Discussion Facilitation- Sarah Munday and Emily Cude- 3/13
1.
Why does Faulkner summarize the entire plot of
the novel in the first chapter?
a.
Gives vague accounts of an in-depth story, but
doesn’t describe them really, just gives her opinion on the overall matter.
b.
Miss Coldfield is so bitter about the history so
is she not accurate because it is told from her point of view? (makes
everything out of proportion)
i.
She distorts the story to make it fit her perception
of how the story went- uses words like demon and savage to describe Sutpen and
what he was doing
ii.
She wants Quentin to tell her story so that
people will see that Thomas Sutpen is a bad man is incapable of compassion.
iii.
Reliability of the narrators
c.
Quentin seems to be more of an objective
character, not exactly forming much of an opinion of his own, merely gathering
details and then relating to the South in general.
2.
Syntax- why does he use so many adjectives,
clauses, and pairs of threes?
a.
Some of the groups of threes have commas and
some do not- why?
i.
Thoughts seem to be jumbled and interposed
between each other.
b.
Use of a lot of similes
c.
Sweet and oversweet (page 8), distilled and hyper
distilled- use of over exaggeration; Miss Coldfield is so bitter about the
situation personally that all of the actors in her story are more exaggerated
also
d.
Demon, band of beasts
e.
Mentions of heat and dust
f.
“Non” things- “not-people” “not-language” “un-defeat”
“un-regret”
g.
Ghosts
h.
Hyperbole
3.
Metaphor of the South as a ghost
a.
Post-Civil War the South no longer exists
b.
Sutpen’s story parallels the South’s story;
downfall is brought about by the same reasons (because they didn’t have
compassion)
4.
Sutpen
a.
Married Miss Coldfield’s older sister Ellen;
mysterious because he was never around the townspeople (never drank at the
bars)
b.
His mysterious and urgent personality creates at
demonic perception in the locals’ mind
c.
Created this perception in their minds of how we
was- relates again how history is told by the perception of others
d.
This description of him provides a more
humanistic and realistic description of Sutpen and gives the readers another
interpretation of him through Mr. Compson (more reliable narrator)
i.
Two skewed perspectives because people are
relating their personal perspectives to Sutpen
e.
What do you think about Sutpen after hearing
about him through these two different narrators of the past?
5.
Fate versus free will?
a.
Structure of the South was doomed to fail from
the beginning because of the reliance on slavery.
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