In the second section of the novel Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez tells us a twisted story of love, obsession, and what it means to grow up. He crafts a setting—nineteenth century Columbia—and uses the binding culture and rule of courtship in said setting to produce a believable tale of desperate young infatuation. Márquez uses powerful language to portray the obsessive love of a meek bastard child named Florentino Ariza for the beautiful, charming, and maturing Fermina Daza.
Surrounded by a culture with a very rigid standard for the behavior of young women, Fermina Daza barely has room to breathe. Every time Márquez tells us about the girl, she is engaged in a routine activity, such as her walk to school or her daily reading lessons with her aunt. Never do we see playing, by herself or with other kids, like children should. She is always with her Aunt Escolástica, “and her behavior indicated that she was permitted no distraction” (56). Her father is so oppressive, he does not even permit her to go to a local dance “a few days after their arrival in the city” (57). When Florentino Ariza appears in her life, he is likely a delightful distraction for the girl. He is her break from her routine. However, caught up in games with her Aunt, like locating which spot Florentino is watching her from each day, Fermina doesn’t notice when “the diversion [becomes] a preoccupation and her blood [froths] with the need to see him” (58). Her intelligence, hindered by boredom from repetition, becomes a breeding ground for curiosity, and said curiosity has the potential to consume her.
Curiosity grows and eventually moves into obsession on both sides when Florentino and Fermina begin exchanging letters. When Aunt Escolástica tells her that Florentino will likely give her a letter, her curiosity is evident in her prayers to God that he will have “the courage to hand her the letter just so she could know what it said” (59). When the exchange finally takes place, the small letter leaves her rereading it and rereading it to try and find more, to satisfy her lust for information about the mysterious suitor. Márquez foreshadows the infatuation to come by saying, “his mysterious resources had awakened in her a curiosity that was difficult to resist, but she had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love” (66). As their letter exchange becomes a daily happening, they are both infected by love in the form of curiosity, each wondering what the next letter will say. Fermina Daza has found something to occupy her mind rather than school; she often tries to write notes in class. She is either waiting to see what a letter says or wondering what to write back. The need to hide her letters from school nuns and her father also adds a certain thrill. Her life up until the entrance of Florentino Ariza had been dominated by her father’s goal to, “turn his daughter into a great lady” and the “appearance of Florentino Ariza had been an unforeseen obstacle in his hard-fought plan” (81). What is an obstacle to Lorenzo Daza’s is a beautiful form of entertainment for Fermina Daza.
When Fermina's father discovers the love between her and Florentino and takes her away on a long journey, his goal is that she will forget her love of Florentino. In essence, he uproots her entire life. She has no sense of the familiar; on their long mule ride, she laments that she will miss “the consolation of his letters” (83). Stolen from everything she knows, she cannot help but burst into tears when she finally reaches her cousin’s house and find eleven letters from her love waiting for her. Being that all her belongings fell into a ravine with a line of mules on her journey with her father, the letters are literally her only connection to home. Feeling secure in her correspondence with the man she believes she will marry, Fermina “[learns] about herself, she [feels] free for the first time, she [feels] herself befriended and protected” (87). She is learning to live without love; Florentino is no longer her escape from boredom, but rather a comforting tie to what she has left behind. Márquez tells us how Fermina learns that “one could be happy not only without love, but despite it” (87), foreshadowing that Fermina will no longer need Florentino when she finally returns. At age seventeen, her father finally decides to go home, and he “[turns] over to [Fermina] the keys to [her] life” (97). No longer oppressed, free to roam the market, free to live her life with all her god-given grace and beauty, Florentino suddenly becomes an annoying reminder of her younger years. The moment he appears, interrupting her blissful afternoon, she realizes that she no longer has any want or need for the obsessive love of Florentino Ariza in her life. (829)
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The Lost Savior
Quentin Compson wants to be a hero. He has grown up in a southern family where he was taught southern values—what it means to be a gentleman or a lady. Ladies should be pure, and gentlemen should respect such modesty. Unfortunately, Quentin is a tragic and weak character that is utterly ripped apart by his sister’s failure to adhere to such standards. He is alone in his views and rarely taken seriously. Through Quentin, Faulkner portrays his own view of southern values: they are useless and hopeless.
From a very young age, Quentin is obsessed with the purity of ladies, especially in the case of his sister. When Caddy was only seven, she was playing in the river and realized she was getting her dress wet. Her solution was to take it off; Quentin demanded that she not. When she defies him, “Quentin [slaps] her” (18). His passion for ladylike modesty was not just a phase of his young-adult life, but rather a lifelong obsession. As a Harvard student, his friends mockingly refer to him as the “champion of dames” (167) after he punches a companion for talking indecently about the girls he’s been with. The fight is the second Quentin has gotten into for the sake of defending a lady’s honor, and both times, he’s suffered a miserable defeat. Every time Quentin tries to be the “champion of dames”, he only becomes more and more pathetic in our eyes.
Quentin’s greatest depression comes from the rejection of his beloved ideas from within his own family. Caddy’s promiscuity hurts him deeply. Quentin cannot accept the idea that she willingly lost her virginity outside of wedlock. His first reaction is to start making excuses for Caddy, begging her to tell him, “did he make you then he made you do it let him he was stronger than you and he tomorrow Ill kill him… Caddy you hate him dont you dont you” (151). Quentin’s sense of honor and purity is so warping that he’d rather believe his sister was raped than that she willingly gave herself to the man she loved. Even more devastating to Quentin is how unenthusiastic Caddy is in her responses. He is hysterical, and she is barely paying attention. When Quentin suggests a double suicide as a way to escape, she puts up no struggle, just agrees. As readers, we get the sense she doesn’t even look up when he holds the knife to her throat. Later, when Quentin declares that he wishes Caddy were dead, her only response is, “do you you coming in now” (157). Quentin is trapped in a world where he is isolated by his ideals and never taken seriously. Even when he mentions extremes, such as suicide or wishing Caddy were dead, she barely acknowledges that he’s said anything at all. His words hold no weight. Quentin wants to be the hero, and yet every action in his life is like a rock dropped in a pond that makes no ripple at all.
The isolation that finally drives Quentin over the edge is that he feels from his father. As readers, we know he is most tortured by such memories because they are his first upon waking and his last before the section ends, just before he commits suicide. Still horrified that his sister has lost her virginity, Quentin declares to his father that it was incest. He is trying to be the hero. He wants to take the blame and therefore save his sister from shame and dishonor. Instead of rescuing her, however, he is only ridiculed by his father, who tells him, “you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm” (177). Even more insulting, his father tells him that he will soon forget all about it, and that this only bothering him so much now because, “you cannot bear to think that someday it will no longer hurt you like this” (177). Quentin’s father does not understand that Quentin has been obsessed with southern morals since he was a child. What Quentin sees as serious, his loved ones find trivial; when Quentin tries to take action, he has no effect. In the end, unable to continue being so trapped in his solitude, Quentin chooses to commit suicide. (712)
From a very young age, Quentin is obsessed with the purity of ladies, especially in the case of his sister. When Caddy was only seven, she was playing in the river and realized she was getting her dress wet. Her solution was to take it off; Quentin demanded that she not. When she defies him, “Quentin [slaps] her” (18). His passion for ladylike modesty was not just a phase of his young-adult life, but rather a lifelong obsession. As a Harvard student, his friends mockingly refer to him as the “champion of dames” (167) after he punches a companion for talking indecently about the girls he’s been with. The fight is the second Quentin has gotten into for the sake of defending a lady’s honor, and both times, he’s suffered a miserable defeat. Every time Quentin tries to be the “champion of dames”, he only becomes more and more pathetic in our eyes.
Quentin’s greatest depression comes from the rejection of his beloved ideas from within his own family. Caddy’s promiscuity hurts him deeply. Quentin cannot accept the idea that she willingly lost her virginity outside of wedlock. His first reaction is to start making excuses for Caddy, begging her to tell him, “did he make you then he made you do it let him he was stronger than you and he tomorrow Ill kill him… Caddy you hate him dont you dont you” (151). Quentin’s sense of honor and purity is so warping that he’d rather believe his sister was raped than that she willingly gave herself to the man she loved. Even more devastating to Quentin is how unenthusiastic Caddy is in her responses. He is hysterical, and she is barely paying attention. When Quentin suggests a double suicide as a way to escape, she puts up no struggle, just agrees. As readers, we get the sense she doesn’t even look up when he holds the knife to her throat. Later, when Quentin declares that he wishes Caddy were dead, her only response is, “do you you coming in now” (157). Quentin is trapped in a world where he is isolated by his ideals and never taken seriously. Even when he mentions extremes, such as suicide or wishing Caddy were dead, she barely acknowledges that he’s said anything at all. His words hold no weight. Quentin wants to be the hero, and yet every action in his life is like a rock dropped in a pond that makes no ripple at all.
The isolation that finally drives Quentin over the edge is that he feels from his father. As readers, we know he is most tortured by such memories because they are his first upon waking and his last before the section ends, just before he commits suicide. Still horrified that his sister has lost her virginity, Quentin declares to his father that it was incest. He is trying to be the hero. He wants to take the blame and therefore save his sister from shame and dishonor. Instead of rescuing her, however, he is only ridiculed by his father, who tells him, “you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm” (177). Even more insulting, his father tells him that he will soon forget all about it, and that this only bothering him so much now because, “you cannot bear to think that someday it will no longer hurt you like this” (177). Quentin’s father does not understand that Quentin has been obsessed with southern morals since he was a child. What Quentin sees as serious, his loved ones find trivial; when Quentin tries to take action, he has no effect. In the end, unable to continue being so trapped in his solitude, Quentin chooses to commit suicide. (712)
The Simple View
Because of the precision with which William Faulkner crafted The Sound and the Fury, we know that Benjy’s point-of-view coming first out of the four was no accident. Every aspect of Faulkner’s novel—every word, every sentence—has a purpose, a reason for existing. The order of characters’ sections is no exception. Benjy is drastically different from the other characters; his mind has not evolved beyond that of a two-year-old’s. So why did Faulkner choose his point-of-view over any of the other Compson children’s? Because of Benjy’s mental condition, his ideas concerning what has happened in his lifetime will be the simplest, the least judgmental, and the first impressions Faulkner wants us as readers to establish in our minds.
One of the primary reasons Benjy’s point-of-view is used first is to establish a love and respect in our minds for Caddy. Benjy adores his older sister; as children, he would wait every day at the front gate for her to come home from school. Versh, Benjy’s caretaker when they were children, tells Caddy on one such day that nobody “[could] keep him in…. He kept on until they let him go and he come right straight down here, looking through the gate” (7). Caddy showers Benjy in love and affection. She sleeps with him even after the parents tell Benjy he’s too old to share a bed with Caddy and beats Jason up on the night he cuts up Benjy’s paper dolls. She is his beloved hero. Through Benjy’s eyes, our first glimpses of Caddy are from her younger days when she would outwit the other children into doing whatever she said. She was a bossy little troublemaker that we learned to love because of how sweet she always was to Benjy. In her quote, “It’s a party. Frony dont know anything about it. He wants your lightning bugs, T.P. Let him hold it awhile” (36), we see Caddy caring for Benjy even in the midst of being a know-it-all brat. The scenes involving Caddy entrance the reader; the section revolves around her, even though the thoughts and memories belong to Benjy.
Faulkner’s reason for creating such a positive image of Caddy at first is that her downfall and eventual departure become all the more tragic for us as readers. As Benjy’s mind switches from present to past, we eventually realize that Caddy is gone from his life, and after loving her along with Benjy, we miss her too. Benjy is longing for her in every moment of his day; he cries when he hears the golfers calling to their caddies. Through Benjy’s progressing memories, brought on by his longing, we watch his beloved childhood Caddy becoming a young woman. The fact that Caddy is growing older and Benjy can only stay the same age causes and irreparable separation between the two. For example, the first time Caddy wears perfume, Benjy is horrified; throughout his fondest memories of Caddy, he constantly tells us that “Caddy smelled like trees” (42). The fact that she has a new smell scares Benjy, because he doesn’t want his big sister to change. Unfortunately, neither of them can do anything to stop her changing. Benjy has no way of understanding that Caddy is eventually married off and sent away because she has shamed her family. He just wants his playmate—the girl who gave him the only true love he ever received—to come home. As readers, our hearts break to know that Caddy can never come home. Even if she did, she wouldn’t be the same girl Benjy remembered. He has lost her forever and is doomed to live his life in his memories of her. (612)
One of the primary reasons Benjy’s point-of-view is used first is to establish a love and respect in our minds for Caddy. Benjy adores his older sister; as children, he would wait every day at the front gate for her to come home from school. Versh, Benjy’s caretaker when they were children, tells Caddy on one such day that nobody “[could] keep him in…. He kept on until they let him go and he come right straight down here, looking through the gate” (7). Caddy showers Benjy in love and affection. She sleeps with him even after the parents tell Benjy he’s too old to share a bed with Caddy and beats Jason up on the night he cuts up Benjy’s paper dolls. She is his beloved hero. Through Benjy’s eyes, our first glimpses of Caddy are from her younger days when she would outwit the other children into doing whatever she said. She was a bossy little troublemaker that we learned to love because of how sweet she always was to Benjy. In her quote, “It’s a party. Frony dont know anything about it. He wants your lightning bugs, T.P. Let him hold it awhile” (36), we see Caddy caring for Benjy even in the midst of being a know-it-all brat. The scenes involving Caddy entrance the reader; the section revolves around her, even though the thoughts and memories belong to Benjy.
Faulkner’s reason for creating such a positive image of Caddy at first is that her downfall and eventual departure become all the more tragic for us as readers. As Benjy’s mind switches from present to past, we eventually realize that Caddy is gone from his life, and after loving her along with Benjy, we miss her too. Benjy is longing for her in every moment of his day; he cries when he hears the golfers calling to their caddies. Through Benjy’s progressing memories, brought on by his longing, we watch his beloved childhood Caddy becoming a young woman. The fact that Caddy is growing older and Benjy can only stay the same age causes and irreparable separation between the two. For example, the first time Caddy wears perfume, Benjy is horrified; throughout his fondest memories of Caddy, he constantly tells us that “Caddy smelled like trees” (42). The fact that she has a new smell scares Benjy, because he doesn’t want his big sister to change. Unfortunately, neither of them can do anything to stop her changing. Benjy has no way of understanding that Caddy is eventually married off and sent away because she has shamed her family. He just wants his playmate—the girl who gave him the only true love he ever received—to come home. As readers, our hearts break to know that Caddy can never come home. Even if she did, she wouldn’t be the same girl Benjy remembered. He has lost her forever and is doomed to live his life in his memories of her. (612)
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