Okay, so I understand that it’s common belief that nothing sexual ever happened between the two. Quentin struggles with the concept of time and struggles with Caddy’s promiscuity because of how it looks to the family?
I just think it’s much simpler. Is that really why he kills himself? Can it not be that he actually loves her, and struggles with what that means and its unrequited nature? How did you all interpret their relationship?
(Side note: After Quentin’s chapter, I kept thinking as I read that the “man in the red tie” was really Miss Quentin’s real father unbeknownst to her, and that it was a reverse oedipus Rex situation.)
by Harper_182
2 Comments
I think there’s a lot to unpack in how Quentin feels about Caddy. But what I interpreted it as is that Caddy represents “The South” to Quentin. He’s kind of put her on this pedestal where she’s this pure, virginal figure and it is his duty to protect her.
When he finds out that she’s been having sex it destroys his image of her and his ideas of “The South” along with it.
He can’t reconcile the ideas he has with reality and that is why he kills himself. I think there’s also a lot of work done on this idea in Absalom, Absalom! in that it shows how horrible the South really is. The last line is Quentin obsessing over how he doesn’t hate the South. And then he comes home from college and sees his sister, the reification of the South, being “impure” it’s the last straw.
Interesting about the red tie man, never considered that.
I just reread sound and fury after absolutely loving absalom absalom, whose main character is a younger Quentin Compson. Incest between a brother and sister is a major theme in that book, so it stands to reason that Quentin is at least partially enamored with the story of the Sutpens because of his own desires. In my mind he covers it up by crying impropriety on Caddy’s part