Friday, April 15, 2016

Dishonesty,  cruelty,  and raging feelings of distaste towards others around him describe Jason Compson's disposition. In this section of "The Sound and Fury", we learn a lot about Jason and his view on things.

There is a certain irony in Jason because of the fact that although Jason is truly the most despicable person in the family, he is still somehow considered the best and the only one he still has a chance at his life, according to Mother. To Mother, everyone else in the family is a lost cause who have only caused disappointment and shame to the family, such as Caddy,  Benji, and Quentin.

Through this section of the book,  we see more and more to Jason's evil character. He attempts at discipling Quentin (not to be confused with the older generation male) for her "promiscuous" ways; he is harsh and abusive; he feels no remorse for his actions towards Quentin and the family. Not only is he abusive in his disciplinary skills, we also see how he has been taking the money for himself, that Caddy has sent for her daughter Quentin. Every month he collects this money and doesn't even tell Quentin her mother has been sending letters and money. Jason feels absolutely no remorse for what he is doing.

While although Jason is an evil, spiteful human being, with only selfish and cruel intentions, we learn to love to hate him because with all the horrible deeds he does comes an intriguing personality, that is horrifyingly captivating.

Along with his shady and cruel character, comes a lot of hypocrisy and irony. These two factors go hand in hand and this is evident in the scene where Jason is talking to a costumer at the post office he works at, about how he couldn't care less what religion this costumer might be, but Jason keeps probing at the man to tell what he his and keeps saying "no offense" and immediately talks about how he hates Jews. But of course again restates that he has no prejudices...except for Jews of course.

A lot happens in this chapter that gives more perspectives to the reader as to what the characters are doing and why. We still love Caddy and for her attempts at being a decent mother in the only ways she can, but we learn to hate Jason with a passion yet love the intricacy to his spiteful disposition. This chapter also gives a clearer glimpse into Jason's mind and how much hate he holds inside him.

We can see how towards the end of the chapter Jason's thought processes become less fluid and more rapid, abrupt, and crazy. We can feel and almost understand Jason in a twisted way. Of course he has no right to to do the things he does, but the reader is somehow able to connect with him, maybe not on a personal level, but on a level of understatement.

4 comments:

  1. I agree with you on the fact that even though Jason is awful and the reader hates him, it is hard to not be captivated by the things that he is saying. Sometimes some of the things he said made me laugh because they were so awful and ironic that it was hard for me to take him seriously.

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  2. I really liked what you said about the irony in this chapter because he is a horrible person yet he is the only one "with potential" according to his mother. I also agree that it was a fun chapter to read because some of the things he said were just so ridiculous, and by the end we began to understand his twisted thought processes.

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  3. You're the first person that I've read who has called Jason a hypocrite. It's very suiting for him because he believes himself to be a good person yet spends his days tormenting others for every little mistake.

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  4. I agree with what you said in your post and that Jason is a hypocrite, I thought your comment about irony was spot on and u thought your analysis was great

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