Quentin

The last few days, our readings have been centered more on Quentin than on Benjy.
We have finally come to Quentin's section of the novel. Although we aren't fully finished
reading the section, there is still a lot we know about Quentin.
We did an activity in class that helped separate each memory that Benjy recollected into
groups. This activity helped me understand a little more about the characters of Benjy and Caddie.
This is because the first section of the novel is focused mostly on Benjy and Caddie. Although
Caddie is a promiscuous girl, who at first I didn't really like, the more I read, I'm starting to like her.
After Caddie leaves the Compson family, we are able to see how much Caddie meant to Benjy.
She was the only one who truly cared for him and treated him the way he should be treated, with love.
Others such as Luster torments Benjy by telling him that he will be sent to a home for the mentally
retarded as soon as his mother passes away. Although Caddie does run away, leaving Benjy by himself,
I think she still had a big enough heart to connect with Benjy, allowing him to feel (although he doesn't know)
what love is.
In this second part of the novel, we learn more about Quentin. I thought that this section of the novel
would be a lot easier than Benjy's section, not only because Quentin is not mentally retarded, but
also because his thoughts should be a lot more organized than Benjy's, have a lot more description
on the event. However, Quentin's section is just as hard to understand as Benjy's section. This disappointed
me a lot because I thought that I would be able to understand the novel much more easily in this section.
But of course, Faulkner continues to write the novel with his own personally "style."
Quentin, described by Faulkner is in the state between Benjy's and Jason's. He is somewhat mental and
somewhat sane. To organize my thoughts, he is an emotional
man who has only one objective in life. Quentin is obsessed with his sister, Caddie.
Although his family has spent so much on his tuition to Harvard, selling the pasture that belonged
to Benjy, Quentin doesn't really try his hardest at Harvard to bring his family honor.
He doesn't want Caddie to be ruined by other men, living a promiscuous life. He tries to protect her by
doing whatever he can. Quentin seems to be stuck in his past. It seems to me that he is reminded
of the present only when the watch that his father gave him wakes him up from all his thinking.
Quentin hates the fact that Caddie is so promiscuous. He wishes that instead of her, he was the the
"unvirgin."
We are in the middle of Quentin's section, not even halfway through the novel, and I am already
so tired of trying to understand what is going on in this novel. All the different events that randomly
pop up in the novel, ruining the flow of the events, having to figure out how all of these stories come
together...not going to lie, The Sound and the Fury, it's a really hard novel.