Quentin Compson III

The fate of this character is placed in the space of one day — June 2, 1910. Quentin's thoughts are turned into the past. He thinks about his sister Caddy, whom he loves very much. A Dalton Ames seduced caddy. Learning about Caddy's pregnancy, he decides to take the blame for himself, to take a terrible accusation of incest.

He does not want her to leave the family, because with her he feels happy. For the sake of saving the honor of his sister and family, Quentin tries to convince his father that incest has happened, however, the father does not believe him. After this Quentin threatens to kill Dalton. Caddy escapes from the house, and from this moment begins the slow destruction of the Compson family. Everything that happened to Quentin’s sister is the collapse of his own life. He realizes that world includes evil and injustice. In order to send Quentin to study at Harvard University, they sell a lawn where his mentally disabled younger brother Benjy likes to play.

One day Quentin meet a poor emigrant girl and buys her bread, sweets and ice cream. For this, he is taken to the police station, accused of lechery and is forced to pay a fine. He understands that nobility, unselfishness, and love are alien and incomprehensible to this world, he painfully worries about the absurdity of it. Has decided to commit suicide, Quentin, in a rage, breaks the clock (a gift from his father) and breaks its arrows, trying to stop the passage of time. Doing this, he is trying to return the world to its former, luminous state.

Time is evil for Quentin; there is neither the present nor the future, it is all turned into the past for him. However, the broken clock continues to go illustrating a merciless truth: time cannot be stopped, the world cannot be corrected.