quentin - final v2

8/8/2019 Quentin - Final V2

1/6

Gentile 1

David GentileEnglish 258

American Literature II

Human Tragedy: The Loss of Hope for Quentin Compson

In William Faulkners novel The Sound and the Fury we read from the perspectives of

the three Compson brothersBenjy, Quentin, and Jasonas we discover why they are, as

Faulkner remarked, tragic people (237). Each of the brothers suffers greatly from the loss of

their sister Caddy, but Quentins loss is the most tragic of them all. While Benjy can only think

in terms of sensations and base emotions, and Jason is consumed by his self-pity and greed,

Quentin becomes adrift in the past and his feelings of futilityhis struggle leading to the loss of

the quintessential human emotionhope. For Quentin, the loss of his sister Caddys virginity

destroys his constructed system of morality and when he looks to his Father for wisdom, Mr.

Compson only provides him with empty philosophies of human vanity. Quentins section

explores this emptiness, this shell of a person, as he lives out his last day, accepting death as the

only thing that provides meaning to his life.

In Quentins section we find a young man whose life has become defined, not by what he

has done in life, but by what he failed to do. Unable to prevent his sister Caddy from losing her

virginity he becomes trapped in this past failure and his sisters loss of innocence. In the

appendix to The Sound and the Fury Faulkner explains how Quentin loved not his sisters body

but some concept of Compson honorsupported by the minute fragile membrane of her

maidenhead (207). Virginity represents virtue and honor for Quentin, and Caddy was the

physical representation of these ideals making her purity paramount to Quentins moral system.

He expresses feelings of worthlessness at not being to stand up to Caddys suitors and he replays


2/6

Gentile 2

the scenes of confrontation throughout his day. This ineffectuality and dissonance comes from

the fact he has placed his moral system above his actual experiences and he is unable to reconcile

the two. Like Benjy, Quentin becomes rigid and inflexible, fearing change. He echoes the same

loss Benjy felt but, as Olga Vickery puts it, his order is based on emotions rather than

sensations, on concepts rather than physical objects. And whereas Benjy is saved by being

outside time, Quentin is destroyed by his excessive awareness of it (283). Quentin provides the

full human response to tragedy that Benjy is mentally unable to performa response that

becomes lost in the eternal landscapes of the rational mind.

Faulkners repetition in this section highlights memories of Quentins that affect him the

most. The repeated recollection of the smell of honeysuckle to Quentin represents Caddys

sexuality and ultimately her pregnancy. Much as Benjy could smell it on Caddy, Quentin too

has associated the smell with this memory of when he asked Caddy to help him kill her then him

together. The repetition showing his frustration, overpowering him as his constructed world

came crashing down around him as the smell reminds him only of defeat. He also repeats the

name of Dalton Ames over and over. The name symbolizes that which stole Caddys pureness

away, that which stole meaning from Quentin and drove him to this futile state. The repetition

takes him back into his past, the time when his life had meaning. His past then becomes just as

real as the present, if not more so, as we can see in the multiple flashbacks. The full extent of

this can be seen when Quentin fights Gerald Bland but remembers only his confrontation with

Dalton Ames. He is told what happened after the fact, as it now has become part of his past

the past that provides concrete ideas and meaning to him.


3/6

Gentile 3

Quentins fixation with time, especially the past, comes from his fathers words, which

he sought as a refuge from the pain and confusion coming from the apparent collapse of his

moral system. The influence of his father obviously means very much to Quentin since we can

see multiple instances of Father said interjecting throughout the section. Quentin seems to

have derived his high sense of honor from his father and would have looked for guidance to

provide comfort and meaning. Instead of providing the meaning Quentin seeks, Mr. Compson

instead provides meaninglessness: a man is the sum of his climatic experiences Father said.

Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an

unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire (78). Man defines himself by time, so Mr.

Compson simply provides an escape for Quentin; by reducing everything to a matter of

subjectivity, Quentin need only change his perspective to rid his deep pain. When Mr. Compson

gives Quentin his watch he explains,

I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly aptthat you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which

can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to

you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and thenfor a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battleis ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his

own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. (48)

With time now reduced to mere human vanity, Quentin allows himself to become lost in

the past. Jean-Paul Sarte provides an apt metaphor by describing it like looking out the back of a

car: the front (the future) is unseen and non-existent, the sides (the present) flies past blurred, and

the back (the past) lies in full view (267). Much as they say a mans life flashes before his eyes

before he dies, Quentin takes a slow walk through his life before he dies. He remembers Roskus

and Dilsey and how much he misses the servants who acted more like parental figures to the

children. He remembers his Mother and how she failed him as a source of love. Her only


4/6

Gentile 4

concerns focused on her familys name, her failing health, and her beloved Jason. But more than

anything he remembers his times with Caddy. The night she lost her virginity, when he asked

her to commit suicide with him, and when he meets Herbert. She is the cause to his suffering,

the one person who shattered his glass house of expectations. Instead of picking up the pieces

and changing his life, Quentin instead gives in to despair his world void of hope and a future.

Quentin acknowledges no future, because none exist to him. His acts of breaking his

watch and ignoring the clocks in the shop symbolize him entering a dimension without these

timekeepers. With no future possible to him, Michael Millgate explains that Quentin is trying to

avoid the dimension in which change occurs and in which Caddys actions have efficacy and

significance (305). Quentin is trying to freeze and capture the innocence and purity that Caddy

capsulated before she lost her virginity. His claims that he committed incest were not signs of

sexual desires, but as a way to save himself and Caddy in an imagined moment of perfection. He

states, Because if it were just to hell; if that were all of it. Finished. If things just finished

themselves. Nobody else there but her and me. If we could just have done something so

dreadful that they would have fled hell except us (50-51). However, his desire for eternal

punishment goes unfulfilled, his father again elucidating his values as meaningless, explaining

virginity was invented and like death: only a state in which others are left (50).

Quentin also fails to acknowledge the future because in his mind he is already dead. His

decision to commit suicide is not considered by him one that can be changed. It must happen,

since there can be no choices if there is no futurethere can only be that which must be done.

For Quentin, he has resigned himself to death as the only answer, the only way to achieve peace

and meaning. His father taught him everything was subjective and meaningless, so there can be

no such thing as hope, that even Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute


5/6

Gentile 5

clicking of little wheels (49). Death is the only thing Quentin can be certain of, and thus, the

only thing that provides meaning. Much as his father avoids life by drinking, Quentin in turn

chooses suicide rather than confront his pain. Throughout this section we see this resignation

symbolized by the motif of Quentins shadow. Quentin either tries to hide his shadow in the

water or he purposefully treads on it. His shadow represents his existence in the present, and he

finds it insulting to see since dead men need no shadows.

Quentins section is the most tragic of them all because he is the one brother who most

deserves salvation. Benjy simply cannot possess the mental capabilities to understand the full

extent of what happened, being no more harmed than a wounded animal. Jason deserves no pity

because his selfishness drives his painhis love of money and personal gain overriding any

feelings for his sisters loss. Quentin, however, is the one who truly understands the effect of

Caddys action and whose love for his sister is driving his passion. When he looks to his father,

his source of principles, for comfort, he is greeted not by explanations of meaning but with the

empty philosophies of futility. These words drive all hope from the mind of Quentin. He

reduces time to the reducto absurdum of all human experience and renders his future

meaninglessthe past becoming the only thing providing his life with meaning. Since he can

have no future he can have no choice in his death. Death is the only thing that Quentin can be

certain of in his world of shadows and thus the only thing that can provide meaning. His

constructed moral system shattered, his moral support empty, Quentin becomes a broken shell of

a human. His world has no future, no meaning, and no hope. Before his body lies in the river,

his human spirit is already dead. For all the possibilities man possesses, a life without meaning

or purpose is the most tragic thing one can experience.


6/6

Gentile 6

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts,Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1994.

Millgate, Michael. The Sound and the Fury: [Story and Novel]. The Achievement ofWilliam Faulkner. New York: Random House (1966): 94-111. Rpt. The Sound and theFury: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. 2nd ed. New York:

Norton, 1994, 297-310.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. On The Sound and the Fury: Time in the Work of Faulkner.Literary andPhilosophical Essays. London:Rider (1955): 79-87. Rpt. The Sound and the Fury: An

Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: Norton,1994, 265-271.

Vickery, Olga W. The Sound and the Fury: A Study in Perspective. The Novels of

William Faulkner. A Critical Interpretation. Louisiana State University Press (1964). Rpt.The Sound and the Fury: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism.2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1994, 278-289.

quentin - final v2

Documents