Quentin's Incest In Faulkner: A Metaphor Of

Quentin’s desire to arrest time is sparked by his father’s pessimistic attitude of defeat. As a defeated Southerner, Mr. Compson refers to time as a “misfortune” and “mausoleum.” Mr. Compson emphasizes that Quentin may not be any better than his ancestors when it comes to fighting against the tide of history:

I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all our breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. (95)

In this passage, Mr. Compson presents a rather depressing view of time. He sees time as an illusion and

In Incest in Faulkner: A Metaphor for the Fall, Constance Hill, Hall emphasizes that Quentin’s desire for incest is a “near-perfect vehicle for the effort to possess absolutely and to achieve complete oneness” (49). John T. Irwin also reaffirms that Quentin’s desire for incest stems out of his fear of the “dissolution of the ego through sexual union with another” (14). By imagining that he is the one who took her virginity, Quentin tries to convince himself that if Caddy cannot remain in paradise with him, he and Caddy should be damned in hell together in death. Because she is his sister, therefore his mirror image, Quentin believes that by being sexually uniting with her or dying with her, he can halt change. Hall, too, points out that the belief that he and Caddy committed incest acts to “stop the clock for Quentin” (45). For Quentin, restoring/preserving Caddy’s virgin state by taking her virginity before anyone else outside the family does restores the Old South. Quentin’s obsession with Caddy is thus his attempt to stop time and become one with himself. However, Caddy’s sexual fall is based on reality and her sexual experience is because of her lovers. Quentin’s desire for incest is a fantasy just as his desire for suicide is self-deception. His desire for his sister before she is corrupted by anyone else outside the family implies his desire to change reality. All out of option, Quentin convinces himself that there is no difference between a truth and a lie if their father accepts his fantasy as