I'm very aware of the fact that I'm well overdue for a blog,

and now that we've got the Sound and Fury essay to work on, I can avoid it no longer (which is exactly what I've been doing: avoiding this thing).
So here goes.
I guess considering I don't live with my immediate family anymore, I should have a fairly different outlook on what the whole thing means than students who still live with their parents. But I don't think I do.
Because my family (and when I say family, I mean my mother's side) is extremely close, verbal, and intrusive- of the traditional Hispanic variety- when I read about the Compsons, whose individual members were so isolated from the rest, I had to view it as a completely different entity. In a way, I went into the book having already suspended my personal views of what defines a family. Now, after the book has been read and I've had weeks to mull over what was said in class, one of the many possible conclusions that I've come to is that The Sound and the Fury isn't so much about a family, but a group of individuals in the context of a family. Family, the surname "Compson", was only an excuse for these people being linked together. They seemed to be more connected by old traditions and dysfunctions rather than by feelings, or, as the family line decomposed, even blood. So what does that mean for family in general? I don't know. It's all relative, I guess. (Oh, god. I in no way intended that as a pun. Sorry.)

There's one thing I want to add about Quentin that I never got a chance to say out loud in class, before I change blogs and topics. Concerning Quentin's obsession with time, I had the impression that it wasn't so much based on Quentin's inability to "see himself going on" or because he was stuck in the past. Rather, I saw it as a morbid obsession with the passing of time- he knew his time was limited, and almost masochistically, could not help watching it literally slip away. The smashing of the clocks, I thought, was an attempt to deny what he already knew was inevitable- his death.

That's it.