ENG250Y1 Lecture Notes - Incest, Fireplace Mantel, Compson Family
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February 2nd
The Sound and the Fury
•Reconstructing memories, grappling (in benjy’s class, often literally) with the past
•Trauma
oQuentin’s mind neurotically returns over and over again to thoughts of trauma
•Memories
oHow characters remember differently
oHow characters narrate differently
Each has their own style, each style represents different ways of
remembering
•Quentin’s suicide
oDiving into something reflective (indicative of his narcissism)
oSomething fluid (reflective of his concepts of time?)
•Faulkner; we can’t live with memory (remembering everything) can’t live without
(remembering nothing)
oHave to organize consciousness in the present; Quentin’s problem is that he
cannot
•“When the shadow of the sash…all your breath trying to conquer it.” – pg 76
oFuture tense
Prediction
oCompson family once ruled Mississippi; now the head of the family is Jason, a
loser, a reducto absurdum
Family itself has decayed; kind of social microcosm, standing for
the South, the United States of America; a book about degeneration
oHow is a watch a mausoleum of all hope and desire?
All your hopes and desires are dead and burned
“Grandiloquent “
oHow does Quentin come in and out of time?
o“Time is a mansion in which all these other abstractions can exist”
•The South itself is feeling trapped, lost after the failure of the Civil War
oSouthern conceit of a mausoleum
•Just after pg 76, Quentin breaks watch
oHow does this relate to Gatsby’s almost-breaking of mantelpiece clock?
Ticking brings Quentin back to the present; Gatsby’s clock doesn’t tick,
leaves him stuck in the past
•Quentin is incapable of taking action
oTerrible fighter; every time he picks a fight, he gets knocked out
•Incest
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