Quentin

     Quentin, brother of Caddy and Benjy, narrates the second chapter. The way I see Quentin is that his mind races too fast for his own good. Similarly to Benjy, he doesn’t think in the present, his mind races from one moment to another. However unlike Benjy, he analyzes each thing he thinks about as they come to his mind. He never stops thinking, and his actions often show that he overthinks things.
    It confuses me how Quentin is able to function, and how others see him as a normally functioning person, because of this. He drives himself crazy because he wants to be in control, and he doesn’t want to let natural things, such as time, control him. He even destroys a watch because he wants to feel in control of time. He also likes to focus on other people in hopes that maybe he can help control what they do, such as Caddy.
    Quentin and Benjy both clearly have obsessions with Caddy, but they are very different. While Benjy is obsessed with Caddy because she makes him feel safe and comfortable, Quentin is obsessed with making sure that Caddy stays safe and pure herself. He is very overprotective of her, and when she losses her virginity he freaks out and can’t let it go for the rest of his life. He feels like his reaction and his obsession with the sin is the only thing that can help, but in the end, he just hurts himself.
    When Quentin is thinking about his suicide (p. 169), near the end of his chapter, he is obsessive and trying to regain control. He wants to escape all of his families ideas, and his life, and he thinks the only way to do it is to end his life. Quentin wants to get away from his family itself as well. He is most concerned with fixing all of his problems, which he tries to do before he dies. He thinks that he can clean up the mess that he is bound to leave, and he does so by overthinking things in his life that really don’t matter. He thoughts are almost in the present, but they are also in the past as he looks back at everything else.