Introduction

Traditionally, there are basically two approaches to tackle the problem of Quentin Compson as a character.(注:A much detailed discussion of this topic will appear in the second part of the introduction.)The first one is to place him in the context of Southern culture, emphasizing a gentleman’s honor, family roles and duties, and the father-son relationship. This approach was widely adopted in the mid-20th century, and has its influential critics such as Robert P. Warren and Cleanth Brooks. The criticism accumulated in this period has shaped some of the widely recognized understandings of Quentin as a character. The second wave of research found support in the psychoanalytical theory and made use of the Freudian concepts for character analysis. The focus of studies, then, is on psychological implications of human relationships and identities. The 1980s saw the arrival of more diversified criticism such as feminist readings or archetypal studies, but on the whole, the criticism has not drifted away from the findings of two previous approaches.

During my reading and research on Quentin as a character, I have come to notice one subject that has often been touched upon but not yet exhausted, that is, the problem of Quentin’s suicide. The death of Quentin cannot be ignored, and his death is in a way comparable to the “delay” in Hamlet since his death does not come until after he has meditated long and hard on his life. Unlike Hamlet, however, there are relatively fewer discussions devoted to the suicide of Quentin. Remarks on Quentin’s death emerging out of the mid-20th century were done within the different concerns of the critics and led invariably into diverse interpretations. For instance, some critics concluded that the parent-son relationship is responsible for Quentin’s death; others maintained that Quentin’s multiple-identity conflict leads to his despair; still others argued that Quentin dies as a result of his sense of ineffectualness in face of time and change.(注:Brooks, Warren, and Mark Spilka represented a school that emphasizes on parental responsibili-ty; John Irwin upheld the psychoanalytical approach; Critics like Jean-Paul Sartre, Donald M. Kartiganer, and John T. Matthews tended to favor a more metaphysical interpretation.)

Inspirational as these understandings are, they often appear to be in conflict rather than complement one another, due to a lack of focused and consistent research. The situation reveals a tendency of treating Quentin’s death as a by-product of pursuing other topics. As I have found out, critics approached Quentin’s suicide mostly from their respective concerns and sympathies. But actually, Quentin’s choice of suicide is a primary act in his life, influenced by but not limited to factors like the parent-son and the brother-sister relationships. To better define and study this issue, I would like to introduce my topic in two ways: The first part of the introduction will offer a rough review of the existing criticism concerning Quentin’s death. In the meantime, it tries to analyze, categorize, and interpret a number of representative opinions in terms of their insights and, if I may be permitted to say so, their possible bias. The second part of the introduction will take advantage of sociological findings and concepts which have helped to shape not only some of my fundamental understandings of Quentin’s character, his choices and his circumstances, but also the way the present work is organized and developed.

1. A Review of Critical Opinions Regarding Quentin’s Death

Needless to say, the early studies between 1950s and 1960s laid the groundwork for much of the discussions to follow, as some of the critics showed remarkable insight into the decoding of essential elements of fiction in terms of characters and themes in Faulkner’s novels. Consequently, what we have now are important observations from early scholars like Robert Penn Warren, Peter Swiggart, Cleanth Brooks, Jane-Paul Sartre, and Melvin Backman, to name just a few. They pointed out Faulkner’s preoccupation with Southern subjects, discussed the heroes’ ineffectualness in facing familial and communal problems, and provided inspirational comments on personality traits, interpersonal relationships as well as the novel’s thematic concerns.

The comments on Quentin Compson’s death also grew out of this earlier period of scholarship. But as time goes on, some of the earlier criticism are gradually losing hold on the imaginations of later critics. For example, the problem of Quentin Compson’s death was an often-discussed subject in the 1950s, yet critics after 1980s obviously find it less intriguing than their earlier counterparts. The result is that, according to the present research, around the last two decades of the 20th century only a few critical studies appeared to address Quentin’s suicide: Margaret D. Bauer’s article entitled “‘I Have Sinned in That I Have Betrayed the Innocent Blood’: Quentin’s Recognition of His Guilt” argued the cause of Quentin’s death lies in his recognition that his sister Caddy’s misery comes primarily from his preventing her to unite with her lover Dalton Ames. An essay by Merrill Horton “Quentin Compson’s Suicide: A Source in Balzac” contended that Faulkner might have been inspired by a character in The Old Maid when creating Quentin’s suicidal behaviors. A few years earlier than 1980, John T. Irwin offered the famous conclusion from a psychoanalytical perspective, linking Quentin’s motive of suicide to his self-punishment as brother seducer and avenger.

The critics, in their examination of Quentin’s life and character, have tried to probe into a number of questions. For example, what are the motives behind Quentin’s death? Who are responsible for it? And occasionally, is it a conscious act or an unconscious destiny? To answer these questions, my research is going to outline these critical opinions along two dimensions. First and foremost, the factors responsible for Quentin’s choice of ending his life; and secondly, what the suicide means, or what is the symbolic meaning of Quentin’s death. As we will see in the following part, the important criticism on Quentin has more or less touched upon these two questions.

1.1 Reasons for Quentin’s Suicide

The critical stances on Quentin’s suicide have generally constituted three groups: the cultural, the philosophical, and the family studies group. Of the three, the cultural dimension is one of the earliest taken by critics. Prominent scholars like Hyatt H. Waggoner, Cleanth Brooks, and later Michel Gresset voiced their ideas that Quentin, as a son of the Old South, commits suicide because he has been trapped in his memories, that he is devoted to past, idealized values, and that he cannot come to terms with the decay and changes in a defeated South. His death, in a large way, symbolizes the death of the old Southern culture and values. Hyatt H. Waggoner said that “Quentin is ultimately concerned with honor…he locates his values in the past, in the Old South.” Since he “can do no morally significant act, either good or bad”, Quentin “can only exist, for a while, in time and then cease to exist” (52). Cleanth Brooks shared the same idea in William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country, stating “Quentin is emotionally committed to the code of honor, but for him the code has lost its connection with reality” (337). Ultimately, Quentin takes his own life with the knowledge that “he can neither repudiate nor fulfill the claims of the code” (337). Brooks’ opinion is influential and echoed by some of his contemporaries with slight variations. For instance, Michel Gresset expanded Brooks’ argument, concluding that Quentin’s problem does not end with his leaving home for Harvard University in the North, because he does not feel that he belonged at Harvard. The failure to integrate himself in a new, changing community away from home is instrumental in determining his death. Thus he dies belonging neither to the corrupt, aristocratic Southern community, nor to the new, materialistic North (177).

To attribute Quentin’s death to a cultural or historical determinant lends the reader a cultural-specific reason often too overwhelmingly powerful to resist. As Quentin’s last day is bound up with memories of the past, it is very tempting to regard Quentin, like Donald M. Kartiganer did, as “sacrifice to repetition of past” (394). But this opinion in general does not account for the fact that not all people trapped in the past, or devoted to the code of honor, will willfully seek self-destruction. Rosa Coldfield, the first narrator in Absalom, Absalom!, is in many respects Quentin’s double, but she survives, though in a miserable condition. Ike McCaslin in Go Down, Moses survives as well, in spite of his own anguish over the corruption in the McCaslin family, his failed marriage, and a solitary life. Even Faulkner himself provided counter argument. In speaking to an English class at the University of Virginia, he said:

Well, there are some people in any time and age that cannot face and cope with the problems. There seem to be three stages: The first says, This is rotten, I’ll have no part of it, I will take death first. The second says, This is rotten, I don’t like it, I can’t do anything about it, but at least I will not participate in it myself, I will go off into a cave or climb a pillar to sit on. The third says, this stinks and I’m going to do something about it. (Faulkner in the University 245-246)

Here Faulkner outlined the circumstances very briefly, and raised important observations over the questions of life, action and death. First of all, “any time and age” may produce people who are like Quentin, Rosa, or Ike, and these people hold different attitudes towards the same reality. Moreover, Faulkner raised the attitude of a culturally-bound man above his culture, making it part of the overall human condition. So Quentin’s life and death would probably be better understood in terms of more universal concerns, rather than grounding it ultimately in the Southern context.

Brooks, with his perceptive mind, was probably aware of the disparity between a correlation of a culture’s decline and a man’s suicide. He warned against the tendency to read “The Sound and the Fury…as another Faulknerian document describing the fall of the Old South” (Yoknapatawpha 334). Instead, he supplied an alternative explanation that Quentin’s death “is not really occasioned by the breakup of the Old South so much as by the breakup of an American family wrecked by parental strife and lack of love” (First Encounters 59). It seems that Brooks was more open than many critics to the ambiguities inherent in Faulkner’s novel and was ready to move from an abstract, culturally-conscious answer to a more tangible, personal dimension, which is a very interesting example of how criticism could evolve and reflect upon itself.

Another interpretation for Quentin’s suicide is supplied by the more philosophical group and often goes hand in hand with the cultural criticism. Human destiny as encompassed by time, the disappearance of the Old South and the lost ways of life, are often mingled together and become a hybrid of universal scars. This understanding has been located with reference to Quentin’s fate from the early years of the novel’s critical reception. Michael Millgate contended “what Quentin is really obsessed with is time” (William Faulkner 31). Peter Swiggart in The Art of Faulkner’s Novels devoted a chapter to the discussion of time, pointing out that both Quentin and his father “look upon the passage of time as the source of inescapable human frustration.” When his failure to change the past is signaled by a failure “to convince his father that he and Caddy have committed incest,” Quentin finds no alternative to his anguish but to commit suicide (94). Swiggart’s idea of Quentin being trapped in the past found the strongest support with Jean-Paul Sartre, who, in his celebrated essay “On The Sound and the Fury:Time in the Work of William Faulkner,” proposed that Faulkner’s heroes “never look ahead,” and that the suicide for Quentin “is not a human possibility…[it] is an immobile wall, a thing which he approaches backward…it is…a fatality” (91-92). Sartre’s interpretation deprives Quentin of any free will and choice, placing him instead firmly within the clutches of past and considering him a substitute for the “intuition of the future lacking in the author himself” (92).

Sartre’s philosophical observations on Faulkner and time, and its conclusions on representative characters like Quentin, hold its unique appeal for later critics, especially when they are drawn to make philosophical meditations. Many critics, such as Lawrence Thompson, André Bleikasten, and Cleanth Brooks, all contributed to the discussion on time and man, thus came to a similar conclusion that Quentin is regretful of the “irreconcilability of virginity and honor” and desirous to halt the passage of time (B. Berger Miller 94). Such an idea, however, is not without problems and opponents. For one thing, Sartre started out with his own philosophical preoccupations, so in passing judgment has substituted Quentin for all major characters and confused the characters’ intentions with the author’s. For another, some of the conclusions drawn here seem contradictory with one another. Take Brooks and Swiggart for example, while they both acknowledged Quentin to be trapped in time, they differed in the nature of this predicament that drives Quentin to suicide. Brooks held that Quentin life “amounts to having no future” because he cannot environ a time when he could be out of the anxiety (Yoknapatawpha 329), while Swiggart believed it is precisely this anguish that Quentin tries to preserve in his death; he is not intending, as Brooks says, to escape from it (Art of Faulkner’s Novels 100). John T. Matthews added to the controversy by taking sides with Swiggart, while David Paul Ragan agreed with neither, offering his own interpretation that Quentin dies upon “his discovery that neither the despair nor remorse nor bereavement is particularly important” (18). In other words, Ragan believed that Quentin dies because he finds nothing really matters. Man’s insignificance in face of time is too much for Quentin to bear.

Partly owing to the contradiction within broad cultural and philosophical generalizations to account for a man’s choice of ending his life, a number of scholars moved away from it to interpret Quentin’s action with relation to the problems within his family. Lawrence Bowling is one of the earlier critics who first gave recognition to circumstances in the Compson family. He identified the curse on the family to be Mrs. Compson, labeling her “the primary corrupting force” (476). Years later, while attributing Quentin’s death to his inability in either fulfilling or forfeiting the cultural norms, Brooks declared the basic cause behind Quentin’s death, as well as the breakup of the Compson family, consists in having a “hypochondriac, whining mother” (Yoknapatawpha 333). Some later critics like Sally Page, Maureen Ann Waters generally followed Bowling’s judgment on Mrs. Compson. However, as literary perspectives change over the years, critics gradually came to attach attention to Mr. Compson’s responsibility in forging his son’s fate. For example, Mark Spilka declared that to Quentin, “it is his father…who dominates his imagination, who tests and undercuts his motives, and who finally determines his suicide” (466). André Bleikasten stated “the impasse of the father-son relationship is perhaps the major cause of Quentin’s inability to live” (113). These voices find support even a dozen years later in the criticism of Arthur F. Kinney and Elizabeth M. Kerr whose work too put the responsibility on the Compson parents.(注:See Arthur F. Kinney’s essay “Faulkner’s Narrative Poetics in The Sound and the Fury,” p. 307, and Elizabeth M. Kerr, p. 28.)

These attempts to explain Quentin’s life and death in terms of family trouble and parental failure offer more immediate, individualized reasons to approach the novel and characters. As Brooks described, The Sound and the Fury is a book that “clearly records…the downfall of a particular family” (Yoknapatawpha 334). The weak, cynical father and the socially-conscious, complaining mother corroborate to epitomize a kind of parental betrayal, which must have exerted a profound effect on the hypersensitive Quentin. Hence, different from the philosophical musings on time and human existence, the emphasis on parent-children relationships as causes for Quentin’s death gains strength from common-sense family values and family studies centering on behavioral patterns. Clearly, the concern with family as an entity has outlasted the metaphysical bent in criticism about Quentin, since the latter voice was mostly uttered around 1960s, whereas the research on parent-children relationships in the Compson family has lasted well into the beginning of the twentieth century.

Still another group of critics believed the motive behind Quentin’s suicide lies with his relationship with Caddy, the only loving Compson in the family and on whom Quentin seems to have lavished his concept of family honor. Evelyn Scott’s review in 1929 of Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury is the earliest insight into this issue. She described Quentin as “oversensitive…pathologically devoted to his sister,” and regarded his determination to commit suicide as “his protest against her disgrace” (117). After Irving Howe made comments similar to Evelyn’s in 1950s, Melvin Backman in 1966 came along with an all-inclusive discussion on Quentin-Caddy relationship, stating that “it is this (sexual) impotence…combined with his love for Caddy, seems to underlie Quentin’s idealism and desire for death” (23). Backman considered the cultural code of honor possible urges, but he argued that “the ultimate reason for Quentin’s suicide is the loss of Caddy to Dalton,” because “it was not so much the gross materialism of Herbert Head that defeated Quentin as the sexual potency of Dalton Ames” (27). In this respect Backman and his followers drifted further from Swiggart who tended to relate Quentin more with the Southern code. With this circle of critics the “personal rather than a cultural situation” earns primary attention in critical assessment (Backman 27).

The consequence of such a switch in emphasis gave impetus to two books in the year of 1975, The Most Splendid Failure by André Bleikasten and Doubling and Incest/Repetition and Revenge by John T. Irwin. Both books applied Freudian psycho-analytic terms to their studies. Bleikasten considered the brother-sister relationship to be as “fatal” to Quentin as the father-son relationship, and called Quentin’s death “a triumph of the id and the superego” (113, 116). Irwin measured the consciousness of Quentin along two roles: that of brother seducer and brother avenger. He followed Backman’s idea on Quentin’s impotence, saying the hero’s “obsessive concern with Caddy’s loss of virginity is a displaced concern with his own inability to lose his virginity” (38). Irwin related Quentin in The Sound and the Fury to his experience in Absalom, Absalom!. By reading the story of Henry, Bon and Judith as parallels to the story of Quentin and Caddy, Irwin stated that Quentin, while alive, could neither perform the role of brother avenger as he is defeated by Dalton, nor satisfy his sexual potency after his aborted act of joint suicide. By contrast, Quentin in death could fulfill his roles, for death represents “not only the punishment, upon his own person, of the brother seducer by the brother avenger, it is as well the union of the brother seducer with the sister” (43).

With all the scholarship it is now an established fact that Quentin’s suicide cannot be separated from his relationship with Caddy. But the psychological studies in this field are prone to be limited in scope or speculative in premises. In general, many psychological studies handled Quentin like a clinical case. Evelyn Scott and Irving Howe suggested about the importance of the brother-sister relationship, but they did not offer adequate explanations for their argument. Bleikasten took advantage of Freudian terms without bothering to establish a relationship between the theory and the novel. Backman’s is a much more extended study but its dismissal of Herbert Head’s influence reduces Quentin’s motivations into a single-dimensional one, that of the physically sexual drive. As for Irwin, he based his argument “within the context of larger speculations about the psychology motivating several characters in the two novels” (Ragan 16). It is natural, that even with Irwin’s deeply penetrating psychological excavations, the discussion is still not at an end.

Two decades later, Margaret D. Bauer came up with a study focusing on Quentin’s death. She argued that, unlike Herbert Head, Caddy’s first lover Dalton Ames does show some concern and love for Caddy. After reassessing the conscious and subconscious memories in Quentin’s section, Bauer introduced the interpretation that Quentin dies as the result of his inability to live with the guilty knowledge that “for him his sister gave up a chance…of leading a ‘normal’ life” (71). Bauer’s understanding is a stimulating return to the subject of Quentin’s death after years’ silence in the critical world. Her effort not only yields an inspiring reading into Quentin’s motives, but also indicates the enduring appeal of this topic, as well as its open-endedness.

1.2 What Quentin’s Death Symbolizes

In describing a man’s actions and choices in a situation, there is first of all “because” to account for, which gives answers to the circumstances surrounding the actions. Then we must supply the answer to “in-order-to,” that describes the action-doer’s intention through his actions (Jean Baechler 53). But pause and think: is it not enough that critics analyze the circumstances and end the discussions there? As we can see, most studies do not merely end with the factors responsible for Quentin’s action. The reasons for doing so are not simply a literary tradition that compels scholars to consider Quentin in the symbolic light. Rather, it is a universal practice to learn the facts and judge the value of it that critics conform to and follow. Therefore, when the critics are trying to account for Quentin’s death, most of them have more or less described the hero’s purpose in committing suicide. As the understandings of such an act differ from one critic to another, the meanings they attach to it naturally vary a great deal. To simplify the matter, I have classified the critical opinions into five categories and shall look at them one by one.

In Swiggart’s 1962 criticism, the causes for Quentin’s suicide were traced to his attempt to change the past. Swiggart explained that Quentin feels bound up in the inevitability of change and decay, and he tries to defeat time by some kind of action he is capable of. When all his attempts fail, his only resource would be to kill himself, thus freeing his consciousness from the corrupt world. Therefore, death symbolizes for Quentin the escape, into which he could “stabilize the elusive I was of the recent past and so preserve his moral feeling intact” (Art of Faulkner’s Novels 100). Swiggart also pointed out the fact that Quentin’s defense of death as a means of preserving life “is a product of self-deception, of his inability to accept his own despair” (Art of Faulkner’s Novels 101). But of course, whether Quentin could succeed with this act is another question. It does not interfere with the symbolic value of his attempt.

Swiggart’s idea of escaping the passage of time reverberated in a number of critics’ conclusions about Quentin, of which the more prominent are Brooks and John T. Matthews. Both of them agreed on Quentin’s strong ties to the South, its past and his memory of such. Matthews returned in 1991 to the “lost cause” in The Sound and the Fury and was strongly in favor of interpreting the characters from cultural and philosophical perspectives. Elaborating on the subject of Quentin’s “legacy of loss,” Matthews stated that Quentin, because of his dread to live “a life in which nothing happens that has not already happened,” commits suicide to “make his temporary state of mourning permanent” (Faulkner and the Lost Cause 62), which is virtually a restatement of Swiggart’s opinion two dozen years earlier. Death, therefore, means for Quentin a welcome way out of the loud world in which “nothing but the old repetition of the past happens” (Faulkner and the Lost Cause 61). His attempt to take his own life suggests both his refusal to continue his legacy of loss and his successful halting of time on his own initiative.

On the matter of Quentin’s relationship with time, Brooks shared with Swiggart and Matthews essentially the same belief that Quentin realizes that “the past contains moral values that are gone and therefore the passage of time must be halted” (Miller 94). Having no way out, Quentin would like to “do away with time, locking himself into some past from which there would be no development and no progression” (Yoknapatawpha 329). So death opens for Quentin the only escape, from which he would cast away his emasculating experience of failing to meet the old heroic code. Naturally, due to the disagreement on the circumstances responsible for Quentin’s death, there are obvious differences in the interpretations of symbolism among Swiggart, Matthews and Brooks. Although all viewed Quentin’s suicide as escape, they differed in interpreting what Quentin seeks through death. Swiggart and Matthews maintained that Quentin wishes to preserve his moral feelings in death, whereas Brooks seemed to believe Quentin is simply seeking a shelter where he could be out of the anxiety, that the preservation of his moral feelings would not be his concern.

Lawrence Thompson, however, came to a different conclusion that death for Quentin symbolizes obsessive love for negative values. Thompson is one of the critics who regarded Quentin in a negative light, primarily because of his relationship with Caddy, his frustrated attempts to stop Caddy’s growth, and his obsession with death. In his essay “Mirror Analogues in The Sound and the Fury”, Quentin is paired up with Benjy, who represents “a kind of moral mirror” (112). In contrast to Benjy’s “instinctive response to objects used to symbolize positive values in human experience,” Quentin’s act of suicide “serves to dramatize a consciously willed and obsessive love for negative values which are life-injuring, life-destroying” (114). With his observation Thompson reversed the judgment of Swiggart, Brooks, and Matthews. While the latter three have generally considered Quentin a young man troubled by moral truth and regarded his death in such light, Thompson preferred to consider Quentin a disruptive presence and interpret Quentin’s death as the last stubborn attempt to preserve an obsession.

Certainly, criticisms of Quentin’s suicide suggest ideas other than escape and obsession, which can be grouped under three interpretations. One is of punishment; another is of rebirth or redemption; and the last is of initiation. The punishment issue is a constant feature in works taking advantage of psychological theories to examine the relationships among Quentin and his family. For example, Carvel Collins borrowed the Freudian theory and explained that Quentin is seeking punishment first from his father on his failures to salvage the family name. When his father would not exercise the authority, Quentin destroys himself in an attempt to “carry out punishment on himself ” (125). This idea of punishment was most elaborately expanded in Irwin’s criticism. Irwin discussed the possible parings of Quentin’s roles with Henry’s in Absalom, Absalom!, identified the doubling of two conflicting identities in one character, and came to interpret Quentin’s death in terms of “punishment, upon his own person, of the brother seducer by the brother avenger” (43).

Another alternative to reading Quentin’s choice is closely linked with the punishment issue, that of redemption. Critics in general have noticed Quentin’s suicide by means of drowning himself in water. As the water imagery is a romantic concept endowed with the symbolic power of cleansing and revival, critics like Swiggart, Fowler, Spilka, Irwin, and Miller employed its literary symbolism to account for the significance of Quentin’s choice. Swiggart, in arguing for Quentin’s purposeful action to escape the temporal fatality, drew the conclusion that death by water not only symbolizes Quentin’s idea of sexual union, but also demonstrates a last chance to redeem the “inescapable human frustration” by preserving his moral purity. In death “the reader is projected into a physical universe where suicide does mean a victory of consciousness over the passage of time” (Art of Faulkner’s Novels 96-100).

Fowler, Spilka, Irwin， and Miller approached the subject of symbolic rebirth more from the relationship of Caddy and Quentin. Both Irwin and Fowler employed Freudian concepts to explain Quentin’s identification with his mirror image in the water. Water, mirror image and the image of Caddy’s muddied drawers evoke Quentin’s memory of his sister lying on her back in the stream and their incestuous talks by the river. Apparently, Quentin could not fulfill his longings in reality. With the act of drowning himself, Irwin asserted, Quentin is able to achieve “the union of the brother seducer with the sister” (43). Fowler agreed with Irwin on the redemption of Quentin’s frustrated desire, explaining that Quentin “successfully enacts both his desire to commit incest with Caddy and his desire to commit joint suicide with Caddy” (13). Drowning himself, Quentin tries to prove that he is capable of significant actions, with the last thrust of his effort.

It is in the light of redemption that Miller called Quentin’s act “regenerating” (96), but unlike the other critics in this group, Miller had a somewhat different reason for doing so. He judged Quentin’s case from the Jungian model of hero-archetype, and considered Quentin’s suicidal fulfillment a step towards significant action. Obviously any action, be it good or bad, is better in this sense than not taking any action at all. While Quentin’s problem in the novel is largely believed to lie with his inability to do anything, Miller considered the final “suicide by water…positive reenactment of that figurative, revitalizing incest, the incest he could not consciously effect with Caddy” (96).

Miller’s view introduces one more critical reading into the suicide symbolism: the initiation intention of the suicide-taker. Quentin’s death thus is viewed as a “purposeful action” to attribute meaning to his existence (Miller 95). As Miller viewed Quentin from the angle of hero-archetypes, he naturally passed the judgment that Quentin, while living, falls short of “committing any significant action” (95). Perhaps readers remember well the nihilistic advice about human circumstances Mr. Compson gives to his son: “We must just stay awake and see evil done for a little” (SF 112). On such remarks Warren commented that because Quentin could not accept his father’s values of annihilation on human effort, he desires to establish his by the “only one act to which he can attribute moral significance” (252). In the published essay of 1982, Donald M. Kartiganer divided the Yoknapatawpha families broadly into three generations, and classified the first generation as an “originating force.” He described that Quentin, as a third generation representative, “returns to the founding generation” (394). This may not sound a very original effort in itself. Nevertheless, it is significant for Quentin that he does take an initiative to reverse his father’s passivity (394). The death by water, thereby, “has all the positive overtones of rebirth” by which Quentin could move “towards a process of individuation” (Warren 95).

The problem with Miller’s argument, and perhaps with some who reasoned in the same manner, is that they confused Quentin’s actions with the consequences. Miller believed Quentin is incapable of doing anything, but in reality he is able to take actions, such as challenging Dalton, trying to keep Caddy at home, and refusing Herbert’s offer of friendship. Miller made the mistake of substituting the result of an action for the action itself. Quentin’s tragedy is that even though he strives, his action falls short of the “great expectations.” He fails in bringing real changes to satisfy his needs or soothe his anguish. Brooks is undoubtedly right when he said Quentin can neither fulfill nor forfeit the code of honor. I would assert that Quentin is constrained by his upbringing, the conventional codes of his white community and his ineffective relationships with men around him, so he is unable to rise above his circumstances.

So far, we have seen that a long list of critics has touched upon the topic of Quentin’s death. And the list could go on much longer, because I do not propose my review exhaustive in terms of critical opinions. Yet, as I have noted earlier, the major works assessing Quentin’s suicide have been done in mid-twentieth century, and that there are a number of important critics leading the show, like Warren, Brooks, Backman, and Spilka. The philosophical, cultural, psychological dimensions as well as the angle of family studies have been adopted by various critics. Miller, Collins, Irwin, Kartiganer, and others all tried to further the argument with their originality here and there. The result is, over the years, there has accumulated a wealth of critical insights to address Quentin’s life and death.

Although I have strived to classify and review the many critical comments over the years, the effort may have reduced the interdependence and complexity of critical opinions. Since generally I have worked as if the critics have presented somehow isolated ideas, each standing alone and not linking to others. In fact, a great many of the opinions are linked to the point of overlapping, like the cultural and philosophical dimensions, the familial and the psychological. At the same time, due to the sheer size of the existing criticism, a reader or a scholar, apart from feeling awesome respect for all the creative output, may still feel some bewilderment at the diverse yet sometimes contradictory interpretations. Thus the question of Quentin’s tragedy runs on, not yet resolved. I will begin my discussion by introducing the sociological theory on suicide as a way to approach Quentin’s problem and organize the chapters to follow.

2. Sociological Findings on Suicide

The sociological theory has contributed remarkably concrete and well-defined studies towards the understanding of suicide. Due to the nature of this discipline, it may present a more systematic study of the question of suicide by defining the problem, identifying the premises, and establishing hypotheses. It is from this discipline of social science that my book borrows a theoretical framework for laying down the fundamental questions regarding Quentin’s death, in an attempt to objectively define and examine the development of his character and suicidal mentality. Thus it is necessary to give an overview of the sociological theories as they relate to the present scope and focus of my study. In this effort I find it most conducive to refer not only to a few classic texts on suicide by such eminent authors as Emile Durkheim, Jack D. Douglas, Jerry Jacobs, Jean Baechler, Erwin Stengel, and Nancy G. Cook, but also the concise and illuminating review of important sociological works offered in Douglas’ most comprehensive study The Social Meanings of Suicide as well as Steve Taylor’s two books: The Sociology of Suicide, Durkheim and the Study of Suicide.

2.1 The Sociological Approaches to Suicide: An Overview

In examining the approaches to suicide in sociology, Steve Taylor classified two basic kinds: that of the traditional and the interpretative.(注:Steve Taylor, The Sociology of Suicide, pp. 8, 39. For this research of mine Taylor’s simplified manner will do quite adequately. Douglas preferred to examine by author the major sociological reports, see Douglas, The Social Meanings of Suicide.)The more traditional school is headed by Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist whose landmark book Suicide remains one of the most important works in sociology. Durkheim observed that “the tendency to suicide” is actually shaped by “the social causes” (145). Hence from his point of view the study of suicide should concentrate on “exploring the relationship between the collective organization of social life and the individual, or personal, experience of suicide” (Taylor, Sociology of Suicide 19). In conclusion, Durkheim said that “suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of the social groups of which the individual forms a part” (210).

Durkheim’s theory of social integration has found wide application and become one of the fundamental theories on suicide. Many studies after Durkheim test and prove his hypotheses by examining how ways of life would socially isolate individuals and consequently lead to higher suicide rates in general and expose individuals to greater risks of suicidal behaviors in particular.(注:This conclusion is gathered from Taylor’s Durkheim and the Study of Suicide, pp. 25-32; and Douglas’s The Social Meanings of Suicide, pp. 84-91, 95-151.) For example, some sociological researches have proved that suicide could take root in an individual’s inability to adjust to the change in social status (qtd. in Douglas 138). It would not be a surprise to find that some of the literary interpretations on Quentin’s death have confirmed Durkheim’s conclusion, such as the relation of Quentin’s death to the decline of his family status, and the understanding of Quentin’s oversensitive nature that prevents him from finding meanings in his communities. These conclusions on Quentin give proof to the universality of sociological findings on suicide.

In follow-up researches, some sociologists have offered other interpre-tations in order to account for the correlation between people of higher social status and the suicidal tendency. Martin Gold argued that the choice of suicide or homicide is determined by a framework of several social factors, an index to which is found in the type of punishment: instead of physical abuses, the children of middle-class are more prone to receive psychological punishment which places the blame inside them. The children then lose the ready target for external aggression and often select themselves as inward self-damaging target (654).

In 1950s, there arose an alternative theory in the sociology of suicide which tries to offer “a more interpretative, or subjectivist, approach to the study of social life” (Taylor, Sociology of Suicide 39). One important development so far within the interpretative approach is to study “the possible causal relationships between childhood experiences and suicidal behavior” (Taylor, Sociology of Suicide 27), which seems to confirm the position taken by Gold in his earlier work. This concern with childhood or child-rearing practices has generated large volumes of research in two major areas of interest: one on the reconstruction of “the childhood experiences for particular suicidal individuals,” the other on “testing factors such as family disorganizations, sibling position, child-rearing techniques, and…parental deprivation” in relation to the suicidal population (Taylor, Sociology of Suicide 128).

Some other interpretative sociologists venture even further in the direction of looking into the varied experiences of the suicide takers. Sociologists Jack Jacobs, Douglas, and Jean Baechler started out with the premises that the initial aim of suicide research should be “to identify, or empathize, with the subject’s experiences rather than to explain his behavior” (Taylor, Sociology of Suicide 41). Jacobs went as far as to place a supreme emphasis on suicide notes left behind by people killing themselves so as to decode common messages about the suicide taker’s mind regarding his situation (qtd. in Douglas 60-72). Douglas agreed with Jacobs on the first priority of examining the suicidal acts, but his purpose was to look for social meanings of suicide like revenge, escape, repentance behind the suicide taker’s experience (60-72). Baechler, developing Douglas’ approach further, argued for suicidal act as a response to an existential problem (11).

2.2 The Implications of Sociological Findings

The relevance of sociological theories on suicide to the present scope of this study is evident: my focus is to explore circumstances so as to account for an individual’s suicide, which has received a systematic and evolving treatment in sociology. There is no reason why my proposed research will not benefit by borrowing and taking advantage of theoretical premises, concepts, and methodological applications introduced in the existing works of sociology. In order to clarify the extent to which my research is indebted to the sociological findings, I hereby summarize the benefits that a reading of sociological works has generated for my work.

The sociological studies on suicide have so far anchored an individual firmly within his social context. Durkheim emphasized the importance of “illustrating and explaining the relationship between social, or collective, life and individual behavior” (Taylor, Sociology of Suicide 9). The focus on individual’s relationship to the society could be applied to the reading of Quentin’s fate, so as to understand the impact of various relationships on his decision. Defined in Durkheim’s terms, Quentin is an individual born into a certain social context; his tragic fate only comes to light in the social context he is bound up in and complied to negotiate with. Therefore, according to Durkheim, any analysis of a purely psychological nature would be insufficient to answer the question why Quentin decides to take his own life.

Literary criticism must look beyond the scientific data to account for the invisible forces in man. Therefore, the direction of Durkheim’s research is of no small importance to the readings of Quentin Compson as a character for whom the chances of a tolerable way of life are tragically reduced. As the search for observable, established facts of human experience is never the end of a literary study—otherwise literature and literary criticisms would have been long replaced by some other social disciplines like sociology, or archeology with solid data, well-regulated experiments and measureable tools—the study in literature will always aim at some “invisible forces,” some fundamental truths about the human condition of which every man is part of and can thus claim his humanity as a man (Gibbens 53). Durkheim’s psycho-social dimension encourages scholars to place the relationship between man and his society on the level of meaning and purpose. With Quentin’s suicide, it would not be an exception.

If from Durkheim’s study I have adopted the fundamental hypotheses on which to build my research, what would be the use of the followers of Durkheim? Actually, studies of sociologists from the 1950s onward provide the necessary methodological models to identify and break down the specific social factors in relation to a better-defined discussion on circumstances surrounding personality growth and suicidal behaviors.

Firstly, the arrangement of chapters is modeled on the sociological findings about the kinds of social factors that shape an individual’s behaviors. I have tried to handle the discussion of Quentin from broader social contexts to narrower ones, the dividing line here being the family. On the broader level, social constraints like the white community and the race issue play a role in Quentin’s identification with his society. Therefore, the first two chapters are devoted to the exploration of each social factor. Chapter One looks at Quentin’s inability to attach himself to the white community through an exploration of the frustrations and failure of his communication with Rosa Coldfield, who is the only white neighbor in the Southern community to have approached Quentin. They both present a case in which we could explore how Quentin’s interaction with Rosa compounds his problem of integration into his community, which in turn adds to his suicidal tendency. Chapter Two will take race as the other cultural variant. By reading Quentin’s relationship with the blacks, and with Dilsey in particular, it argues that Quentin’s acceptance of a racially biased Southern code leads to his withdrawal from the larger social scene.

Chapters Three and Four move from broader social variables into the immediate family circle that seems to exhibit a greater impact on Quentin’s state of mind. The introduction of family theory and relevant criticism on the Compson family will be presented first in Chapter Three, followed by the discussion on Quentin’s parents. The conclusion is that each of the Compson parent fails, in Quentin’s memory, to guide their son in a changing world. Chapter Four, like Chapter Three, starts out with a review of the critical opinions regarding the nature of relationship between Quentin and his sister, and then reveals the critical tendency to turn Caddy into an “empty signifier” (Bleikasten 56), in which Caddy is often viewed as the motivator of the story, the cluster of nature imageries, or the symbol of Southern womanhood.(注:A brief summary of the opinions regarding Caddy’s image and character can be found in works of critics such as Bleikasten, 56, and also in several articles in Caddy Compson, pp. 16, 22, 39.) My argument, however, maintains that Caddy’s influence over Quentin comes not from abstracting her image and power, but from her status as the one family member that fulfills Quentin’s need to communicate and connect to human beings in a family and world where other ties have become ineffective.

The last chapter, Chapter Five, attempts to support the argument offered in the previous chapters by placing Quentin in the larger literary context of Faulkner’s works. Through a look into a few other characters from some major novels of Faulkner’s later years: Ike McCaslin of Go Down, Moses, Chick Malison of Intruder in the Dust, and finally, Lucius Priest of The Reivers, Chapter Five maintains the same sociological hypothesis that the answer to an individual’s destiny is to be found in the environment he finds himself in. Even though Faulkner ceased to create boy heroes like Quentin and Joe Christmas who die a tragic death, he did follow the sociological findings, albeit unconsciously, that a better integration into society will help considerably reduce the risk of suicide.

Now finally comes the turn to acknowledge my debt to the interpretative school of sociologists. Unlike the traditionalists who derive their observations almost exclusively from scientific, statistical survey, the interpretative sociologists locate their studies within a view of individuals as “active creators of their own social reality.” Therefore, “human action is purposeful ” (Taylor, Durkheim 131). If the traditionalist has helped with the composition of my project in terms of furnishing basic concepts and the organizational framework, the interpretative approach firmly supports my argument on Quentin’s search for a purpose in life through the interaction with his immediate southern environment, with people he knows and reflects upon in the community, and with his family members. It would not be difficult to understand why Faulkner resurrected Quentin as the central narrator in Absalom, Absalom! after he had arranged this character’s death in The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner’s arrangement seems to suggest that Quentin’s choice of death is not occasioned by any single force, but is a result of his repeated frustrations under various circumstances. Thus the present research traces Quentin’s behaviors and activities in Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury as a conscious construct of that search; and argues that his suicide is inevitably a product of his circumstances.

In addition, my research has constructed part of its argument around the theories of one author in particular: Jean Baechler. Baechler’s treatise Suicide is a relatively recent, yet a comprehensive treatment of suicide, especially of meaning patterns in interpretative terms.(注:But noticeable differences exist between Douglas and Baechler’s patterns: one with classification and one with definition. First, there are both four types of meanings in each author’s book, but in Baechler’s study each type allows several subtypes. So I regard Baechler’s patterns more concrete and specific. Second, Douglas’ definition of patterns is relatively complex while Baechler’s is simpler. See Douglas, The Social Meanings of Suicide. pp. 284-319, and Baechler, Suicides. p. 63)My indebtedness to him is two-fold: First of all, I find in Baechler a definition of suicide not only mirroring the real situation of modern man,(注:Jean Baechler’s definition reads: “Suicide denotes all behavior that seeks and finds the solution to an existential problem by making an attempt on the life of the subject.” His definition implies a number of things, among them: a recognition of suicide as a response to a problem; a definition of that problem as existential, bearing both external and internal conflicts. For an extended discussion on this definition and also on the differences of definitions offered by several prominent sociologists like Durkheim and Halbwachs, see Jean Baechler, Suicides. pp. 9-22.) but a justification to account both for the external and internal conflicts in the character Quentin. Secondly, Baechler pointed out that an understanding of suicide involves “why”, which gives rise to two answers: because and in-order-to. “Because” describes the circumstances of suicide while “in-order-to” tries to assess the meaning of the action (53).

These two sets of questions are what I endeavor to adequately account for in the process of my research. As outlined in the arrangement of the chapters, I attempt to address the “because” question raised by Baechler by focusing respectively on more external factors like cultural and social influences in community and race, then on the more internal ones like Quentin’s relationships with family members. Through the exploration of the social and cultural variables, I propose an answer to “in-order-to”: that Quentin Compson as a man struggles in order to find a purpose, a meaning for life in his social context, the failure of which leads to his suicide, the last act that he initiates as a man.