Group+5

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PREZI
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Southern Identity after Civil War
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 * Carlee Steppe

Present day Discrimination of Southerners is common in American culture. Insults such as rednecks, hillbillies and white trash are often used to signifiy the sourthern culture as a whole.Other depicts Southerners classify us as uniformly backward, uneducated, dirty, and poor, Other representations include them being fanatically religious Fundamentalist, racist, anti-intellectual, sexist, and homophobic. Pronounced regionalisms and cultural differences are often cited as the cause of stereotypes about Southerners. White Southerners are often displayed as being parochial and intolerant of anything different from their own homogeneous provincial culture, despite the fact that Southern culture is not monolithic, as it varies greatly by state, church and ethnic origin. Just think of how different Greenville SC is to Columbia SC.-Carlee Steppe Th South is not necesarily as culturally deprived as people think. Go to Charleston, you see Gullah people. Go to Atlanta, you see the largest Asian population in the East. Go to Asheville, you see the most eco-friendly people in the country. -Kelsey I complete agree with you! It seems that when people think of The South all they think of is trailer parks and beer but we have the oldest culture in America. Florida and Louisana have drastic French Influence and South Carolina had one of the biggest ports in America during the Rev. War. Most of the Civil War was fought in the South and we appreciate our cultural idenity more then any other part of the country. -Carlee Steppe Southern Identity in the book The Civil War and Reconstruction devastated many of these once great Southern families economically, socially, and psychologically. Faulkner contends that in the process, the Compsons, and other similar Southern families, lost touch with the reality of the world around them and became lost in a haze of self-absorption. This self-absorption corrupted the core values these families once held dear and left the newer generations completely unequipped to deal with the realities of the modern world. We see this corruption running rampant in the Compson family. Mr. Compson has a vague notion of family honor--something he passes on to Quentin, but is mired in his alcoholism and maintains a fatalistic belief that he cannot control the events that befall his family. Mrs. Compson is just as self-absorbed, wallowing in hypochondria and self-pity and remaining emotionally distant from her children. Quentin's obsession with old Southern morality renders him paralyzed and unable to move past his family's sins. Caddy tramples on the Southern notion of feminine purity and indulges in promiscuity, as does her daughter. Jason wastes his cleverness on self-pity and greed, striving constantly for personal gain but with no higher aspirations. Benjy commits no real sins, but the Compsons’ decline is physically manifested through his retardation and his inability to differentiate between morality and immorality. The Compsons’ corruption of Southern values results in a household that is completely devoid of love, the force that once held the family together. Both parents are distant and ineffective. Caddy, the only child who shows an ability to love, is eventually disowned. Though Quentin loves Caddy, his love is neurotic, obsessive, and overprotective. None of the men experience any true romantic love, and are thus unable to marry and carry on the family name

Water/Clocks
Water-cleansing and purity-Caddy. ex. Playing in the stream as a child, Caddy was full purity and innocence. Then- her underclothes get muddie, which foreshadows Caddy’s later promiscuity. Benjy gets upset when he first smells Caddy wearing perfume. Still a virgin at this point, Caddy washes the perfume off, symbolically washing away her sin. Likewise, she washes her mouth out with soap after Benjy catches her on the swing with Charlie. Once Caddy loses her virginity, she knows that no amount of water or washing can cleanse her. Quentin eventually commits suicide by drowing. Cleansing the world of himself.

* I know water is said to symbolize Caddy's personal cleansing and purity. That once she loses her virginity, the once cleansing water seems to lose its purifying power. However, on a broader spectrum could the water also represent the cleansing of the Compson family and the purification to its old grandure? Maybe Caddy losing her virginity represented failure of the Compson familie's last hope of restoration? Might be a stretch, but what do you think?* -Tom Broyles

Thanks, Tom, for posing this question. I think you might be on to something here. I would encourage the rest of your group to respond, and also the rest of the class. I think the water represents a lot more than just cleansing of Caddy's life. If taken in context of Quentin's chapter, it could be connected with drowning, and so perhaps the family is drowning, as is the life of the Old South. Times change. Life begins and ends. Cultures go through upheaval. Just like our own culture, mores (folkways of central importance accepted without question and embodying the fundamental moral views of a group) might stay around through the changes as a kind of folk knowledge, but eventually they die in their persistence. Maybe the water symbolizes a tabalarasa of sorts. --Mrs. Atkins

Quentin’s watch is a gift from his father, who hopes that it will alleviate Quentin’s feeling that he must devote so much attention to watching time himself. Quentin is unable to escape his preoccupation with time, with or without the watch. Because the watch once belonged to Mr. Compson, it constantly reminds Quentin of the glorious heritage his family considers so important. The watch’s incessant ticking symbolizes the constant inexorable passage of time. Quentin futilely attempts to escape time by breaking the watch, but it continues to tick even without its hands, haunting him even after he leaves the watch behind in his room Quentin is obssessed with clocks.-CarleeSteppe


 * 1) Clocks are the markers of the historical past. If the clock keeps ticking, then things that happen before "now" have to have happened "then." If you want to run with this (and oh, believe us, Quentin does), then without any clocks, there wouldn’t be any difference between the present and the past. If there’s no "today," then how can there be a "yesterday"?
 * 2) (What Quentins father said to him as he gave him the watch) Faulkner writes, "I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it." The watch (and time itself) continues to gain symbolic meaning -Brittany Brown

Quentin's need to always have watch might have to do with the fact that he can't let go of the past and can't move forward into the future. He wants to be able to have a physical representation of his fate.-Carlee Steppe

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Also, Quentin's fixation on time could be because of his traditional southern values. He tries to hold onto old tradition, while the rest of the world around him is modernizing. By hearing the belltower ringing and his watch ticking, it's signifying that time is going by and things are changing.=====

Shadows/Blood
Seen primarily in Benjy’s and Quentin’s sections, shadows imply that the present state of the Compson family is merely a shadow of its past greatness. Shadows serve as a subtle reminder of the passage of time, as they slowly shift with the sun through the course of a day. Quentin is particularly sensitive to shadows, a suggestion of his acute awareness that the Compson name is merely a shadow of what it once was---Carlee Steppe

To add onto Carlee's post about Quentin's shadow, I believe the shadow is directly related to Quentin's perception of time. As we know the watch was passed down from Quentin's father and represents Quentin's perception of time, not neccesarily what time is in reality. It could be seen as a constant reminder of lost time or the "times" in which Quentin's father lived at the peak of the Compson families wealth and prestige. Similarly, the reoccuring theme of the shadow (as stated above by Carlee) suggests the Compson boy's "acute awareness that the Compson name is merely a shadow of what it once was." -Tom Broyles


 * //Assignment://**
 * //1. Using the website//****//s listed on the "assignments" page, explore aspects of or perspectives on Faulkner's life and the culture of the South. Look at the webpage in detail and then write a brief summary of what you discover. If there are images on the website, analyze them-what kind of image is it (graph, photograph, etc.) and what does it reveal about the subject? What does it obscure? As you gather your thoughts and learn new information, begin to think in terms of digital storytelling. How can you relate what you have learned to each of your other class members (as well as a select outside audience) through digital media? I would like you to consider creating a short video on what you have learned. Remember to sign your work after you post it.//**


 * //2. Consider the following symbols in the novel (especially Quentin's chapter): watches/clocks water, Quentin's shadow, and blood. Respond to and discuss the following questions:.//**
 * **//What makes the image symbolic?//**
 * **//Why and how does the symbol trigger time shifts throughout the chapter?//**
 * **//What does the symbol suggest about Quentin's mental state?//**
 * **//How does the symbol help to clarify this chapter's plot?//**


 * //3. Record important aspects on this wiki. Then answer the following questions://**
 * **//What effect does Quentin's suicide have on the Compson family at large?//** Basically, his death assures the Compson family demise because after his fathers death he was the next one to carry on the family name after his death there will be no resurection of the Compson family. -Brittany
 * What do all of these symbols suggest about the Compson family?
 * How does the declining Compson family reflect the changing Old South? the once prominent Compson family and the deterioration of the Southern aristocratic class since the Civil War.- Brittany Brown

Something to remember: After the civil war the south had to pay for damages and losses to the north (south had money prior to civil war because of trade and production, farming ect.) which put the south into poverty and increased production and movement to the north inturn created the industrial revolution and majority of wealth was in the north with major industry. Took quite a while after wwll for the south to even reach a level close to the northern industry. -Brittany

Is it ironic that Quentin is the one in college up north but the only one in his family who still holds traditional southern values? I'm not sure how college was during this time period, but nowadays it seems like college changes a lot of people's views. -Kelsey