Jason Compson

I do believe Jason is a villain. Looking at this from the perspective of Caddy's daughter, Quentin, I definitely think he's a villain. He is openly racist, sexist, and clearly does not think highly of lower classes. Given that Caddy's daughter is girl, he's overly rude to her. Yes, she skips school sometimes to be with boys, but he is just plain mean to her. In the first four pages of the chapter, we encounter unnecessary violence towards her when he is grabbing her by the arm, she tries to slap him, and then he drags her into another room-only just to talk to her about her absence from school. This man is filled with hatred.

The mother of the Compson's also fuels Jason's psychotic doings. By showing her favoritism so openly to Jason only fuels his belief that he can get away with anything. It appears as this is the case as the chapter opens. She tells him not to be too hard on Q, but he is anyway because he knows the mother won't do much to stop him. He also leaves work to follow Q around-again fueled by the belief that he can do whatever he wants without worrying about repercussions.



Jason is clearly the villain. He stops his family from doing what they want or need to do. He constantly is trying to send Benjy to Jackson. He won't let Caddy see her daughter. He hardly mentions his brother Quentin at all. He also speaks ill of his father too. When you add all that he does to Caddy's daughter, he is disgusting. He should be despised by all of his family members and it appears as though he is. When you look at Benjy's and Quentin's chapters, it is apparent that Jason is the villain. He is the wrongdoer of the family and he is a psycho. He needs to get help.

Dos Passos

The Newsreel and Camera Eye sections certainly do offer an interesting piece to Mac. Although it feels easier to disregard these sections as irrelevant to the story, we know Dos Passos has added these sections in his writing for a purpose. There must be a reason why these are present throughout the narrative, but this reason is unclear just on a first read.

The very first Camera Eye section could easily be a memory that Fainy has of him and his mother. Although it is not explicitly stated in the section, it seems reasonable to me that in the next section where Fainy's mother dies, Fainy would have just had a flashback of his mother in a stream of consciousness thought process.

The final Camera Eye section shows the narrator seeing a man reciting Shakespeare's Othello. This could also be a view into the eyes of Fainy inside his mind. Given that Doc Bingham recited Shakespeare on several occasions and it was his recitation of Shakespeare that landed the two of them into trouble in the final few pages of the story, it would seem reasonable again to believe that the Camera Eye sections are through the point of view of Fainy and that these shed insight into what Fainy is really thinking at the times of these incidents.

The Newsreel sections are harder for me to figure out the purpose of. The only idea that pops into my head is that when these sections occur, it also occurs around the same time of when Fainy was reading a newspaper. The sections cover a vast amount of material, most of which are news clippings or happenings of the time when Dos Passos wrote. Alexander's Ragtime Band is mentioned in one of the newsreel sections and this was a song that came out around the time of the publishing of this story.

Although none of these things are stated explicitly throughout the story, this seems most logical to me.