Tag Archives: Jason

Jason’s Section

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Jason comes off as a particularly coarse character in comparison to the other members of the Compson family, including the staff who may as well be considered family too. As many can and have pointed out Jason has a misogynist and racist frame of mind accompanied with a terribly selfish attitude. What struck me during his section is how concerned he seems to be about the very people he has a distaste for. Throughout Jason’s recount of things he notes time and time again the activities he feels women can’t do properly or should be doing instead. The first account of this is how he feels Quentin should be in the kitchen cooking instead of “gobbing paint on her face” (Faulkner 180). Later on, he states it’s “just like a woman” (Faulkner 190) when Caddy is late sending money as if he expects women to be incapable of handling business and money- and he treats them in such a fashion. He handles every Compson woman’s finances: the money Quentin receives from Caddy, the money Caddy attempts to give to see Quentin, and Mrs. Compson’s account and power of attorney. For a man that has so much disdain for women, he insists on being the center of their world. I’m aware of the time period The Sound and the Fury takes place in, this is a time (and a place) where men are expected to take charge of such things. Outside of the women’s financial business, Jason insists on inserting himself in the role of Quentin’s guide. I use that term very loosely as Jason only wants to beat Quentin into submission as opposed to letting Mrs. Compson and Dilsey handle her. He also takes it upon himself to be concerned about what his workers do or don’t do. When he points out that Quentin should be in the kitchen instead of them, he expresses the idea that they do nothing and are lazy. He repeats this sentiment when he goes hunting for Quentin and finds his tire has gone flat, “I just stood there for a while, thinking about that kitchen full of [n-word] and not one of them had time to lift a tire onto the rack and screw up a couple of bolts.” (Faulkner 242). Jason also pays his attention to the activities he believes the Jewish community is up to that in one way or another personally affects him (or so he believes). Jason’s section begins with the iconic line, “Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.” setting the tone for the rest of the chapter. What he doesn’t realize is that line is a reflection of himself. He is inadvertently calling himself out. I’m not in favor of using a derogatory term but as Jason insists on using it so, he is acting in much the same annoying way he expects women and non-white people to act. As he has always been that way, self-serving, and misogynist/racist, he will always be.

Irony, Solipsism, and Jason Compson

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Firstly, before going into how Jason employs irony and to what end, I want to make clear what sense of the word irony I’ll be using, because the term does contain a multiplicity of meanings and so can be vague whenever used. The sense of irony I’ll be using is one articulated by the German poet, critic, and philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, and I’ll refer right now to Terry Pinkard’s concise rendering of it in his book Germany Philosophy 1760-1860: “Irony,” he writes, “expresses both our unavoidable commitment to certain projects and our own inevitable, reflective detachment from these things. Irony is thus the appropriate stance to feeling both inescapably committed and inescapably detached at the same time” (161). I’ll add as well that the name of the game for folks like Schlegel, a post-Kantian and a romantic, is Being, and so when he speaks of irony he is speaking of it as a mode of being, a kind of condition, and not simply a thing to employ on occasion.

Now, to begin understanding Jason’s use of irony first requires that we identify the impasse between inescapable commitment and detachment that it is contingent on. It’s perhaps redundant to state that most all of Jason’s commitments are not very genuine, and that time and again those ostensible commitments give way to his one monomaniac commitment—to himself. Indeed, there is a palpably nihilistic individualism about Jason that, I think, borders a kind of solipsism, which I’ll get to later; and the substance, so to speak, of this individualism—the medium with which it is preserved—is irony. On the one hand irony preserves Jason, preserves Jason qua Jason; on the other hand, though, its deployment is, as Schlegel thought, endemic of his detachment from himself. But what does it mean in concrete terms, that he’s “detached” from himself? Because I think it’s not so much a kind of alienation, which would imply a divorce between him and his environment and in turn him and himself; Jason does, after all, see himself everywhere he looks; he’s very confident in his own “realness,” as it were. But, confidence aside, there still remains the undeniable fact that Jason’s fortune hitherto has been purely incidental, contingent on the right folks of the Compson family being either dead or incapable; on his own he’s powerless, incapable of asserting himself in any meaningful way, and that’s why, I think, he places such existential significance to Quentin getting one under him by getting back her money and running away, it makes incontrovertible what he already knew but viciously denied, especially through irony. It’s the tension rendered here, then, that irony does not so much promise to resolve as it does to alleviate for a bit, to obscure. Let’s then look at Jason in town, the space I think is best demonstrated his one, frail means of asserting himself.

It’s interesting that of the figures whose subjectivity we’re allowed to inhabit for the duration of their section Jason is the only one who goes to town and exists in it. It’s more interesting that, despite this, one never gets the impression he actually participates in the society of the town. The town really only serves to punctuate his increasingly frantic back and forth between it and the Compson estate. He, like Benjy and Quentin, is still beholden to the private sphere of the family. But he also rejects the town in a way Benjy and Quentin never had an opportunity to. Because while he is there he menaces the town with disdainful judgement, not to mention that in interacting with the folks of the town his demeanor is none too different. He is in a state of constant repudiation, he can only say No. And it’s because, like with his own family, he sees the town as owing him something. This can be read implicitly in moments like when his boss asks him why he doesn’t just quit if he’s always apparently looking to get fired, and Jason rejoins with an allusion to an ambition of owning his own business (Faulkner 245). This desire for a business is an apt one. It would be for Jason an assertion of his own existence, much like the Compson estate is for his family. But it requires what might be called “creative force”—which I think Quentin possessed but was consumed by—and to a degree he simply doesn’t possess. And so that little creative force in him is used instead for preserving himself in a resin of irony, wholly incapable of doing anything else.

What amounts to Jason’s use of irony in The Sound and the Fury are these snide asides and digressions which serve as a brief withdrawal from the forefront scene before Jason. Not only a withdrawal from one scene, but the production of another altogether, one divorced from the former and charged with that pathos of distance Jason is always seeking. A good instance is an earlier scene with his boss. After Jason returns to his job from the Compson estate, and after some back and forth wherein his boss talks around Jason’s lying to his mother about investing money in this business of his, his boss says, “‘I don’t say anything,’ he says, ‘I just ask you to be a little more careful after this,” at which point follows what is essentially a riff by Jason:

I never said anything more. It doesn’t do any good. I’ve found that when a man gets into a rut the best thing you can do is let him stay there. And when a man gets it in his head that he’s got to tell something on you for your own good, goodnight. I’m glad I haven’t got the sort of conscience I’ve got to nurse like a sick puppy all the time. If I’d ever be as careful over anything as he is to keep his little shirt tail full of business from making him more than eight percent. I reckon he thinks they’d get him on the usury law if he netted more than eight percent. What the hell chance has a man got, tied down in a town like this and to a business like this. Why, I could take his business in one year and fix him so he’d never have to work again, only he’d give it all away to the church or something… (228)

This goes on and on and essentially consumes the scene with digression, and it even comes as a shock when we realize his boss is still there a page later, wholly unaware of this drama invented in Jason’s head. And this becomes almost a formula for Jason: dialogues and interactions invaded in much the same way as they were in Quentin’s section, only in Jason’s case what invades is stubborn judgement and irony.

As far as this thing of solipsism that I mentioned earlier, I feel this is only the logical conclusion of this form of irony that Jason entertains. These constant ironic interludes divorce the forefront scene from its context, making it only the material of an invented pastiche. Moreover, the individuals that people these scenes are denied individuality. In fact, I’d go so far to say that Jason does not even privilege others with any kind of interiority, or at least not the quality of interiority he would think himself to possess. He truly dehumanizes the people he encounters, evinced most explicitly with his family and most of all Quentin. But this is all necessary to preserve Jason, and the danger of quitting that distancing his irony affords him and entertaining any kind of intimacy with another person is the collapse of the image he has cultivated of himself as well as his reality.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. Vintage Books, 1990.

Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760-1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Jason’s Attitude towards Women

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In the third chapter of The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner presents the story to us through Jason’s perspective. From the beginning, we can determine his personality and his attitude towards women because of the words he utilizes. He seems to be a man who only cares about himself, even though he has taken the economic responsibility for the family after his father died due to alcoholism. However, he does not worry about Benjy, his mother, or his niece Quentin. He is a selfish, emotionless, and ambitious man. Jason lies to his mother, to Caddy, and to Quentin and takes the money that Caddy sends for her daughter. 

Jason thinks that women should be controlled and that he is actually the person who can control the women in his family. He states, “If you want me to control her, just say so and keep your hands off. Everytime I try to, you come butting in and then she gives both of us the laugh” (Faulkner, 181). In these lines, Jason is talking with his mother about Quentin because he believes that he needs to control her because she is skipping school. He is the type of person that believes that he must mistreat someone in order to make them follow the right path. This is the easiest way for him to make Quentin understand that she should attend school, instead of sitting and talking to her calmly so that she could realize what is best for her. 

Nonetheless, for Jason, women deserve no respect, and that he can treat them the way he wants. We are able to see an example of this when he is hitting Quentin and Dilsey gets in between them to protect Quentin, “She held to my arm. Then the belt came out and I jerked loose and flung her away. She stumbled into the table. She was so old she couldn’t do any more than move hardly. But that’s all right: we need somebody in the kitchen to eat up the grub the young ones cant tote off” (Faulkner, 185). Through these words, we are able to realize how terrible Jason’s personality is because he thinks that women are in this world to be in the kitchen and take care of the house. The fact that Jason is the only person who works in the house, except Caddy, who sends money for her daughter, makes Jason consider that he has the right to hit, offend and lie to the women in this house. 

According to Jason, women are not capable of being productive. He mentions, “I opened her letter first and took the check out. Just like a woman. Six days late. Yet they try to make men believe that they’re capable of conducting a business” (Faulkner, 190). Based on his own words, women are not capable of being entrepreneurs, be in front of a business, and conduct it properly for it to progress. He considers that important jobs are for men, and women are just left out with house chores, etc. Nevertheless, he takes the money that Caddy sends for Quentin, and makes use of it, only for his convenience leaving Quentin without the money her mother provides for her support. Hence, we can determine that Jason’s attitude towards women is emotionless, he treats them mercilessly and assumes that their wellbeing is not important.

2. Order and Chaos in TSAF

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A notable element in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is that of order and chaos as perceived in each part by their narrators. We see with each narration how these characters make sense of the world around them. In the case of the Compson brothers, their individual sense of order and chaos ultimately fails them. Yet, out of all the four parts that constitute TSAF, the only person who seemingly endures throughout the novel is Dilsey. Dilsey’s sense of order is the only one which is not deterred by the downfalls around her.  

Benjy’s sense of order and chaos is perhaps quite evident through his physical sensations. Due to his psychological limitations, Benjy’s expressions are limited to that of whimpering and wailing. Most of the time that we see him crying, it reflects his view of chaotic imbalance and it is often the result of something being awry or out of his perception of order. Perhaps an important part which most clearly indicates Benjy’s ideas of order and disorder is in Dilsey’s part, where Luster takes him on a Surrey ride. Dilsey wants to ensure that he’ll take Benjy on his usual route, “Up de street, round de square, to  de graveyard, den straight back home” (318). But the very second that Luster turns left instead of the usual way we see his horrifying reaction, “Then he bellowed. Bellow on bellow, his voice mounted, with scarce interval for breath. There was more astonishment in it, it was horror; shock; agony eyeless, tongueless; just sound” (320). However, the instant that Luster returns to the usual course, “…at once Ben hushed” (320-321). His silence attributed to, “…post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place” (321) This strong scene is highly reflective of his notions of order and chaos, anything that deviates from his physical sensations or the patterns surrounding his memories is chaos to him. This fails him, because he is incapable of moving past his past. In the end his demeanor is that of agony and utter numbness, “…his eyes were empty” (321). 

Quentin’s sense of order and disorder relies on his idea of proper Southerness. The Southern code of conduct is order to him. It is also something he cannot let go of or escape, the end result being his death. This is mainly reflected in his obsession with time and his deep desire to restore Caddy’s virginity. Like the instance where he pictures himself as Dalton Ames’ mother, for the sole purpose of preventing him from ever existing at all to prevent Caddy from losing her virginity to him. He even goes so far as to say, “I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames” (79). This false admittance of incest is quite interesting, as if this occurance would absolve Caddy of her intolerable promiscuity. Linked to the notion of pure bloodedness, or perhaps it’s attached to the end of his section where he imagines both of them dead together in hellfire. There are also many instances in which he finds himself in physical altercations with other men such as Gerald Bland and Herbert Head to defend women and their honor. Despite his efforts he fails each time to make order of disorder, and the unbearability of it all leads to his suicide. 

Jason’s entire world revolves around his selfishness, he cares for no one but himself and his version of order is bound to personal gain and manipulation of others. His attitude is reflected when he states, “I dont owe anything to anybody that has no more consideration for me” (241). He cynically manipulates the people around him, creating an elaborate plan to cheat his niece out of money, in doing so he is content and enabled to play the stocks (he also brought his car in this manner as well). This monetary gain makes him feel empowered and in control, despite his constant self pity. In the last part of the novel, we see Jason angrily unravel and his world turned to chaos when his niece steals his money. His attitude and demeanor noted as being, “…the violent cumulation of his self justification and his outrage” (303). He also loses his sense of order when he is unable to manipulate the sheriff into doing his bidding. In the end he doesn’t recover the money and he goes back home filled with anger.

   Dilsey’s character is one who rolls with the punches day to day. No matter the time frame or the narrator, her values and attitude remain unchanged throughout the novel even with the Compson family’s demise. Her sense of order is seen in the homely duties she performs, the way that she treats family, Compson and her own, even her narration is indicative. While Benjy’s and Quentin’s narration are steeped in the past and the present, and Jason’s mainly in the present with some bitterness from the past, Dilsey’s is strictly honed onto the present. Her motherly conduct is seen when she holds Benjy to calm him down, “Dilsey led Ben to the bed and drew him down beside her and she held him, rocking back and forth” (316).  She also defends Benjy while attending Sunday service, “Tell um de good Lawd dont keer whether he bright er not. Dont nobody but white trash keer dat” (290). Being that Dilsey’s perspective is the last in the novel, it leaves the reader with a sense of relief, with its linear narration, especially after the tumultuous depressing narrations of the first three parts. Whether we read Benjy’s, Quentin’s, or Jason’s parts the only stability found in the entire novel is Dilsey in which there is no chaos, only order and motherly love. 

2: Jason’s Sense of Time and Money

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Jason has the easiest sense of time to follow out of the sibling narrators because he has desires outside the family. Unlike Quentin who wishes to preserve family honor and Benjy who misses Caddy, Jason wants money, which is external to family, hence his better ordered mind.

Benjy keeps track of time through his senses so when something happens in the present that is connected to something in the past, it prompts him to think about a memory. Such as when Benjy gets stuck on a nail in the fence and Luster says, “Cant you never crawl through here without snagging on that nail.’ Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through” (4). Not only did the nail remind him of a time in the past when he got caught on it, but when Caddy helped out of it. Many of his flashbacks involve moments with family members, especially Caddy since he misses her.

Quentin’s relationship with time is quite complex since he is obsessed with the past. His flashbacks and fantasies happen frequently and are preoccupied with family. His section even starts with how his watch was originally his grandfather’s. “It was grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire” (76). His father describing the inheritance of the family watch as a “mausoleum of all hope and desire” explains Quentin’s negative attitude about time and his obsession with the failure of his family honor. The watch is not only a symbol for time, but for a dying family. This metaphor prepares us for Quentin’s confusing narrative and immediately informs the readers of his primary concern: Family.

Jason, however, does not flashback. Unlike Benjy and Quentin, Jason doesn’t seem to be preoccupied with family in the same way that Benjy and Quentin are. Whereas Benjy and Quentin’s realities are obsessively rooted in their emotional relationships to their families and its failures, Jason seems to be rooted in something other than that. He is consistently described as rude and cruel to his family so relationships are not what defines his reality. Yet, his reality, out of the siblings’ narratives, is the only one grounded in the present. Given that Benjy and Quentin’s obsessions with family are rooted in the past, looking at Jason’s obsession will equally answer his present setting narrative.

Jason is obsessed with money. There are so many times he is preoccupied with money that it is impossible to cite them all in this post which is telling. From cruelly teasing Luster’s lack of a quarter to pay for the show tickets (255) to stealing his family’s money at various points, Jason is willing to extort and hurt his supposed loved ones. His obsession can be seen when he is upset that Caddy has given fifty dollars to her daughter, Quentin, in the form of a money order. This makes it harder for him to steal it as he will need Quentin’s signature. “Giving a kid like that fifty dollars. Why I never saw fifty dollars until I was twenty-one years old, with all the other boys with the afternoon off and all day Saturday and me working in a store” (211). Here, it can be seen that his bitterness is toward his family is about money.

Jason is unconcerned with the failure of the Compson family – a matter of the past. So, his primary concern, money, is a matter of the present. Money is something that is ever moving. Its value changes and one must keep up with the current trends to make the highest profit. Jason’s mind is not trapped by the past like Benjy and Quentin because his priority is external to family and exists only in the present. Additionally, his bitter and mean attitude toward his family could be because they didn’t give him money. One of the events of the past that he ponders about is when he was jealous that Caddy gave her daughter fifty dollars. This could have prompted him to have a flashback to his reference at being a working boy while the others didn’t, but instead he remembers it the regular way. That being through a single sentence in which he tells the readers about his past rather than showing. It is interesting to note that while his memory was provoked by Caddy, the memory itself does contain family unlike Benjy and Quentin. He still quickly moves on from this thought though since his state of being is ever-present as a result of his obsession with money.

A Tentative Approach to Jason

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“Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say” (TSAF, 180) are the words with which Jason Compton begins his section. It’s easy to loathe Jason; he is cruel to Dilsy, Quentin, Benjy, and Caddy. He thinks of Benjy should be “the state asylum’s star freshmen” (230) and he withholds Quentin’s money. He literally made his ‘fallen’ sister chase after his carriage once he allowed her to get only a quick, teasing glimpse of her infant daughter. And yet, Jason felt justified for his cruelty; based on the terms of his arrangement with Caddy, he technically did fulfill his end of the deal – he sneaked out baby Quentin so that Caddy could see her. Jason is not a stupid character; he knew that there was more to that deal, but because it was only implied, not spoken, and because he felt aggrieved at Caddy having cost him a job, he “didn’t feel so bad” (205) as he counted the money she paid him. It seems that in Jason’s world, while he understands the familial responsibilities he has to shoulder the burden of such as dealing with and complying with all of his maudlin mother’s wishes, and housing and paying for the care of  Benjy and Quentin, Jason is concerned first and foremost with himself. Having grown up with three other siblings but having no distinguishing characteristics, save for his brutality, he was largely ignored. Only his mother gives him attention and professes that he is the only one of her four children “who isn’t a reproach” to her (181) and is really the last beacon of hope for the Bascombs. Her attentions toward her son are not altogether altruistic – mother is aware of what she benefits from by putting all her hopes for the family’s future on Jason. I can’t help but wonder if Jason’s fight with Quentin is from a place of fear; fear that Quentin will end up like her mother, a fallen woman and this is not to say Jason is concerned with her morality, but how another fallen woman in the family would make Jason look to people he’d want to forge business ties with.

Jason

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Jason Compson lives a bitter, isolated existence in each and every sphere of his life, be it work, family or pleasure. As he progresses from his position as the youngest and least powerful Compson child to the symbolic head of the family’s household, Jason develops a massive superiority complex. For while he comes to be the partial breadwinner of the family, other characters, like Dilsey, still maintain a more practical authority over how the house is run. The early alienation he experiences from his family combined with the over-flated sense of pride his mother reserves for the two of them, who are “more Bascomb than Compson” at heart, leaves Jason with a dangerous sense of unfulfilled deserving (103). Moreover, just as he feels that he has been perpetually and disproportionately slighted, he also believes the converse: that others have been given unwarranted advantage.

From an early age, Jason comes to resent his father and his older siblings, who have formed an unspoken alliance from which he is excluded. Growing up, he is constantly targeted by his siblings, and receives little defense from his father, Jason Sr.. During Damuddy’s funeral, for example, Caddy calls Jason a “[c]ry baby” and specifically targets him with the temporary authority Jason Sr. has granted her for the evening, despite Jason’s opposition (26). When Jason attempts to stand up for himself and the others, Caddy retorts: “They will [mind me] if I say so…Maybe I wont say for them to,” taunting him with the implication that she could choose to exercise her authority over Jason solely, while letting the others retain their relative autonomy (33). And when the family’s financial struggles prevent him from receiving the same opportunities that were granted Caddy and Quentin before him, Jason’s resentment takes on an aspect of cynicism: “I believed folks when they said they’d do things, I’ve learned better since” (206). Moreover, he allows his cynical outlook to justify his own lying and scheming; because he was cheated out of what was rightfully owed to him, it is acceptable, in turn, for him to steal and manipulate from those around him.

As a grown man he constantly speaks ill of his deceased father and brother and openly disrespects all other living members of the house, even his mother, Caroline, the one character in the novel who loves him unconditionally. Jason and Caroline’s relationship is characterized by a complex love-hate dynamic: Caroline smothers Jason with undying praise and adoration, fueling his pride and consequently, his lack of respect for others, including her. Indeed, his superiority complex is so extreme that it manifests itself as utter contempt for the people he interacts with day to day: his family, his servants, his boss, and any townsfolk unlucky enough to be sharing the sidewalk with him at the same time.

Jason’s hatred is so complete that he tends to project essentialist (most often racist and sexist) qualities onto other individuals or groups of people, i.e. “Once a bitch, always a bitch” and “I never found a nigger yet that didn’t have an airtight alibi for whatever he did” (180, 218). He is too narrow-minded to be sympathetic towards others’ societal predicaments, so he ends up holding the oppressed responsible for their oppressions. Indeed, Jason’s pride is so great that he finds endless faults in others, but none in himself; any self-criticism is really just a disguise for self-glorification. Jason is the kind of person whose remorse for his own actions stems only from his disdain for others (Others), and hence, he won’t pass up an opportunity to make vicious, underhanded attacks: “You’re a nigger. You’re lucky, do you know it? I says I’ll swap with you any day because it takes a white man not to have anymore sense than to worry about what a little slut of a girl does” (243). He plays off his vengeful desire to dominate Quentin as concern, while simultaneously upholding racist and sexist ideologies, and trivializing the experiences of those affected by their institutions.

Jason myths: “fleeing niece” = “golden fleece”?

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It’s obvious Faulkner isn’t just telling the story of one Southern family’s downfall; rather he seems to be using a family to tell the story of the South’s downfall. We can see this in two ways: first, in how his characters operate not just within the family sphere but the reader is made aware, particularly in Jason’s chapter, of the forces — economic, historic, cultural and so on — converging on the Compson family. But I was interested in looking at the second, which is how Faulkner expands the scope of tiny universe by drawing parallels to mythology, particularly through Jason, perhaps named for he “of the Argonauts.”

Both Jasons have been disinherited from a throne (or thrones) each believes to be rightfully his. In Greek Jason’s case, his uncle Pelias usurps the throne from Jason’s father Iolcus, and when the hero comes of age he rises up to take it back from his uncle, only to be sent by that uncle on series of difficult tasks, including a long, dangerous journey to claim the Golden Fleece. Seeing how difficult the tasks are Jason grows depressed. Jason Compson suffers similar depression and feelings of impotence as he has been disinherited of power in two ways: he has ascended to the head of the Compson family household, only to find that the throne is not worth holding, that the power associated with it has been lost. Second, he repeatedly refers to a lost opportunity for work at the bank — the people in his life altogether “merely symbolised the job in the bank of which he had been deprived before he ever got it.” (306) His greed gives the bank an obvious resonance as a throne-like seat of power.

Jason Compson’s professional failure, along with his failure to sit atop a successful family, ultimately turns into a kind of savage impotence: Near the end of the final chapter, when Jason is pursuing Quentin and the man in the red tie, the narrator twice in quick succession refers to Jason’s sense of impotence. (Eg his “injury and impotence” and “outrage and impotence.” [303]) His sense of impotence manifests in a series of delusions about having an army behind him — an army that also recalls the Greek Jason’s Argonauts: “ ‘I’m Jason Compson. See if you can stop me. See if you can elect a man to office that can stop me,’ he said, thinking of himself entering the courthouse with a file of soldiers and dragging the sheriff out,” (306) and later on the page, “his file of soldiers with the manacled sheriff in the rear, dragging Omnipotence down from his throne, if necessary; of the embattled legions of both hell and heaven through which he tore his way and put his hands at last on his fleeing niece.” Note here how “fleeing niece” seems like a verbal play on “fleece,” as in Golden Fleece.

In addition to expanding the tiny Compson universe in Jefferson, Miss., linking the jerk Jason Compson with the Greek Jason serves to highlight the former’s impotence, to paint starkly the forces that turned this thwarted heir to power into a vindictive man-child.

A family Led on Seperate Roads

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Quentin and Jason Compson both have very different ideologies towards their past and present lifestyles. Quentin obsesses with time and indulges in past failures as his narration is hindered by retrospective memories of his father and sister, Caddy. In contrast, Jason Compson reflects on his past experiences as a method to bring reassurance and to motivate him for future success. Both narrators approach their past in very contrasting ways, Quentin in a crippling manner while Jason in an empowering manner, but ultimately they are unable to escape their past.

Raised closely by different parents, Quentin by his father and Jason by his mother, Quentin’s obsession with time represents his desires to escape his father’s ideals of time and sexuality but gain his acceptance. But as his mind constantly fluctuates between the past and the present it becomes obvious, he obsesses with his father’s ideals while Caddy is used as a scapegoat to deviate from his father’s principles and for Quentin to gain his own identity. From the start of the chapter, Quentin’s father warns him to separate himself from time but contradicts himself and hands Quentin a watch.

Quentin’s father tells him, “to forget time… try not to conquer it because no battle is ever won. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair” (76).  As Quentin tries to separate himself from the past, the constant ticking of clocks and watches haunts Quentin indicating its not Quentin’s sense of time that is crippled but it’s the memory of his father that Quentin can’t forego and separate from. Many memories that arise, are often focused in on Caddy but they are all reflected off of conversations between Quentin and his father. “I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames” (TSAF 79). Quentin calls upon incest relations with Caddy as a way to propose the idea, Caddy’s child does have a known father and Caddy is not ruining the reputation of the Compson name through her promiscuous actions. However, on page 78, the conversation between Quentin and his father states, “In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to a women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women….Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said that what that’s sad too.” In this passage, the idea of losing virginity as a male serves as a passage from becoming “a boy to a man.” Quentin who is still a virgin, is looked down upon, and grasps at the concept of, if he mentions to his father he had sexual relations with his sister, he will gain his father’s approval as well as save the rest of the reputation that is left of the Compson name, that has not been destroyed by Caddy’s pregnancy out of wedlock.

Another moment that brings Quentin to arrest at the thought of his father’s memory is when Quentin is accused of spying on Caddy, “The street lamps would go down the hill then rise toward town I walked upon the belly of the shadow. I could extend my hand beyond it. feeling father behind me beyond the rasping darkness of summer and August the street lamps Father and I protect women from one another from themselves our women Women are like that they don’t acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil…”(TSAF 96-97). Faulkner incorporates this passage to implicate several things. Mr. Compson, Quentin’s father is the primitive source that haunts Quentin. While his sense of time and Caddy represents the disorder that builds within Quentin as he tries to gain his father’s acceptance but gain his own identity.

Lastly, the Italian immigrant girl depicts Quentin’s last attempt to separate himself from his father. He calls her his sister and does not try to take advantage of her as he is able to lose his virginity to her making his father proud he is no longer a virgin. Instead, he tries to lead her to her home. The Italian girl may be representative of purity and as Caddy untouched. He views her as his last attempt to separate himself from his father; allowing himself to bring her home without memories of his father clouding his judgment. Though memories of Caddy and Natalie arise during this moment, this represents a struggle he has with his morals versus expectations he has as a man (134).

Jason obsesses with money and social status like his mother and unlike Benjy and Quentin he does not respect women. He views himself superior over all others, authoritative, sees himself as a person who should command respect and attention, and is extremely cynical of everyone’s actions. In contrast to the views Benjy and Quentin had for their mother, Jason’s narration views Mrs. Compson as a very emotional and caring mother whose actions are controlled him Jason. Mrs. Compson constantly repeats the words “flesh and blood” as she pleads Jason to allow Caddy to return for Quentin, “I’d gladly take her back, sins and all, because she is my flesh and blood. It’s for Quentin’s sake.” Jason’s relation to time is blended with jealousy of Quentin’s Harvard education but also biased as each memory he has is propelled through blame and misery while he is a spectator. Jason is constantly comparing himself to Quentin’s Harvard education by stating the education is completely unnecessary as he is doing fine without it (196,197, 206, 235,). However, he also mentions Quentin is the reason for the downfall of the family due to selling property to pay for his education (206) and him having to be a father figure for the family. In this narration, Jason does not have flashbacks of Caddy instead his memories are targeted at Quentin and moments of his superiority. He views black people as inferior to him and him having to install a method to control and put fear into them so they know their role in society (207).  Jason’s relations to economics are very derogatory as he is fueled with hatred towards Jews and black people (234). He constantly remarks on their laziness and incompetency but on the contrary he is dependent on them (186), dependent on Dilsey to make him his meals, and the Jewish people who run the market.  Jason is not only racist but he is also sexist. On page 247, he states he does not need any more women in his life as she may “turn out to be a hophead”- a drug addict. Basically, women are virtually of no use to society.  His authoritative persona brings about his insecurity. He does not allow Caddy to return home probably because he’s afraid she will be favored, (on page 220 he forces his mother to burn the check) as well as the constant reminder of Quentin’s Harvard education he carefully attempts to show was a pointless education (235).

Surviving the Compsons

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Jason has little affection for his family. He provides economically for them, there’s enough flour in the pantry and he keeps a roof above their head but he resents his responsibility as head of the household. His vignette is by far more logical than Benjy or Quentin’s narrative, he may lack feelings but at the very least he provides factual information. The brazen swirl of colors and emotions that make the past two stories so enjoyable makes Jason’s narrative a refreshing breeze. Caddy’s story really is the center theme in each narrative, from her first teenage kiss to her banishment from her family. Before Jason, it was easy to sympathize with the headstrong Candace, but after Jason it is a slightly more difficult task. Once a bitch, always a bitch. Once a mad Compson, always a mad Compson. He doesn’t begrudge Candace, he clearly doesn’t think much of her or really care about her in anyway. He doesn’t love her in the same dimension that Benjy or Quentin loved her.  Jason, however, does care about keeping face as best as he can. He’s the only Compson that is not mad, crippled or dead and it shames him to think that the whole town is laughing at his family. So he does what any man in his position would do, to work hard and to dare anyone that might cross him. He tortures Candace and the young Quentin, not because they whore around the town, but because their indiscreet with their behavior. Jason says repeatedly that he doesn’t care whether Quentin runs around with every jelly bean in town, he cares that every townsfolk knows that they can call his niece for a backseat romp. Jason is not a prude, he has a girl on the side, Miss Lorraine, but she lives in another town and wouldn’t dare call him up at work on pain of death. Jason believes in keeping women in line, whether that means beating them or ridiculing them at the dinner table, Jason has more important things to do than concern himself with feminine feelings.

Jason sees what needs to be done; with efficiency and precision Jason does what he does for survival and to keep food on his plate. He may be cruel, his words may be harsh, and yes, he might find pleasure in making his women folk upset, but he has been thrust into the role as the patriarch. He despises Mrs. Compson and Dilsey’s efforts to cajole Benjy and Quentin, and in his own rebellion he has become colder than a cod in a hail storm.  Madness runs in his Compson veins, as well as anyone else, but he has learned to dilute the insanity in acts of cruelty. From burning the circus tickets to calling names, Jason is certainly not without fault but he has discovered how to survive in the madness around him. With his family background, the best Jason can do for himself is learn how to survive.