Analyisis of Quentin's Section in William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury".

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The Shadow of Time

It is quite evident how the writing styles of the characters in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury resemble their personality and mental stability. At the very beginning of section two, Quentin's sentence structure was very sturdy and accurate -- with the exception, of course, of the random interruptions of various memories. Yet later in his section, Quentin begins to lose his hold on life. It seems that everything is falling apart and that he can no longer handle the hand that he has been dealt. This is when his narration begins to decline; "I pulled her she was limp I lifted her to her feet" (Faulkner 157). There is no punctuation, no apostrophes, no capital letters -- except for Caddy and I -- and various other ungrammatical errors that even the common person knows to avoid. Yet at the end of his section, as all of his ideas and plans are coming together, as he begins to realize what he must do to rectify the sins of his family, Quentin resumes to write in an appropriate and accurate sense of syntax and diction.

Though his writing style does not return to perfection, it is mixed between good and bad writing, showing that although Quentin may believe he has figured it all out, there still lies confusion within the shadows of his mind.

Time -- it is by time that humans live, and it is by time that humans die. And to hide from time, you must run into the shadows of the past. Beginning the second section with "When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch," the reader is already familiar with two of the...