Quentin Compson, Time, and the Lady Folk

            Ahh…yes, Quentin Compson, the eldest of the Compson children.  He’s the Harvard boy, and the hope of the family.  The Compsons risk everything on him, and even sell Benjy’s pasture to pay for Quentin’s tuition at Harvard.  Unfortunately, although Quentin’s the smartest of the Compsons, he’s stopped living in the present.  Quentin’s cracking under a burden, and time, the future, and the world outside have stopped mattering all that much.  He wants to focus on his past.  As a result, Quentin doesn’t maintain a clear sense of “I.”  Faulkner’s tone in Quentin’s section is educated, obscure, and frequently obsessive.  Faulkner uses lots of big words, literary devices, and biblical references to show the reader how disheveled Quentin has become, making him a hard guy to follow.  As Quentin examines deeper into his memory, his tone becomes less educated and more emotional.
            Quentin, who is agonized and deeply troubled, spends most of his time worrying about how his “sisters” of the world are being treated (Faulkner 51).  Caddy was the most important person in Quentin’s life, and he understands relationships, women, and sexuality because of her.  Quentin thinks of most other women as somebody’s sister.  If wanting your sister is banned (well yeah, incest), then Quentin thinking of all women as sisters means that any desire he has is a cause of guilt.  That’s why Quentin finds it so “incredibly farcical” and begins “laughing hysterically” when he’s really accused of stealing Dalton Ames’ sister (Faulkner 100).  Quentin’s the last person in the world to ever do anything to harm a woman, and has been beat up many times for defending women’s honor.

            At one point, Quentin decides to tell his father that he’s committed incest with Caddy.  Quentin has not done anything with Caddy.  There’s been no sex or incest, and in fact, he’s a virgin (Spoade makes this painfully obvious by “calling Shreve my (Quentin) husband” (Faulkner 50).)  That doesn’t stop Quentin from trying to protect Caddy, and he thinks to himself, "If it could just be a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing and the horror beyond the clean flame" (Faulkner 74).  What Quentin wants is a way to stop the passage of history, and is willing to do anything to make it happen, even leave the world entirely.

            Quentin’s goal to "save Caddy” is complicated by an unsophisticated conception of how women function in the world (Faulkner 92).  At one point his father says to Quentin, "Women are like that they don’t acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself (Faulkner 51).  Quentin’s stuck with saving Caddy and pointing out to her she needs saving, and unfortunately, Caddy disagrees. Quentin desires to protect his sister because he’s under a lot of pressure from Mrs. Compson, and believes that he’s been recruited into a “club of a few good men” (Faulkner 54).  Quentin reflects at one point, "Father and I protect women from one another from themselves our women" (Faulkner 55).
            When Caddy doesn’t accept his "saving," Quentin falls apart (Faulkner 92).  Faulkner shows ways that Quentin theorizes and lives the stopping of time.  For example, in the first sentence of Quentin’s chapter, he finds himself “in time again” (Faulkner 50).  This is Faulkner’s fancy way of describing Quentin just waking up, but the word time is included.  By the end of his section, Quentin’s mind is shuffling between his present and a past which to him seems just as important as the life he’s currently living.  The discovery that he can’t live in both the past and the present, or "Massachusetts and Mississippi” at the same time is what causes his death (Faulkner 112).

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