Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

CONFESSION TIME: Oops, I see I kept calling Caddy's husband Herbert Head 'Hadley Head' earlier on in the discussion. I have now hopefully fixed them all, and I do apologize for any confusion that slip of mine might have caused.... 🤦‍♀️🙈🤷‍♀️

Saski wrote: "I would say that deep inside Caddy effects Quentin sexually but he refuses to see it and thus his feelings come out more as ... sibling affection or protectiveness, maybe......."

Yeah, I think Faulkner leaves that one pretty much open to interpretation, but I did have a thought that perhaps Quentin is damaged by the lack of care or affection from his parents, and since Caddy is a motherly and affectionate girl, he sort of gets from her what he wasn't getting from them, if that makes sense.

Sort of, she was the only person who ever gave him the kind of unconditional love that you get from a parent, so he is pretty mixed up, and I do think he gets pretty jealous when she gets involved with other males, because he feels she 'belongs' to him, in perhaps more ways than one, and that could also include the sexual aspect.
However, I do think the little Italian girl is a pointer that shows us that Quentin feels protective towards the innocent; so perhaps a part of the sexual jealousy around Caddy has to do with that he wanted to keep her pure (in addition to that he wanted to keep her for himself)?

Saski wrote: "I would say that the watch represents his link to his father, and that he broke when he felt that link was broken ... maybe?..."

Yep, the watch represents at least 2 things that I could figure out, namely the passage of time, and like you said Quentin's link with his father. Ok, now I asked the question about the masculinity because I think masculinity is a pretty important part of this novel; the novel takes place at a time when modernity started to set in and old values started to be questioned. Interestingly, the father does NOT really represent the conservative, the controlling and the "old guard", but it is more Quentin, with his sensitive and obsessive personality that does this.
You may have noted that the father has a very existentialist, pretty much nihilistic and fatalistic outlook on life; (which was pretty modern at the time) -according to him, human endeavor is futile: at the start of the chapter Quentin recalls his father saying:

...hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that 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 then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is 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.

Now, I think that Quentin rejected this directive given by his father - Quentin is a very controlling person; to him, I think, masculinity represents honor and control; he feels that he is supposed to control his family members (in this case Caddy), to keep them pure and honorable. He also tries to control time with all these little games he plays with time and with shadows - he even tried to control his own shadow by constantly trying to trick it, and he is also constantly trying to break time's hold on him.

So, I think he breaks the watch not only in order to control or limit the power of time, but also, like you said, I think he is thereby rejecting his father's suggestion that he shouldn't "try and conquer" time - it sounds as if the father already knew of Quentin's obsessions when he told him that.
(Sorry, and I meant to add in here that I think Quentin also rejects his father's outlook on life - the story hints that the father drank himself to death, so yeah, not a very positive role model).

Ultimately, of course, Quentin doesn't manage to control all of the things he tries to control, and fights back in the only way he knows how to assert the ultimate control (view spoiler)[ by committing suicide (hide spoiler)]

Saski wrote: "I have a question. Who is the 'blackguard' Quentin often mentions in relation to his sister, Caddy?"

Ok, since we have come to this point, I'm not going to worry about spoilers anymore. What I have gleaned from my readings is this: (And here I am going to answer some of my own discussion questions to some extent) . As you may have noticed, the Compson's mother isn't very maternal, so this affects each of the children, but in different ways; it is my personal belief that since Caddy is obviously a warm and affectionate person, that she goes to seek love and affection in the arms of boys and men, and that she unfortunately fell pregnant in the process - this is what happened to her when she says she is "sick" and that she needs to get married and that then it won't be a problem anymore.

So, this happened when she was around 18 and Quentin around 20. In any case, then their mother takes Caddy to the "French Lick" holiday resort, where Caddy meets a guy named Herbert Head. Herbert presents himself as successful and wealthy, promising Jason junior a job in "his" bank; and Mrs Compson is very taken with him, so they grab him to be Caddy's husband. Later, when Quentin meets him, he recognizes him as a guy who cheated both at cards as well as in the exams at Harvard. (Remember that Quentin is studying at Harvard.)

So, it is because Herbert is revealed to actually be dishonest and morally bankrupt, that Quentin calls him a "blackguard" (but of course Quentin hates him in any case because Herbert took his beloved Caddy away from him – or so he feels, in any case).

The Quentin chapter happens about a month after Caddy's wedding - does that help a bit with the timeline? We can finish the timeline once we have done the Jason chapter, because a lot actually happens in the Jason chapter.

And just to keep the link current, in case any of you wanted to move on, thread for the next section (Jason) is here :
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Would you say that honesty and integrity would have been part of the Southern gentleman of yore's code of honor? If so, how much irony do you read into the fact that Caroline Compson, with her pride in the honorability and nobility of the Bascome family, does not censure Jason Jr's disgraceful behaviour, or do you think that she is simply unaware of it - do you think Jason has her fooled, or is she simply too weak as a personality to make a stance?

Could you discern that perhaps Quentin, Jason Sr and Jason Jr all had different conceptions of the ideal forms of how masculinity should be expressed? Please elaborate. Do you think each of them managed to live up to what you judged might be their ideal of masculinity?

Do you agree with Jason Jr's assessment that Caddy had ruined his life? Do you think that justifies his actions?

Caroline Compson features quite strongly in this section; how would you say she rates as a mother? Do you agree with Caroline's attitude towards 1. Benjy, 2. Caddy , 3. Quentin, 4. Jason the son?

Ok, let's throw out some discussion questions to help us along: after reading the 3 sons narrations, it struck me how very different the 3 Compson sons are from one another; how would you say the three sons differ in: 1. their worldviews in general (as in, their paradigm of the world), 2. their style of relating to the world and the people in it, and 3. in how they view themselves?

Also, differences in how they treat the women in their lives?

I'm going to throw out a discussion question or two; let's start with this one:
a) Do you think Jason and Caroline Compson, the parents of the Compson children we meet in the novel, were two people of good character and do they personify good parenting?

b) With reference to a), in which ways do you think the fortunes of the Compson family could have turned out differently, if Jason and Caroline had been persons of a different caliber?

Do you think that Quentin's father, Jason Compson, is a good father?
In the beginning of the Quentin narrative, Quentin mulls over his father's pronouncements a lot; do you think he accepts his father's worldview, and in which ways do his and his father's worldviews agree or differ, for example as it pertains to time, life, meaning, the meaning of life, women, masculinity, and so forth, and just in a general sense?

How would you describe what you see as the old-fashioned Nineteenth Century ideals of masculinity - as in the perceived qualities that a "Southern gentleman" should have?

It soon becomes clear to the reader, that not only was Benjy from the previous chapter obsessed with Caddy, but Quentin is obsessed with her as well. How, would you say, does Quentin’s view of Caddy shape his sense of self? Do you agree that he seems to fixate on her sexuality? ...or do you think it's more of an emotional thing, since she is clearly far more maternal than her own mother? Do you think his protectiveness of her is driven more by love, obsession, or societal pressures?

..and what, would you say, do his obsessions reveal about his own insecurities, and what have you noticed about the relationship he has with Southern honor, morality and values as exemplified by his parents?

Hmm, our discussion seems to have stalled. Let's see if we can jumpstart it again with a few well-aimed questions.
We've already mentioned that the concept of 'time' is a big thing in TS and TF, and elsewhere I have remarked that it features in each of the 4 chapters with each of the narrators, but in a different way with each narrator.

As far as Quentin is concerned, what would you say, why does Quentin break his watch, and what does this act signify about his personality in general and his current mental state in particular?

In addition, it is clear that Quentin is preoccupied with time - how does Faulkner use Quentin’s obsession with time to explore deeper themes in the novel, such as memory, identity, and the passage of time?

PS. Can you think of an additional significance that Quentin's watch may have for him, beyond that it is a symbol of the passage of time?

I know this is a silly thing to comment on, but did anyone else notice that the clock's chimes in the kitchen is behind by about 3hours?
When the clock strikes five times, Dilsey knows that it is eight o'clock; While she stood there the clock above the cupboard struck ten times. “One o' clock,” she said aloud.

Each section of the novel seems to have it's own little niggle with time.

As for "The shadow", since that is one of our themes, I would love for us to elaborate more on that in our "ending spoilers" thread.

Bonitaj or I could perhaps copy and paste that quote to that thread a bit later in the reading and we can discuss. Thanks again for those contributions, Bonitaj!

Bonitaj wrote: ""I had to use some method to indicate to the reader that this idiot had no sense of time. That what happened to him ten years ago was just yesterday. The way I wanted to do it was to use different colored inks, but that would have cost so much, the publisher couldn't undertake it".."

Thank you Bonitaj! Yes, that aspect is discussed in many of my 'side-reading' articles about TS and TF; and which is why I've tried to help out a bit by working on a timeline. (Since it made me realize that Faulkner was not deliberately trying to make the novel unreadable - he was more trying to recreate an authentic stream-of-consciousness experience).

I am finished with the book, so I am in a position to flesh out the timeline a bit more in our timeline thread; would you like me to do that, fellow readers?
Or any other assistance at this stage? I do have a lot of books on this novel and though I haven't read them all, I would be happy to look up any questions you might have?

Bonitaj wrote: "Interesting you say that Traveller - I'm reading another book called
BEING BLACK IN THE WORLD - which is an academic study of the Black Man during the apartheid era. What insights it provides."

I guess it might be a good exercise to ask yourself which is worse: slavery or Apartheid; after all, terrible things were also done to slaves, and they were as much human beings as anyone else. Did the perpetrators of slavery/apartheid ever stop to reflect on the humanity of those that they chose to see as less than human? Perhaps not much more than the Nazis did, but I'm sure there must always have been those who disagreed but were too afraid to go against the stream.
Anyway, it's a fraught issue, but also a timeless one - where people for some reason or another start regarding other humans as less than human, and this occurs more frequently than we would like to think... one could even simply look at India and the caste system, for example.

Linda wrote: "I still have a bit to go on Quentin. Had a pipe burst, so have been doing things around the house and will probably be able to focus on it this weekend"

Oh that's always a bummer, sorry to hear. I once had an underground pipe burst, and they had to dig up the concrete to get to it... no worries, we'll be around. :)