I personally thought Quentin's chapter was harder to understand.
His chapter, like Benjy's, revolved around time and Caddy.
He is more aware of time than Benjy is;
Faulkner makes this clear because clocks are constantly mentioned in the
chapter. However, due to his madness, time seems to be confusing. You are able
to tell the past from the present, but at the same time, you can sense
Quentin's desperation to continue to live in the past, back when Caddy was pure
and innocent. His chapter has an echo of Faulkner's message from Benjy's introduction
that time does not make a difference in the South during this period, when the
Old South was struggling to live and the New South was underway.
Benjy and Quentin care about Caddy and
have close relationships with her, but the way they feel about her is
different. To Benjy, she was his life raft, protector, and tether to the
present. Quentin has an obsession with his sister. It is NOT sexual; rather, he
feels that she is almost an extension of him. He was angry at himself for not
being able to keep Caddy pure and attempted to take the blame by telling their
father that he had committed incest, which his father knew was not true. He is
extremely protective of her, so when he can no longer stand himself and cannot
take the mountainous pressure that his mother puts on him (to be a
"proper" Southern gentleman and live out the values of the Old South)
he kills himself.
It is obvious that Quentin is not in the
right state of mind. Let's examine his behavior with the behavior associated
with depression. People who suffer from depression are not as ambitious as they
once were, lose interest in things they once enjoyed, difficulty concentrating,
feeling a sense of worthlessness, guilt, and they have thoughts of
suicide (NOTE: there are more, but these are more relevant to Quentin).Although
he was forced to do well at school and forced to go to Harvard, his disinterest
in school could also be seen as him losing ambition and interest. He also seems
to be wondering around town, to me this made him seem unfocused and thus
coinciding with the list of behaviors mentioned before. As I mentioned before, he
feels guilty about Caddy's unplanned and out of wedlock pregnancy (which is why
she had to marry Sydney Herbert, so that it would not be so scandalous, even
though the "baby-daddy" is Danton Ames). His mother thinks of him,
his sister, and Benjy as embarrassments to the family and that Jason is the
only child she is proud of; this is the root of his feeling of worthlessness.
He is considered a disappointment to HIS own mother; this would cause anyone to
drown in depression. In the chapter, his suicide was not something I would have
guessed would have happened, so it would seem that he had not previously
thought of killing himself. WRONG! It was planned. He had often walked by the
river and paused there. He bought irons to tie to himself in order to weigh
more, thus effectively drowning him faster. When someone suffers from severe
depression, they make plans, they think about where they will kill themselves,
how, and sometimes find ways to make the attempt (unless of course it is
accomplished, then it is not an attempt) more efficient and have a higher
probability of working.
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