Monday, October 18, 2010
oops! ...let's talk about sartre too
Sartre states that Faulkner could not tell the story in any other way... I found this statement to be pretty powerful. Initially, I disagreed. Though it would leave out the motif of the human construct of time, I thought the story could be told chronologically and produce a similar outcome. However, giving it greater thought, does the confusion make the book? Is it specifically done to make readers work harder and get lost in the present in the Compson family? I personally think it is specifically and effectively crafted. What do you guys think? What's Faulkner's reason for distorting time?
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I think the time distortion makes the book. Sartre states that "Quentin's gesture of breaking his watch has a symbolic value; it gives us access to time without clocks" and that "the time of Benjy, the idiot, who does not know how to tell time, is also clockless." I think that these statements are really important when analyzing the importance of time in the novel. In Benjy's Section, the reader is taken through Benjy's stream of consciousness and literally reads about everything he is thinking, seeing, and feeling. As Sartre states, Benjy is clockless. His lack of time perception allows Faulkner to neglect time in this section. The time distortion allows the reader to get a deeper understanding for Benjy and his disability.
ReplyDeleteThis is blowing my mind and is probably over my head, but I'll try to post a coherent response.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, the reader is able to get a better grasp of the story when the story is classically linear. But the linear story with a central complication, as Sartre says, is a different species altogether. By writing nonlinearly but leaving clues, Faulkner allows the reader to piece a linear plot together, while also still giving the reader the nonlinear story as intended. But I don't think the story is meant to be read in one way or the other. To answer Elizabeth's question, I think the story is indeed made by the hybridization of the two as the reader compares and contrasts and draws his own conclusions. If time is in fact Faulkner's central theme rather than just a motif, the story is made by Faulkner's distortion of time even more.
I liked Sartre's point about Benjy being the narrator. We give ourselves constructs like the measure of time and rules of grammar so we can give our lives order and context. But Benjy, a retard, sees the world with an unfiltered lens, which we see when Faulkner omits punctuation, etc. In some ways, we actually have a clearer idea of what’s going on when we read through Benjy’s eyes. The motives of the various characters (as a bit of a tangent) seem to be clearer to me without the punctuation and modifiers.
I don't know if anybody's read Vonnegut (I haven't either) but I'm reminded of the Tralfamodorians, about whom I've read somewhere. Unlike men, Tralfamodorians aren't time-bound and can simultaneously visit any time, present, past or future. In that sense, nobody is actually dead (or everybody is always dead). They're just either alive or dead at that particular moment, but they always exist and area always dead. Applied to Sound and the Fury, I think Benjy and the reader might also be timeless Tralfamodorians, so to speak. If the novel is about the death of the Southern family (we've already seen a few actual deaths), the deaths of these people and the family already happened, but they're also still alive. They're stuck in this sort of limbo.
My thoughts are obviously pretty jumbled, so I don't know if that made any sense at all.
I agree with Ariana, the time distortion makes the book for sure. i think its supposed to be incredibly confusing because it is equally confusing for the characters in the book. lets face it benjis completely lost, Quentin commits suicide so he obviously has issues as well and the mothers a mad woman. i think we are supposed to piece together the lives of these characters as they piece together their own lives, or don't. the story makes me very sympathetic towards the family but also completely flabbergasted about what the heck is going on at any given time. I think Faulkner is showing us the hectic lifestyle of a family in dissaray by putting the book in dissaray (clearly idk how to spell that word) making us feel even more bad for the south (i think thats his intention)
ReplyDeletei ran this by siegs and she disagrees but i wouldnt be me if i didnt put it out there anyway- Anybody besides me think caddy doesnt receive narration in the story cause shes one of the only characters WITH a concept of time? she says she has to get married before time runs out, time runs out, this means she understands the value of time and therefore would be ineffective in narrating the story because she could tell it chronologically, unlike benji who is incapable and quentin who fights time by breaking his clock
I liked Clarks point about how it is a story of a death of a southern family and that "the deaths of these people and the family already happened, but they're also still alive. They're stuck in this sort of limbo."
ReplyDeleteI also thought that the Sartre reading was really fascinating. Things that stuck out in the reading to me would be his point that in both the sections, as Justin mentioned, time is made irrelevant. This is achieved by the breaking of the watch and the fact that Benjy is mentally challenged and cannot tell time. Something, however, that I did not notice and that Sartre did is how the diction and sentence structure of Faulkner alludes to the meaningless or lack of time such as "the train swung around the curve, the engine puffing with short, heavy blasts, and they passed smoothly from sight that way, with that quality of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity..." I also thought it was very interesting his point that "the present had not first been a future possibility. In response to Elizabeths questions and post, i do think that i makes the book confusing but it makes it more worthwhile. And as for his reason for distorting time i have one theory and that is that the events themselves are far more important then when they happen. For example for Benjy the majority of the things we see are reactions/results/responses from events like Damuddys death, Caddy wearing perfume, etc it didn't matter when they occurred because they still would've affected Benjy in the same way.
When I first posted my blog entry, I didn't see that we started another thread about Sartre's article. So I'm going to post my entry in this thread as well.
ReplyDeleteDanielle Kohn said...
Demetra, I really liked your point about the gate. To add to what you said, I think the gate symbolizes the division between Benjy's past and present. The other side of the gate represents Benjy's past; it reminds him of the times he spent with Caddy in the pasture. The land inside the gate represents Benjy's present, in which Caddy is not with Benjy (she has married Herbert). I also liked what Elizabeth said about the connections to Faulkner's commentary on southern society.. the symbols are definitely not just meant to be taken in a context solely within the novel but also within the society for which Faulkner's novel is a commentary.
Putting symbols aside, I think we were supposed to do the blog entry about the article by Jean-Paul Sartre so I'm just going to make a few comments about what I noticed:
Two quotes about time that stuck out to me from the article are "Beyond this present time there is nothing, since the future does not exist. The present rises us from sources unknown to us and drives away another present; it is forever beginning anew" (2) and "the past takes on a sort of super-reality; its contours are hard and clear, unchangeable. The present, nameless and fleeting, is helpless before it. It is full of gaps, and, through these gaps, things of the past, fixed, motionless..." (3). As we saw in Benjy's and Quentin's sections, the entire tense is in the present. For the most part, the characters have absolutely no sense of the future. I believe Faulkner does this purposely because he is making a commentary about southern society and how he believes there is no hope for the people living in the south.
Additionally, like Sartre says, Faulkner's novel "does not assume chronological order." There are many events that are repeated, but all those events are memories and readers learn about them as the characters recall them. This style allows Faulkner to get his message across to readers that there really is no concept of time and that time is simply a manmade thing. This message was made clear to me in Quentin's section when he constantly thinks of the ticking and how his father told him that time will be the death of him and that could never seem to count the time correctly when he was a child.
I found it really interesting that Sartre suggests that, throughout Quentin's entire narration, he is dead. I like how he describes "the hero's last thoughts coincid[ing] approximately with the bursting of his memory and its annihilation." He manages to effectively connect this with the idea of time serving to "[cut] the present off from itself"
ReplyDeleteThough this idea is nice, I'm not really sure how Sartre gets to it. He cites the line that begins "Through the wall" as an indicator of Quentin's being dead for the whole section, but I don't see much in this specific line that gives any indication of Quentin's state.
Ultimately, I think this reading confused me more than reading Faulkner on its own did.
I like Danielle's quote that she chose from the Sartre reading; it was my favorite as well. Moreover, I agree with Emily that this reading was even more confusing than Sound and the Fury itself. The book explores the "metaphysics of time," and I think that Sartre aptly summed it up with his comment that the "present is not; it becomes." The past is when everything happened that affects the characters in a major way and Sartre discusses the possibility of humanity without a future. Sartre touches upon some pretty conceptual stuff here that is a bit abstract and confusing to me, to be honest. The whole "the present does not exist" argument makes sense superficially, but it DOES exist in every moment. So I don't get why Faulkner and Sartre basically cast it aside. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteSo Sartre just gave me a headache... those rhetorical questions with like six different branches of answers made me seriously dizzy. But I think he has some good points. Although the timelessness/untrackable time of the novel adds to its literary significance and succeeds at confusing me greatly, I would not have initially said it "made" the book. However, I now agree that because nothing happens/unfolds, everything has already happened and we are discovering it, that the random bursts of time and memory do actually make the book. That was a difficult concept for me; that nothing was happening and we were just experiencing and revealing the meaning behind what had already happened, and also the idea that Quentin was already dead and telling the present in the past in the present or whatever that was. I think Faulkner distorted time to prove its irrelevance and the human inability to control/harness it. Because time is manipulated and intertwined so intricately in the Sound and the Fury, it does become evident as a manmade device and Sartre's commentary well exemplifies the significance of this. Also to answer Justin's question, I kind of agree that Caddy may not have narrated because she had a concept of time. She seems to be the only really responsible character, (although responsible might be a stretch considering her sexuality and openness...?) and would have an order and timeline to the events in her life. She seems pretty clever and sensible, and also I know we talked about the significance of her climbing the tree, being the only one brave enough to go up and take a look, and this alienates her from the other characters. I think this also contributes to why she does not narrate, aside from my other idea that she has too much knowledge and insightful understanding to everything that goes on that if she narrated the book might actually start making sense and then Faulkner would have failed.
ReplyDeleteI thought Sartre's interpretation illuminated several aspects of the novel. I find Sartre's point that "for Faulkner, the past is never lost, unfortunately; it is always there, it is an obsession" (4) particularly compelling. I thought this was spot on, and tied together the novel very well (at least the parts we have read so far). For example, Benjy and Quentin constantly have flashbacks to events, and Benjy's entire consciousness is dominated by memories from his past. Quentin is less past-oriented, but his section is still full of memories.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Sartre is clearly analyzing this through his own existentialist lens (as he is focusing on the emotions and memories that contribute to the characters' individual personae), he still makes a point to exemplify his points with apt textual support.
I also like Ariana's point about the time distortion making the book. The Sound and the Fury would not be nearly as compelling or unique if it didn't explore the consciousness of four people's minds, in a candid, stream-of-consciousness-esque manner.
I really like Sartre's point that Quentin was already dead during his last day because he had already chosen and accepted his suicide. Sartre further elaborates by saying there is no present or future, only a past. I thought that connected nicely with Quentin's section of the novel because it was told in past tense, even though it is technically the present. Quentin sees his lack of a future and only focuses on his past which is why he is so dead inside.
ReplyDeleteSartre's article left me with more of an understanding of Faulkner's intentions as it relates to his reasons for the chronology of the novel yet it utterly confused me with the amount of profound statements that he made. The fact is that he has a specific idea of how to explain time but when he tries to put it on paper it comes out wordy and confusing.
ReplyDeleteHe says "The past takes on a sort of super-reality; its contours are hard and clear, unchangeable. The present, nameless and fleeting, is helpless before it. It is full of gaps, and , through these gaps, things of the past, fixed, motionless and silent as judges or glances, come to invade it." He explicates that time is neither here nor there yet here and there with then being now as long as now was before because now is then...(My point exactly).
Despite his own twist on time, I liked Sartre's criticism on The Sound and the Fury. I think that he brings up some good points about the present being masked by the past until it is relevant as a story, when he states "And when Bland punches his nose, this brawl is covered over and hidden by Quentin's past brawl with Ames. Later on, Shreve relates how Bland hit Quentin; he relates this scene because it has become a story, but while it was unfolding in the present, it was only a furtive movement, covered over by veils." I think Sartre is right on with this one. With an ever continuous present, it is impossible to internalize or reveal what is happening until it is over. Therefor we can only perceive past experiences and replay them in our minds until what is happening now is gone far enough that we can look back on it.
Now Im confusing myself
justin- whoaa cool! i might sort of see what you're thinking. imma give it a little more thought.
ReplyDeleteAAAAriaNa. totally agree. i think the distorted time line of the novel is key because it illustrate the general motif that time is useless and "your misfortune". In Quentin's section so far especially Faulkner makes it clear that he is anti-time as are some of the characters (breaking the clock, etc.) As Satre points out, the point of the book is really not at all the present, it is the past. Because of this, there are multitudes of memories to be woven in whenever Faulkner sees fit.
I think that the use of the discontinued narrative also pushes the reader to pay more attention to what is going on, which requires more thought. Echoing the thoughts of Ariana, it is so true that the structure is also intimately tied into the general theme of the novel.
ReplyDelete