Final Thoughts on The Sound and The Fury!!

My final thoughts on this book is that it was an out there type of book.  Like the brothers wanting their sister, the cheating on spouses, death, love, and all that fun stuff. This book was really full of all that fun stuff.  I must admit I did cheat with this book and use sparknotes…..mostly because it was sometimes hard to follow and get what was going on. However, talking about it in class did help because while sparknotes give me the general idea of what happened in each chapter, class discussion of it caught what sparknotes left out.  While I was not a fan of it because I’m more of a fantasy person I would not say it was not interesting it just was not for me.  give me a good book about things that are just made up and far out there any day and I will probably like it. Why I think this book is included in the canon is because of the general themes it has in common with so many other canon books.  It has love, death, betrayal, incest all of which are important themes for canon books.

For this week I commented Lauren M and Rebecca’s Blogs!!!!

The Sound & The Fury~~Wiki and Blog

Ok for this I choose the passage beginning on page 115.

I’ve got to marry somebody  Versh told me about a man who mutilated himself.  He went into the woods and did it with a razor, sitting in a ditch.  A broken razor flinging them backward over his shoulder the same motion complete the jerked skein of blood backward not looping.  But that’s not it.  It’s not not having them.  It’s never to have had them then I could say O That That’s Chinese I dont know Chinese.  And Father said it’s because you are a virgin: dont you see?  Women are never virgins.  Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.  It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So is virginity and I said you dont know.  You cant know and he said Yes.  On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.

  First off is why I choose this passage out of the entire novel.  I choose this passage because its the part where the male Quentin (Caddy’s brother) is talking about the story of mutilation and the cutting off of the balls.  It seemed to me that when the mutilation was mentioned in class people didn’t seem to get this part so I thought I’d be helpful and point it out.  While I seem to have a very limited understanding of this passage I can sort of explain it.  I’m not 100% sure how you get that he is cutting off his balls in this but I’ll just go with it.  Like after reading it you can understand that the character has cut something off but most readers aren’t sure what.  So I can understand how a lot of people missed this.  I missed it too the first time we read it.   What is happening is Quentin is telling Caddy about the mutilation story he heard and how virginity goes again nature and women are never virgins to begin with simply because it goes against nature.  Quentin is also trying to talk Caddy out of getting married.  What is most important here is that this passage shows us the readers how impotent (sp?) Quentin is because I mean why would a guy even tell a story about some guy cutting his balls off, unless he was actually sick enough to want to do it to himself.  It also shows us just how far Quentin would go to try and convince Caddy not to get married.  Like he loves his sister that much that he would try to convince her that virginity really doesn’t exist and that the whole thought of it would go against what nature intends.  All this just so she wouldn’t get married. 

For this week I commented Cody and Courtney’s Blogs!!!

The Sound and the Fury Passage

A passage from the book that I was intrigued by was the one mentioned in question 1 of our worksheet thingy we got in class on wednesday.  It’s the scene from pgs 150-153 when Caddy and the male Quentin are on the bank of the river and they have the knife and are thinking about killing themselfs. Literally they are talking about killing themselves but metaphorically they are talking about having sex.  Like if sit and listen to how they talk about it, it really does seem like they wanna have sex with eachother which they are a boy and girl so seems normal but then comes the problem that they are brother and sister.  The important idea here is that they are talking about sex and having it.  So this is important because it sort of confirms that this brother and sister love eachother a little bit more then they should.  What we can learn from this is that this really is one messed up family and really really needs counseling!!!!

For this week I commented Devon’s Blog and Dawn’s Blog!!!

End of Gatsby/short stories/Faulkner

I must say that I am glad that we are done with the Great Gatsby.  I read it in high school was not fond of it then and now in college I still am not fond of it.  I felt that there was too much going on in the book and it was just a little too dramatic for my taste.  All the characters just seemed like they were in need of counseling or something.  Even the ending was too dramatic, half the characters died.  Although I wish gatsby and daisy ended up together just so they could possibly go off and live happily ever after. 

Then we move on to the short stories and wow, being that I’ve worked in a hospital for a while I can understand how the main character Harry is feeling, like he knows he’s dying and has like these flashbacks.  Working in the hospital has exposed me to illness and death so many times.  I’ve seen patients that are sick and know they are dying and watched how they become hopeless.  Some like Harry just lose their minds and have no idea what they are talking about, this is especially true with the elderly patients. So when I read the snows of kilmanjaro I sort of interpreted it as him dying and just loosing it.  It sort of made me feel bad for the character because while i don’t believe I have ever seen gang green in real life I know it isn’t pretty and it’s a horrible way to die. 

The elephant story just confused me like i had no idea what they were talking about I didn’t get the whole abortion thing out of this couple having drinks at some bar or where ever. So yea and like I said I almost thought that the elephant story was just a different part of the snows story, so to anyone that reads this and did the same thing its ok. 

 As for Faulkner I’ve never read this book before but it looks interesting.  I hope it is better than Gatsby.  I mean it must be good, it was featured in Oprah’s book club, and Oprah seems like she has good taste so, I’m sure its better then Gatsby. 

For this week I commented Alyssa and Lauren J.