Quentin's flashbacks were easy for me to follow, but it was the writing that wasn't in italics that really got me. I didn't understand the patterns between his associative thinking. For example, why did watching the fishermen get Quentin thinking about a conversation he had with Caddy, trying to convince her not to marry Herbert? I also found myself confused about the whole Caddy situation - but I'm sure that confusion was calculated and intended by Faulkner. There's probably some deeper meaning about the speechless immigrant girl, maybe something to do with the way Quentin referred to her as his sister and a possible parallel to his obsession with his own sister. I failed to come up with any reason why the fisherman were included.
I'm not quite sure if Caddy and Quentin actually committed incest or not. Quentin's insistent persistence that he, in fact, did commit incest, as well as Caddy's promiscuous history, sway me to believe that it happened. Another interesting thing I noticed was on pg. 51, when Quentin says that Saint Francis never had a sister. Is he using this as a claim that sisters are somehow a temptation, and that the Saint was a saint because he didn't have a sister?? It's all really weird. Also, on pg. 74 Caddy demands "dont touch me dont touch me". However, the fact that Quentin's own father doesn't believe him pushes me closer to the he-didn't-really-do-it-and-is-
Quentin's "unique" narrative is certainly written that way on purpose. As I read this chapter, I tried to discern why Faulkner wrote Quentin with this strange voice. As I was reading, I found this chapter even more disjointed than Benjy's. Just my personal opinion, but I found it really hard to get through. I think for me, reading from Benjy's perspective was easier because I knew about his mental disability prior to starting my reading. I knew the narrative style would be a little hectic because of his disability. However, with Quentin, I had no idea about his madness going into it.
Something interesting I noticed is that Benjy and Quentin have more in common than just their hard-to-digest narrative voices. They both have fixations on their sister Caddy, although Quentin's is a lot more sexual. This is a big theme of the chapter. I'm interested to see if the fixation on Caddy becomes a central theme of the novel, because it's been a big part of the first two chapters so far. Benny and Quentin also seem to share an ability and adeptcy to experience the world through smell. On pages 118 and 119 Quentin says that "honeysuckle was the saddest odor of them all," then goes on to claim, "I could smell the curves of the river." Quentin's fixations don't end at Caddy and smell. He's a little obsessed with time, and quite frequently mentions one or two of his peers at Harvard.
So all in all, I'm still speculating about what's going on with Quentin, his narrative style, and it's link to his mental state. He likes to have weirdly philosophical conversations about virginity with his father, (pg. 77, and another one on an earlier page I can't find) obsess over time, (pgs. 51, 53, etc) watch his peers, and try to convince his dad he commited incest (pg. 63, and on other pages). He also repeatedly shoes aggression towards Caddy's beaus, toeing the line between protectiveness and jealousy. He demands "do you love him" (pg. 99), then repeats his question on pgs. 104 and 108. I'm looking forward to our in-class discussion and hearing everyone else's thoughts and ideas regarding Quentin's complex narrative, personality, and consequent mental state.
I agree that this chapter was almost harder to read that Benjy's due to Quentin's own confusion, as well as the lack of punctuation to be able to differentiate between memory and real time. When I read the chapter I was confused on almost all of the same key points as you, especially with Caddy and incest. It was extremely difficult to piece it all together at first but I think you showed a great understanding of the chapter. Nice work!
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