From Conflict to Suicide: The Inner Turmoil of Quentin Compson

At the end of Absalom, Absalom!, Quentin Compson is in agony as he denies his hatred of the South. Six months later, he commits suicide in The Sound And The Fury. The roots of Quentin's despair have been investigated by a great many critics, some of whom treat Quentin primarily as the victim of a historical problem, while others focus on his psychological abnormalities. The first group asserts that Quentin illustrates either the South's decay or the inherited burden to set right a time that is out of joint. The second group of critics treat Quentin as “a young man” with a “grievous psychic wound,” but they disagree on the nature of his wound (Howe, 1952, p. 168), which they variously attribute to his sick puritanism, his morbid idealism, his moral innocence, and his sexual maladjustment. These various interpretations are evidence of Linda Wagner's observation that “we are never quite sure” what Quentin's problem is (1975, p. 177).

To understand Quentin we must ask: Why does he both love and hate the South? Why must he deny his hatred? How are his feelings about the South related to his interpersonal difficulties? Why is he psychically paralyzed? Why does he commit suicide? These questions cannot be answered by analyzing Quentin as an illustrative character because, as Irving Howe points out, there is a “discrepancy between what [Quentin] is and what he is supposed to signify” (p. 168). Because Quentin escapes the limitations of theme and becomes a “creation inside a creation,” he can be understood in the same way that we understand human beings (Paris, 1974, p. 11). When we understand Quentin in this way, we shall see that although the “discrepancy” pointed out by Howe between the representation and interpretation of his character indicates a structural weakness, it also points to a mimetic success. The remarkable portrayal of Quentin Compson as a complex human being whom we can understand in motivational terms reveals the brilliance of Faulkner's psychological intui