’s pasture for what have I done to have been given children like these Benjamin was punishment enough....etc.
...it's like he was afraid to go there in his mind and now it all comes tumbling out.
...so I'm gonna leave a spoiler alert here for Saski and perhaps others who might still follow the discussion later: Please don't continue down this thread if you haven't read up to this point, because we might want to discuss rather big plot points from this point onwards.
While we're on the subject of prose, I found that this paragraph tickled my fancy: I stood in the belly of my shadow and listened to the strokes spaced and tranquil along the sunlight, among the thin, still little leaves. Spaced and peaceful and serene, with that quality of autumn always in bells even in the month of brides.
And yes, it contains the themes of brides and shadows that we're discussing elsewhere. I've not had time today, but I'll make that themes thread for "the shadow" etc. tomorrow.
Bonitaj wrote: "Earlier on someone commented on the impact of Quentin's father in his life. I found this a very telling quotation:"Where the best of thought Father said clings like dead ivy vines upon old dead br..."
His father's voice does seem to subsume him, and it's definitely not a very positive voice, is it? Personally, especially taking the whole passage of :
Hats not unbleached and not hats. In three years I can not wear a hat. I could not. Was. Will there be hats then since I was not and not Harvard then. Where the best of thought Father said clings like dead ivy vines upon old dead brick. Not Harvard then. Not to me, anyway. Again. Sadder than was. Again. Saddest of all. Again.
into account, that seemed to me to be a rumination on the fact that
SPOILER ALERT: Read only if you've already moved on to the next section please (view spoiler)
...but doubtless his parent's mores and ideas about what constitutes respectability does have a negative impact on his psyche (both his parents seem pretty negative people, I must say), but he is also of course depressed because of his obsession with Caddy, who just got married.
And yes, the father's outlook is pretty cynical, isn't it?
Thanks for that, Bonitaj. Yes he could be quite eloquent when he wasn't trying to sound like an idiot. 😆😏
...and having unlikeable traits doesn't make me think less of an author as an author; if he/she is talented, they're talented, and we all have unlikeable aspects to us, surely, well I know that I have...Sometimes, though, if it shines through too much in the writing itself, then I will condemn that work; it all depends, I suppose, on how it's done, and also on how mature and self-aware the writer is.
Bonitaj wrote: "I think for example of Nabokov and Lolita as a prime example...."I think Lolita is an absolutely brilliant piece of literature. I hate when people miss how thoroughly unlikeable Humbert Humbert is and how one should read between the lines of his unreliable narration. ...but Nabokov is really very good at portraying unlikeable 1st person narrators; the psychopath in Despair is a good example.
I do believe though that just a tiny bit of the author goes into the creation of such characters, just as there was, after all, a small bit of Thomas Mann himself in the paedophile he portrays in Death in Venice.
So I'm guessing that the true answer probably lies along the lines of : ... it's a bit of both? i.e. both a portrayal of an external character, but with a tiny bit of the author himself invested into that character, maybe a sort of caricature of a small, probably secret aspect of himself, if you will.
Linda wrote: "OoosheabouttomaketheSouthernersmadupinhere!..."Well.... my sister and her family live in Tennessee, and my kid's uncle's family moved from California to North Carolina, so I got a lot of folks gonna me mad at me...!
Ok, but seriously, my family is not like that - honest! Ok, let me shut up and try to stick to the 'no politics' rule....
Anyway, I meant to say "of the time..." Lemme go and edit that in. 🤦♀️
Linda wrote: "I don't know that I've read enough of Faulkner to say it's a part of him, but what Bonitaj (or you?) Told us about what he said to his daughter would nake one think so."I've often seen that portrayed as just because he had a writer's personality. Yes, I've not read enough of him either, and of course there's always the "he is a product of his time" argument....
Ok, and since I have now hit on a lot of misogynistic talk (where it seems that the necessity or not of having Caddy watched is being discussed(view spoiler)
So, as discussed above, I thought it might be a good idea if we make one "themes" thread for the misogyny (and maybe we can do racism in that thread as well- as it falls under "Southern values of a bygone era" and then another "themes" thread for death, time, shadows/the shadow and futility" which I shall make soon.
In the meantime, here is a link to the "misogyny themes" thread, or else you can access it by clicking on the heading of this thread.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Hey guys, as discussed in the Quentin section, we're going to try out some 'themes" threads. I'll also do one for "death, time, shadows/the shadow and futility", because those tend to go together, but I thought I'd do a separate one for misogyny and the concept of Southern honor which had a lot to do with female virginity as one can indeed find in many parts of the world; a requirement of female chastity that hasn't aged very well in our modern world of feminism and the concept of equality for all.And since a kind of endemic racism was also a part of the American South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (and beyond, but let's not go there), we could perhaps stick that in here as well.
Re the racism, I must say that I can't help thinking how a modern person must surely see Quentin's behaviour and thoughts towards Black persons as being patronising and quite offensive, or is that just me?
So these two issues above- are those values and feelings only inherent in the characters as Faulkner portrays them as being denizens of the South, or do you think some of that is perhaps a bit ingrained in Faulkner himself?
I want to throw a wild thought out there and you guys are quite welcome to shoot me down in flames, but what do you think of the possibility that Quentin might be gay? That his apparent obsession with Caddy is that perhaps he identifies with Caddy, rather than the more obvious and pat conclusion that he might be infatuated with her.
The incident between Quentin and the man on the donkey really puzzled me – what was the whole "I caught you out" thing about? So I trawled my sources and the internet, and I found this:"Christmas gift" - a customary game in the South, usually between blacks and whites, where the one who can say "Christmas gift" first gets a gift. Usually no gift was exchanged except that white adults would give black children money when "caught." The custom, like Quentin's stated views about black people's behavior, expresses an affectionate albeit racist paternalism left over from slavery and characteristic of Faulkner's South in the early twentieth century. The passage that then follows is a rich index of all the clichés of Southern paternalism.
…and indeed, I'm not sure if those are Quentin's sentiments or Faulkner's, but they seem to be typical of the kind of paternalistic "benevolent" racism that you see in works by Southerners such as Gone with the Wind.
Bonita mentioned bad grammar, so now it's jumping out at me, especially when it comes from Quentin himself, for example, Fitted, awaked
I've had a thought about the time theme, and all of the to-and-fro with clocks and Quentin trying to escape from the passage of time by avoiding clocks and progressing shadows, and that is that along with time goes change, so if Quentin could have escaped time, he could have escaped the changes in their lives that have left him so unhappy.
EDIT: or maybe Quentin is simply a neurotic guy with a touch of OCD and a weird obsession with the concept of "time". ..and maybe, just maybe, it's Quentin who is the looney.
