Quentin's Passion and Desire in The Sound and the Fury
As Quentin Compson travels through the countryside with his college friends, the reality of the situation becomes terribly confused by memories and past feelings. After a little girl follows him for miles around town, his own sexuality reaches the forefront of his consciousness and transforms itself into disjointed memories of his sister Caddy. Quentin's constant obsession in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, surrounds a defining sexual act with his sister. Though the physical act never appears in plain language, Quentin's apparent lapse into an inner monologue demonstrates his overwhelming fixation with Caddy as well as a textured representation of their relationship. Sexual language pervades his inner consciousness - scents, sounds and colors represent his passion and desire. Elements of nature, when associated with his sister, become erotic; the tiers of description, no matter how seemingly mundane, tend to be steeped in sexuality.
Quentin's lapse into past events with Caddy begins in the midst of typical conversation with his friends as they drive through town. His attention to reality is shattered by an unconscious slip into thoughts of his sister. As the eyes of the little girl snap Quentin into a reverie of sexual exploration, his words wander haphazardly, even before the image of his sister, prone on the banks of the river, comes to mind. "If I tried to hard to stop it I'd be crying and I thought about how I'd thought about I could not be a virgin, with so many of them walking along in the shadows and whispering with their soft girlvoices lingering in the shadowy places and the words coming out and perfume and eyes you could f...
... middle of paper ...
... environment to evoke such passion. Although Faulkner rarely refers to sexual acts directly, the use of language through Quentin's consciousness and internal monologue is so rampant with erotic metaphor and passionate depth, that a simple object, such as a pocket knife, transforms into the most vital of symbols.
Works Cited and Consulted
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.
Harold, Brent. "The Volume and Limitations of Faulkner's Fictional Method." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 11, 1975.
Hoffman, F. J. and Vickery, O. W. William Faulkner: Three Decades of Criticism. New York, Harbinger, 1960.
Irwin, John T. "A Speculative Reading of Faulkner" Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 14, 1975.
Polk, N. New Essays On: The Sound and the Fury. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Upon listening and reading William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, it is immediately deduced that he provides his vast audience of the epitome of himself. William Faulkner is not someone, but everyone. His humanistic approach to writing and thought has allowed him to hide complexity within simplicity, and for this, he is memorable: his work is a true testament to the unbreakable nature of the human spirit in the face of enormous hardship and consequence; a look into the human mind that is simultaneously interesting and uninteresting. This, along with so much more, is prevalent in this speech, which perfectly conveys the responsibilities of the writers in 1949.
...ntity in 'There Was a Queen.'." In Faulkner and Gender: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1994. Ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. 160-180. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 92. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 July 2011.
Another significant element to look at in Quentin’s section is his imagery. For one, “the mirror” constantly creeps up in Quentin’s mind and is a symbol of Quentin’s inability to look at Caddy’s marriage directly. Moreover, Quentin always sees Caddy as “ confined “in the mirror because this is his illusion of her childhood purity. He cannot accept that she has crossed the threshold into maturity. Doors are another important image in Quentin’s section. They portray Caddy’s actual entry into the world of maturity - a notion which Quentin refuses to accept. Water, as well, is alluded to often. It represents Quentin’s understanding of the knowledge of good and evil which he constantly tries to deny and his obsessions with sex and mortality. It is in water that Quentin finally decides to take his own life.
By reading closely and paying attention to details, I was able to get so much more out of this story than I did from the first reading. In short, this assignment has greatly deepened my understanding and appreciation of the more complex and subtle techniques Faulkner used to communicated his ideas in the story.
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” is a short story that not only shows cultural divides and how they affect our actions, but also how that cultural prejudice may also affect other parties, even if, in this story, that other party may only be an elephant. Orwell shows the play for power between the Burmese and the narrator, a white British police-officer. It shows the severe prejudice between the British who had claimed Burma, and the Burmese who held a deep resentment of the British occupation. Three messages, or three themes, from Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” are prejudice, cultural divide, and power.
or hundreds of years people have considered capital punishment a deterrence of crime. Seven hundred and five individuals have died since 1976, by means of capital punishment; twenty-two of these executions have already occurred this year (Death Penalty Information Center). Many U.S. citizens who strongly support the death penalty believe that capital punishment remains the best way to protect society from convicted killers. I, however, disagree; I do not feel that execution best punishes criminals for their acts. Instead, in my opinion, the administration of the death penalty should end because it does not deter crime; it risks the death of an innocent person, it costs millions of dollars, it inflicts unreasonable pain; and most importantly it violates moral principles.
Brooks, Cleanth. "William Faulkner: Visions of Good and Evil." Faulkner, New Perspectives. Ed. Richard H. Brodhead. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, 1983.
"William Faulkner (1897-1962)." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 97. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. 1-3. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Hempfield High School. 31 March 2010.
William Faulkner uses multiple narrators throughout The Sound and the Fury to depict the life of Caddy Compson without telling the story from her point-of-view. Benjy, a mentally disabled 33 year old, Quentin, a troubled and suicidal Harvard student, and Jason, a racist and greedy man, each give their drastically different sides of Caddy’s story to create an incomplete chronicle of her life. Faulkner’s first chapter explores Caddy’s life through the silent narrator Benjy. As a result of Benjy’s inability to talk, much of how he describes the world is through his heightened sensory awareness. Benjy constantly repeats the fact that, which, to Benjy, symbolizes Caddy’s innocence (Faulkner 6). Later in the novel when, Benjy realizes that Caddy has lost the innocence Benjy once idolized and loved (Faulkner 40).
The most prevalent example of tyranny harming both oppressor and oppressed in recent reading is Frederick Douglass’ piece, “Learning to Read and Write.” Douglass explains how his mistress was initially kind and tender-hearted, but being a slave owner transformed her into a monster. Having to exert the kind of cruel power that she did turned her cold and evil. She grew to fit the mask of slavery and became something she originally was not. It is in the same way which Orwell grows to fit the mask of his role as the white man in the Burmese village. He is supposed to show no fear or cowardice, so he shoots the innocent elephant. Orwell’s behavior acts as a mask of his true emotions - he clearly knew he ought not to shoot the elephant, but his role in the village meant he had to. This showcases the irony of how Orwell is the central power in the village, but crowd psychology has forced into doing something he would rather not. Douglass and Orwell, while from very different places and very different ends of the spectrum of totalitarianism, make virtually the same observation: by the end of his reign, a tyrant will be just as broken as the subjec...
In “Shooting an Elephant” writer George Orwell illustrates the terrible episode that explains more than just the action of “shooting an elephant.” Orwell describes the scene of the killing of an elephant in Burma and reveals a number of emotions he experienced during the short, but traumatic event. Effectively, the writer uses many literary techniques to plant emotions and create tension in this scene, leading to an ironic presentation of imperialism. With each of the realistic descriptions of the observing multitude and the concrete appeal of the narrator’s pathos, Orwell thrives in persuading the audience that imperialism not only has a destructive impact on those being governed under the imperialists’ oppressive power, but also corrupts
The death penalty is the only punishment in some criminal cases. Society feels as though justice is served when criminals receives what is deserved of them. Most people agree that justice is served when the punishment fits the crime.” The death penalty in the U.S is used almost exclusively for the crime of murder. Although state and federal statutes contain various capital crimes other than those involving death of a victim. Only two people were on death row for a non-murder offense, when the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this issue of 2008. No one has been executed for such a crime since it was reinstated in 1976”. No one has been executed since 1976. The death penalty is probably the best choice of some of the corrupted people out here since some of them can make it in and out of prison no problem and still commit crimes.
Faulkner's style may give you trouble at first because of (1) his use of long, convoluted, and sometimes ungrammatical sentences, such as the one just quoted; (2) his repetitiveness (for example, the word "bleak" in the sentence just quoted); and (3) his use of oxymorons, that is, combinations of contradictory or incongruous words (for example, "frictionsmooth," "slow and ponderous gallop," "cheerful, testy voice"). People who dislike Faulkner see this style as careless. Yet Faulkner rewrote and revised Light in August many times to get the final book exactly the way he wanted it. His style is a product of thoughtful deliberation, not of haste. Editors sometimes misunderstood Faulkner's intentions and made what they thought were minor changes. Recently scholars have prepared an edition of Light in August that restores the author's original text as exactly as possible. This Book Note is based on that Library of America edition (1985), edited by Noel Polk and Joseph Blotner.
The state of power established through the imperialistic backdrop show that Orwell should have control over the Burmese. Orwell is a British colonial officer in Burma, which is under the control of the British, and because of this he should have authority and control over the Burmans. The presence of the empire is established when Orwell explains that, “with one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny...upon the will of the prostrate people; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s gut.” (144) This ideal imperialistic circumstance, where ...
In colonial Burma, the foreign, British minority ruled the large, local majority. In this setting, the British demonstrated its dominance and power through its gruesome treatment of the Burmese. Orwell described the locals as having “cowed faces” and “scarred buttocks” from Britain’s “unbreakable tyranny”. This exemplifies the typical imperialistic state- an oppressor and an oppressed. However, Orwell’s depiction of imperialism goes deeper than such a simplistic view. Orwell, who