Thursday, April 17, 2008

Characters' Reflections

How do the characters vary in their process of reflection?

Out of all the chapters in this book, I think the most reflective is Benjy's. Basically his whole chapter is a fragmented reflection of his past with Caddy. However, there is a method to his madness. Benjy does not just think up random moments of his life and goes with it, but instead, things in the present provoke his memories, and those memories provoke other memories. For example, at the beginning of his chapter, Benjy hears a golfer call on his caddie, which causes Benjy to reflect on past times with his sister, Caddy.

Quinten reflects on his past a little differently than Benjy. Instead of reflecting on many instances, he only focuses on one: Caddy losing her virginity. The memory keeps invading his thoughts, sometimes interrupting in the middle of sentences. Quinten can be thinking of one thing, but then in the middle of the thought jumps "Dalton Ames," which happens many times in his chapter.

Jason does not reflect on much of anything except the negative aspects of everyone around him. Whenever he has to deal with someone, he often brings up a time before when they were making an annoyance of themselves, and further explains how much it could hurt him in the future.
"
Take [Benjy] on round to the back," I says. "What the hell makes you want to keep him around here where people can see him?" I made them go on, before he got started bellowing good. It's bad enough on Sundays, with that dam field full of people that haven't got a side show and six niggers to feed, knocking a dam oversize mothball around. He's going to keep on running up and down that fence and bellowing every time they come in sight until first thing I know they're going to begin charging me golf dues, then Mother and Dilsey'll have to get a couple of china door knobs and a walking stick and work it out, unless I play at night with a lantern. Then they'd send us all to Jackson, maybe. God knows, they'd hold Old Home week when that happened. "

Dilsey's chapter contains little, if any, reflection at all. In fact, it is just as much Dilsey's chapter as it is Luster's or Jason's. It is the only chapter that is presented in third person, giving it even less focus on a single character, much less their reflections.

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