Dilsey Chapter: April 8, 1928

What is the note at the end of the chapter about New York, N.Y. supposed to be? The last passage mentions the same Confederate statue that was at the beginning of the book. Which, along with everything else I've been reading, makes me believe that the New York note has nothing to do with the setting of the scene. So then what is it?
Other than that, the last scene had a lot of images from the first chapter. In my book it was page 8. The images were so similar I wondered if it was the same scene, but in the last scene the driver is Luster, and Mrs. Compson is not in the carriage. Re-reading the first scene also made it clearer why Benjy started sobbing. He says, "Then those on one side stopped at the tall white post where the soldier was. But on the other side they went on sooth and steady, but a little slower." Then at the end of the page he says, "The shapes flowed on. The ones on the other side began again, bright and fast and smooth, like when Caddy says we are going to sleep." Benjy starts sobbing when Luster drives the carriage to the left of the statue. But once the carriage goes back to the right side and starts moving,"...Ben hushed...as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place." My first reaction was surprise. Why would Benjy care about order, "from left to right?" He doesn't even see time as linear. But visualizing the scene helps a little. He would be driving on the right side of the road, looking over his right shoulder. He says he could see "Facades," faces of buildings, no doubt well cared for. And these buildings would be the same buildings he has seen for his whole life. If the carriage suddenly lurches to the left, the Confederate soldier interposes itself between Benjy's field of view and the buildings. This could easily be taken as the old south pushing itself between Benjy's and the life and people he loved. And in keeping with this, Jason cannot shut Benjy up until the carriage gets back on the sight of the road. After that nothing Jason does, not breaking his flower or beating the horse, or even hitting him can do anything to perturb him. Because on this side of the road, Benjy is literally living in a time when he can still see Caddy and Quentin. It makes Jason's last words seem meaningless, "If you ever cross that gate with him again, I'll kill you!" And ironically enough, the flower Jason broke was a Narcissus, which in classical mythology came to be because of a man completely obsessed with his self image. Of course, Jason's image has just been completely destroyed, and like the broken flower, he has nobody but himself to blame.
Thanks for reading

Jason Chapter: April 6, 1928

Reading sentences with punctuation has been so much fun I decided do this whole post after I finished reading the chapter. My biggest issue after reading is about Benjy. Quentin's chapter focused all on one event, his suicide, which I assumed took place on the day the chapter was titled. After reading Jason's chapter I assumed that Benjy's castration took place on April 7, 1928, the title of the first chapter. But then I glanced at Jason's date, and turns out we just read about April 6, 1928, one day before Benjy's chapter. But Jason already refers to Benjy as, "...the Great American Gelding" (pg 164). This tells us two things. First, Jason thinks of his brother as worse than a horse, and second, the incident has already happened. So here's my question: If the incident has already happened by the time Benjy narrates his chapter, why don't we hear about it at all from Benjy? An event like that is not something anybody would forget, least of all Benjy.
My next big question is about Jason. Everyone agrees he is not likeable, not friendly, really bitter, racist, sexist, has a complete lack of respect for Benjy, and ready to take advantage of whoever he can. I don't intend to be the devil's advocate, but I do think he has several very good reasons to be bitter. A good portion of what he had was spent to send his older brother to Harvard. He himself never got an education, he never had an opportunity to make something of himself the way Quentin did. Now he's stuck as the breadwinner for his sister's child, his mother, who's burning most of the money that Jason doesn't steal (assuming I read that bit right) and who also spent Jason's inheritance on his older brother, his brother Benjy and the staff both of which Jason sees as subhuman. Quentin was the family line, he's gone, so is Benjy, leaving Caddy's illegitimate child and Jason. I don't know exactly what Faulkner was trying to communicate with all of this, but it does speak measures to what happens when people try and force an outcome that wasn't meant to be. It also does a lot to discredit societal expectations. If the family hadn't married Caddy off, Quentin would be alive and supporting the family, Benjy would not have hung around the gate and been castrated, and Jason would not be so bitter. Then, his inheritance would have at least had meaning. It's not hard to imagine Jason seeing burnt checks and Quentin's suicide as nearly identical acts. But instead, Caddy is now an outcast, Quentin is dead, and Jason, the last connection to the family line is ready to tear Caddy's child apart. And the only person in between the two of them is Mrs. Compson, the person who started the whole plot. I'm not sure I agreed with everything Sartre said about the story, but right now the story appears, like Sartre stated, "...an invasion of the past."
If I think of something really important or obvious, I'll make another note, but until then bye and thanks for reading.

Quentin Chapter: June 2, 1910

So Quentin...
At least he knows when he's going on tangents, although I still lose him sometimes. The more he does the stream of consciousness thing the harder it gets. And who's this Dalton Ames character? In my text it was page 51 when Quentin describes him or her. Funny how he smashes the watch right after that. Maybe there's some really important connection between Dalton Ames and temporal reality. Seems like an unfortunate and kind of sketchy guy. And what does Quentin actually think about Caddy. He seems a little critical of his sister, and of his family in general. And more than a little ungrateful if that bit about Benjy's property being sold to pay for his education is true.
Its also a little odd how he references incest, and coming of age a few times, while he thinks about Caddy. The side note he makes about stepping on his shadow is an interesting hint. He says he's crushing his shadow into the ground, and according to the notes on the bottom of the page, stepping on your shadow results in death, according to an old superstition. Kind of hints at suicide.
Ok, kind of crazy idea but how about no punctuation from now on sound good here we go kind of a side note but the envelope he gives deacon reminds me of the envelope in invisible man from a long time ago hopefully not as bad as that one though ok giving up. Its funny how everything Benjy told us about was actual events and quotes, and now all we have are thoughts. Its hard to tell who's talking or what Quentin thinks. After reading most of the chapter I've decided his tangents are just as hard to follow as Benjy's. He is pretty scatterbrained. One minute Caddy, then fighting words, then Harvard, then mom and dad, then smoking, back to Harvard...
One big difference in the chapter is that it does all focus around one narrative, rather than several at once. It's still difficult to keep events straight.
A bit later on he says, "I died last year." It's just what Sartre was talking about, how every climactic event was already fixed in time.
Going out on a limb here, but the girl, could she be death? She doesn't breathe. She has fingers like worms. She doesn't have a home. She feeds off of Quentin, and she follows him. The bell to the store doesn't ring for her. The store owner is suspicious even scared. I'm actually creeping myself out now. But her eyes are friendly at least. And I just finished reading about them; Quentin actually runs away. Freaky.
And later on with Caddy. It's still hard to tell what he actually thinks about her. He says, "I wish you were dead," but by now in the narrative even death seems almost friendly.
And now back to Dalton Ames. Is this guy really here, or is it just something Quentin is thinking of that represents an actual person?
And is the fight the same one we heard about in Chapter one? It doesn't seem like it, there's no rain like there was in Benjy's chapter.
Last note. So Benjy's time is "clockless," but Quentin seems completely trapped with human impressions of time. The watch keeps ticking after he pulls the hands off, he always knows if its half past or a quarter two. And all throughout the last passage there is a clock sounding off the hours. (I didn't bother to see how many rings there were). What's the point here, or is it just for contrast? Anyway thanks for reading have a good day bye

Benjy Chapter: April 7, 1928

The following are my uncut notes on chapter one. Hopefully they post. Enjoy.
-It would be cool to see the world this way, it's like a dream. I'm not catching all the changes of scenery though.
-Benjy's way of seeing things does make a really flexible narrative. The author can start out expressing a variety of ideas
-I can't say I know what is going on or where the book is going. but I am getting more interested to see
-It gets a little freaky, like something out of control, especially in the cellar scene. It's like Benjy's imagination and memory alter the reality he's in
-Imagery really gets emphasized. It's not just in a narrative, it's all over the place, in this memory and that one, and always in the present. The trees, for example, are not just bouncing in the background, they are everywhere thanks to Benjy's perception
-It makes it hard to know who and what to believe. It's narrator bias on steroids.
-When images like people and trees are so prominent though, it makes you wonder what you're missing, what another narrator might catch.
-There's a line about remembering who people were. That seems kind of strange given that Benjy talks to people in his memories. They are present to him, so it doesn't have to be, "Writ out."
-Also the way they emphasize names, if Benjy sees past as present, he might see himself as different people.
-And at the end it hints that when he dreams its similar to when he's awake.
So that was disorienting, freaky and rather inconclusive. I'm sure it gets better from here.
-One last note having read the Sartre Article: One of my thoughts on this chapter is that it introduces us to an essential argument that Faulkner presents. According to Sartre's analysis, one of the key goals of the characters is to differentiate between time as a reality and artificial time constructed by man. If this is the case it makes sense to start with Benjy, because he is "clockless," while still trapped in a different temporal reality. The tradeoff is that the reader comes into the book drowning without knowing which direction the surface is in. In other words, I'm a tiny bit confused.

Intro to Faulkner

Hello. Writer's Block. Bye.

So my research on Faulkner has taken me about 2 min so far. If you have done any more than that you might consider leaving. I've established he's really smart, not racist, and the author of the book the sound and the fury. He also had a basic grasp of Chipewa. He could probably at least spell the language right. He liked to drink when he was finished writing, and had sex outside of marriage. He won the nobel prize in literature and gave a really great speech in a southern accent that nobody could hear. I scanned it and it looks like it is probably worth your time. And its only 553 words assuming I counted correctly. 

At this point I have spent a whole 15 min reading about Faulkner. I found some more information about his drinking habits. In 1924 he was removed from his position as scoutmaster for drinking. For those of you who are experts in American history you know that from 1920 to 1933 drinking was illegal. So he violated a constitutional amendment while head of a boy scout league. I think that's what a scoutmaster is at least. In 1937 he apparently burned his back in an exceptionally impressive bout of drinking. In 1962 he suffered two successive falls off of a horse. Ouch. The second time he suffered a serious injury and died of a heart attack less than a month later. I'm almost excited to get started.