Sub-texting in Scottsdale should be Illegal Too

Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE and POLONIUS

LORD POLONIUS

He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.

HAMLET

[Within] Mother, mother, mother!

[Hamlet calls mockingly to his mother, like a child that doesn't fear an expected but ineffectual punishment]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

[Gertrude speaks assuredly to Polonius that she will lay down the law appropriately]

POLONIUS hides behind the arras

Enter HAMLET

HAMLET

Now, mother, what's the matter?

[Hamlet continues to mock his mother]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET

Mother, you have my father much offended.

[Hamlet turns from mockery to indirect accusation and an accusatory manner]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Why, how now, Hamlet!

HAMLET

What's the matter now?

[Virtually spewing sarcasm]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Have you forgot me?

HAMLET

No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.

[Hamlet turns from sarcastic mockery to contempt as he finishes this sentence]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.

[Hamlet grabs hold of her and forces her into chair]


HAMLET

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

[Holds up a mirror to her face]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!

[Shudders and pushes herself back into the chair, scared]

LORD POLONIUS

[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!

[Hamlet drops the mirror (it shatters) and lightly paces over to arras]

HAMLET

[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

Makes a pass through the arras

LORD POLONIUS

[Behind] O, I am slain!

[white arras begins to stain red with blood]

[Falls and dies]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O me, what hast thou done?

[Queen is frantic]

HAMLET

Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?

[Snyly , hoping that it is the king]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

[appalled at her son's brutality]

HAMLET

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

[turns back towards his mother with contempt in his eyes]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

As kill a king!

[She is confused and still scared of Hamlet]

HAMLET

Ay, lady, 'twas my word.

Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,

[Looks at Polonius with contemptful pity. He is not sorry, but sees him as pathetic]

And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brass'd it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

[Hamlet turns back toward Gertrude]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

[Frustrated with Hamlet's disrespect. Raises her voice to counter Hamlet and rises out of the seat]

HAMLET

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

[Asserts himself and comes in close to her. He physically intimidates her and looks down upon her. She backs down into the seat]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

[becomes less confrontational]

HAMLET

Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

[Hamlet points at two portraits on the wall]

See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:

[stares at portrait of his father as he speaks]

This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?

[Speaks pathetically of Claudius and asks her questions in confused wonderment and misunderstanding]

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.

[Wallows in pity and begins to sob into her hands]

HAMLET

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,--

[Hamlet speaks as if to twist the metaphorically knife into his mother]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!

[overcome by conscience]

HAMLET

A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!

[livid with contempt for the lowly acts of Claudius. He speaks with utter disdain in his voice. Spit flies from his mouth as his anger boils over in his words]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

No more!

[Gertrude frantically sobs, screaming at Hamlet]

HAMLET

A king of shreds and patches,--

Enter Ghost

[turns toward ghost and speaks to the phantom with arms outstretched]

Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, he's mad!

[stops crying and looks up with awe at Hamlet]

HAMLET

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command? O, say!

[looks up, inquiring. Hesitates as he expects reprimand from the ghost]

Ghost

Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET

How is it with you, lady?

[surprised at her blank amazement and confused look]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

[Temporarily forgets her gulit. Her tortured conscience disappears from her face and she investigates the curious behavior of her son]

HAMLET

On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. Do not look upon me;
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects: then what I have to do
Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

[He gestures toward the ghost , angry at her disbelief in the ghost of her husband]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET

Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET

Nor did you nothing hear?

[Asks her in wonderment, perhaps looking for justification for his listening to the ghost]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET

Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!

[points at the ghost again]

Exit Ghost

QUEEN GERTRUDE

This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.

[She speaks with a hint of triumphant understanding, sure that she has found proof of Hamlet's madness]

HAMLET

Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;

[Hamlet's temper flares and he totally goes all puritan-fire-and-brimstone on Gertrude]

Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

[Hamlet then becomes sarcastic and sardonic, forcing his mother to acknowledge his irony]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET

O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either [ ] the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you.

[Hamlet continues to relentlessy torment her with description of her sins. He assumes a voice of judgment as he gives her a last chance to repent and win back his love and trust]

For this same lord,

Pointing to POLONIUS
I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.

[Hamlet speaks with a fatalistic attitude as he has given up on proper life and accepted his eternal damnation]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What shall I do?

[eager to regain his love]

HAMLET

Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know;
For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top.
Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down.

[Hamlet assumes his role as final judge of her trustworthiness. He again offers her her final resort]

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET

I must to England; you know that?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alack,
I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.

HAMLET

There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing:
I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.

Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS
Shakespeare homepage | Hamlet | Act 3, Scene 4
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My Big Fat Greek Problem

Bottom line… Creon is more right. I sympathize with Antigone (as much as I can sympathize with a character from a completely undeveloped storyline), but she is wrong. Polynieces is a traitor. I admit, the limiting factor of this story is that we have no idea how the dispute over the thrown went down. Polynieces probably was the rightful heir to the thrown, but he forfeited his justification when he lead an army on his own people. I don’t care about Eteocles or Creon. I could care less that he killed his brother, but he attacked his own people. He attacked the people that he would be charged with protecting and helping to prosper if he was king. You can’t care about them one day and not the other and be a just, responsible king. Doesn’t work like that. Even if he and Eteocles were the only ones to die, he purposefully attacked his own city and put an entire army of his fellow countrymen at the mercy of a bunch of Argive mercenaries. Mercs are not always the nicest guys on the block. The Argives could of turned out to be the Blackwater of Greece. Oh wait, that comparison can’t be right. They are security contractors not hired guns, right. (Hey you hippie, left-wing, vegetarian, tree-hugger. Hybrid-driving, pot-head liberals…this doesn’t mean I’m on your side. I just hate useless, poorly trained idiots with guns. I still love guns.)

How can Polynieces care for his people when he attacks them just to reclaim the thrown so he can protect them from attack as king. “ Ok, I will attack and possibly kill thousands of my people so I can help them live better lives in the future (as widows and orphans of course).” Maybe Eteocles deposed Polynieces because he was a selfish jerk. Polynieces didn’t deserve to be king. Neither does Creon, so Polynieces only removed a potentially bad king (I say potentially bad because we just don’t know. He could be a great king too.) to instate a suredly bad one. Polynieces was selfish. He valued himself over his people (and most certainly his family).

Creon is also obsessed with power.His edict is a bad law. Not because it is fundamentally wrong, but because it goes too far. King of the state is not enough for him. He wants to extend his powers beyond the worldly (he wants to be god-like, and we all know that he couldn't even multi-kill). He is obsessed with controlling the afterlife of Polynieces. He shows little concern for the higher law of the gods,but Creon is focused upon preventing Polynieces his nectar and ambrosia. In this way Creon both levels himself with the gods and shows his lack of faith in the gods (big mistake for a character in a Greek myth. Just say no to hubris). If he did have faith in them, he would let them take care of the punishment. Ironically, Creon should be thanking Polynieces. He just wouldn’t be king if Polynieces hadn’t knocked off his own brother. Creon doesn’t even listen too his people regarding Antigone’s actions. He is too busy playing God. Creon needs to pay attention to his own zoo (meaning the state).

Antigone is also selfish. Yeah, I think she’s selfish. Like Creon, she goes nuts with her cause. Like most martyr, she is too wrapped up in her cause to step back and solve the problem. I like the Hollywood version too, but dying for the dead doesn’t do a thing (other than reduce my morning traffic). Ironically, Creon is just as much a martyr (and killing for the dead doesn’t make much sense either). These Greeks can not possibly stand for the reason that they hold so dear. The world has too many martyrs. It is way too fashionable to “die” for your cause. And you don’t have to be burned at the stake or blow yourself up to follow in Antigone’s footsteps. While everyone is glorifying themselves by defying the whole world, the problems are just growing. We should all just lift our fingers off the triggers and put down our explosive vests and try to talk to each other a little. I promise, I won’t make you eat meat if you don’t make me grind with a redwood.

My advice? Antigone, think about how much it’s going to hurt before you nail yourself to the cross (and by the way, Jesus had a good reason…you, not so much). You can’t help anyone from the inside of a crypt. Creon, if you can’t get off your pedestal, I’ll get you a ladder. Go ahead and kill’em all, but let God sort’em out. You two could be a great team. You stab’em, she’ll slab’em.

By the way, Mr. Coon, 24 isn’t on this season. The writers ruined it. I can never forgive them for denying me my Jack fix. WWJBD? Take them out, just for the inconvenience.

Shock Value

Kafka’s metamorphosis is one of the most confusing stories I have ever read or seen… or even heard about. To some degree, I believe the story’s outrageous plot prevents the reader from uncovering the true message of the text. I also believe that this effect may be somewhat by design and may reinforce the message of the text. Gregor’s absurd transformation renders the reader helpless. The reader can no longer view the story seriously. The story’s removal from the realistic prevents the reader from uncovering the true nature of the text… initially at least. The eight hundred pound gorilla that is the storyline blocks us from truly seeing the meaning of the situation. We cannot get past the plot. The insane events that befall Gregor Samsa overwhelm our critical mindsets and force us to react to the circumstances. In this respect, we the readers are much like Gregor’s family in that we are distracted by the shock of Gregor’s transformation and condition. Gregor’s family is shocked by the transformation of their son into such a horrid, unacceptable thing, and we are shocked by the transformation of the text into a wildly unrealistic and insensible thing. We, as readers, are not prepared for this development and are therefore disarmed and transformed ourselves. We are blinded by the shock value of the story and are rendered unable to analyze the story past the transformation of Gregor into an insect. Gregor’s family is likewise unable see past Gregor’s transformation. They are rendered incapable of recognizing their own son for who he is because his transformation has shocked them into a state of petrified vulnerability. Gregor’s transformation has blinded them to Gregor’s true nature and left them unable to see their son as anything other than a monster. It is this blindness that connects the reader and the story. We are distracted by the overwhelming situation at hand, and this strips us of our insight.

Ignorance is Bliss

Ivan Ilych suffers incredible anguish because he can’t come to grips with the meaning of his life. It is not impossible to imagine. We spend most our lives achieving success based on society’s standards. The worst realization would be that most of our lives are spent achieving society’s standards of success. Most of our time on earth will be spent working towards a set of standards created by the successful and proper society that we are trying to join. They are not even our own goals. And if we convince ourselves that they are our own goals, they just happen to fit right in with the man’s expectations and everything is just great. You know who I envy? The ski bum. There is a person who has their priorities straight. Is the ski bum’s life meaningful? Maybe not to you, but your considerations mean nothing to him. Your approval doesn’t add meaning to his existence, so he does not seek it. The real twisted thing about the realization that your life is meaningless if its meaning is influenced by others’ standards is that even though I have just written it down in words, I am going to continue to let society determine at least a significant part of my worth. I am in too deep. I don’t know. I couldn’t imagine to expect reconciliation or rectification or enlightenment of Ivan Ilych’s kind on my deathbed. Instead, if I look at the odds, I choose ignorant bliss. I think I just might choose to remain behind under the illusion of what my life meant. If it really is a meaningful life, then I win. If it isn’t, and I don’t know that it isn’t, I still win. Then again, maybe my life was meaningful and my standards of meaning are wrong, and I lose.

Loves...in the Time of Cholera

I’m not used to writing about or concerning myself with love, but this entire book is nothing but a love story. Not a romantic love story but an objective situational report on the status love in the lives of the main characters. It is a story about love but it is not a sentimental story about love. I suppose this is why I like the story…or can at least stand it. It’s not about idealized sentimental love. Instead, Love in the Time of Cholera shows us several different types of love and contrasts them to each other.

Like we talked about in class, there are two main types of love in the story. Florentino represents an intensely passionate, fast-paced love. He loves on sight with no hesitation. He is relentless in his pursuits…at first, but most of his flings end unceremoniously with a general loss of interest. He continually replaces his faded glories with a new short-term passion. Florentino’s love is something like a bottle rocket. Starts out big but doesn’t last long.

However, Florentino has this perpetual obsession with Fermina Daza also. Fermina is his emotional passion and obsession and his numerous mistresses are his physical passion in her absence. His affairs combined with his emotional obsession for Fermina make one whole love for Florentino.

He needs both loves to feel whole but he consciously tries to keep them separate in an effort to be faithful to Fermina. There are only two explanations for this behavior. One, Florentino has no true emotional connection to his mistresses and considers them only as purely physical and sexual relationships. Therefore, he must not consider his flings as substantial relationships and feels that they are not comparable to his love for Fermina. Two, he is a lying, deceitful fraud who is totally uncommitted to Fermina. I have no problem with his being a player but his mental disassociation of his love affairs and his love for Fermina even though he wishes to appear faithful is both interesting and startling. Through Florentino, Marquez presents physical love and unattainable love-from-a-distance.

Of course, Urbino and Fermina represent the other type of love. Their type is not passionate. It is not immediate. It can only be described as an acquired taste. They slowly come to depend on each other physically and emotionally but their relationship is almost devoid of physical passion. Yet, it can be considered no less true than any other type of love. Indeed, in many ways it is more real than Florentino’s type of love simply because it has lasted through the years. Urbino and Fermina’s love is the exact opposite of Florentino’s. Their love is slow, emotional and stable. More like a diesel engine--slow to start up but long running. However, neither type of love can be considered inferior.

This is Gary’s special edition Thanksgiving blog!

Note: For this this blog entry, I will speak…sorry…Gary will speak of himself in the third person.

Note (again): Addressing myself in third person was extremely tiresome, so I gave up. Just wanted you to know that I was going to do it.

Love in the time of Cholera is an uplifting, wonderful story about the delights of first and true love…not. It’s depressing and frightening…and quite dark. It appears to be about the neverending hope and eternal happiness supplied by true love, but in reality we soon discover that it faithfully describes neverending hope… and the subsequent neverending hopelessness. Instead of filling our hearts with hope of a chance for true and unimaginable, unrealistic love, it smashes our dreams and tears our hope into shreds with it’s sudden shift to the stereotype of realistic love and marriage. Never has the void in me that I sometimes pretend holds emotion and sentimentality been torn as it was by Fermina’s rejection of Florentino.

It’s not so much that I felt for Florentino as I felt for myself. I had committed hours of my time to reading the hundred or so pages that led up to this event. I had invested my time, which could have been spent playing FIFA or Guitar Hero, in this book believing that I was working toward a final solution to this fifty page obsession that was Florentino and Fermina’s verbal fling, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. Or very seriously wrong, at least.

I know that the book started at the end of Urbino’s life and that we knew that Fermina and the doctor get together but I didn’t know it happened like this. When so many tragic stories end with forced marriage breaking up a physical connection but leaving an eternal love intact, I didn’t expect this one to break apart in a sudden change of heart on the behalf of the hot girl. That’s not uplifting. That is devastating. Yes, devastating (and I mean the total destruction, nothing left, nuclear winter, Sherman’s march to the sea devastating). Who cares if the star-crossed lover is devastated. I am devastated. All of my attention and effort was wasted on an ending that I would have guessed from the get go. My outlook on life was not changed by Fermina’s rejection. It was sadly confirmed. If every story ended like this one, glasses would always be served half empty and the terrorists would probably be waiting for me at home.

I mean the happy ending is an archetype for a reason. Real life ends like this book does. And real life sucks. Why would I waste my actual life reading about a realistic ending. I could just watch the news. Go on, call it great literature. I call a perversion of the human spirit.

La Familia

The Compson family disintegrates because of one reason. Every single member of the family fails to live up to the expectations of their role within the family setting. Every single member fails to do their duty and sacrifice for the survival of the family. They are all too selfish, in their own particular ways, to give up their pride and beliefs and be what the family needs them to be.

I’ll start with the parents. Mother is terrible. She does not at all resemble her namesake and does not fulfill any of her position’s requirements. It’s ridiculous. I do not feel that I even have to state any evidence to support the fact that she is selfish and does not sacrifice anything for well-being of her children or her family. She treats Benjy as an embarrassment and a trouble. We could not expect a stranger to show less compassion than Mother shows towards Benjy. She had no business becoming a mother and would be a far more suitable candidate for a high-class call girl than a home-maker or a family woman.

Her favoritism towards Jason is also beyond reason and propriety. Parents are not supposed to pick favorites. That’s a given, but it’s the real world and I can’t expect every action of every parent to be unbiased. Mother’s preferential treatment of Jason is so blatant that it has become a weapon that mother uses against her family and her husband. Her favoritism for Jason also displays her lack of judgement as Jason is nothing but a bitter little stool-pidgeon anyway. Mother’s support of this cowardly, base behavior does not help the situation either.

Father is also flawed. He is detached and aloof from the needs of his children. When his children need guidance and personal reassurance—as in the case of Quentin—he offers only his often pessimistic or fatalistic opinion. Sometimes, his children need to hear a certain thing, and he offers them only an extremely limited and in some cases harsh point of view. However, he is not harsh in the discipline of his children. In fact, his forgiveness of Caddy is admirable and very compassionate but he seems out of touch with the emotional needs of all his children—Quentin in particular. He forgoes his responsibility to console all of his children and instead sticks to his logic and pessimistic disposition when confronting his family. He also fails to take control of the situation—in this case the Caddy predicament--and be strong for his family. Instead, he drowns his sorrows in whiskey and abandons his responsibility as leader of the household. He forgets the problems of the family and, in a selfish way, concerns himself only with his grievances and turmoils.

The children also contribute to the family’s demise. Each child acts selfish in his or her own way. Caddy’s initial affair with Dalton Ames, although not evil, still begins the selfish trend. She, whether consciously or not, rejects her role in the family and focuses on her own life and passions. It may not be a malicious decision but in a family environment as fragile as the Compson’s, it was a tragic choice with dire consequences. She is then forced to abandon the family when she marries. Quentin, in his own way, also decides not to sacrifice his concept of honor for the good of the family and in turns runs away from his problems, whether real or imaginary, by killing himself. He also abandons the family in this way. Jason, on the other hand, does not physically abandon the family. His providing for the family after the death of Quentin and Father are to be commended, but he has long abandoned the family in an emotional sense. He does not make any effort to emotionally rebuild the shattered lives of his brother, sister or her daughter.(648)