Notes for 5 May 2016

LITCS 111
Teaching Associate: Patrick Mooney
Bldg. 494, room 160B
Spring 2016

• Interpretive difficulties? Problems? Favorite sections? Raves?
• Opening journal write: What kind of economics is at play here? List every transaction—cash and/or barter— that you can think of in the first section of The Hamlet.
• Opening up The Hamlet ...
  • Faulkner's long-planned story, etc.
  • What do you notice is different about the sentence structure here, as compared to Absalom, Absalom!? What about tone, diction, themes?
  • What's at stake so far in the novel?
  • What role does gossip play?
    • The eponymous Frenchman himself: Even his name was forgotten (and the legend of the gold) (4)
    • Ratliff, Ratliff, Ratliff.
  • What has changed in the South since Sutpen's death? How is the economy different? For that matter, what is the economy like?
    • Patriarchal seignury over the area by Varner (5—6); cf. Sutpen's Hundred.
    • What does barn-burning signify?
    • The $24.68 milk separator: 43, several other places.
    • [...] look at the man whose name a week ago they had never heard, yet with whom in the future they would have to deal for the necessities of living [...] (57–58).
    • the cotton had just just begun to bloom and it would be months yet before there would be any money in the land. (61).
    • the time came when Will Varner made his yearly settlement with his tenants and debtors. (67)
    • So he's working the top and the bottom both at the same time. At that rate it will be a while yet before he has to fall back on you ordinary white folks in the middle. (78)
    • Goat-ranching. (87–88)
  • The geography of Yoknapatawpha County: we're in the SE quadrant for this novel.
  • Characters you've already met: Armstid, Varner, the old Varner place (Light in August); other Snopeses (Cla'ence and Virgil, Sanctuary); Major De Spain (Absalom, Absalom!).
    • Also, so far: Doc Peabody; Vernon and Cora Tull (As I Lay Dying)
• Other points for discussion:
  • Ab Snopes's appearance: My name is Snopes. I heard you got a farm to rent. [...] I can put six hands into the field. [...] I'll take it, he said. (8–10)
  • Jody's plan to defraud Flem and Ab: Take a case like this. [...] And a man that's got habits that way will just have to suffer the disadvantages of them. (12–13)
  • Jody's conversation with Flem: I was hoping to see you, Varner said. [...] You run a store, dont you? [...] Have a cigar, he said. (25–26)
  • Flem's description: a thick squat soft man of no establishable age between twenty and thirty [...] a frantic and desperate warning. [...] By the end of that first week they had all come in and seen him [...] when they looked toward the door, it would be empty. (57)
  • Within a month the new shop had got all the trade which Trumbull had had [...] [...] one goddam barn full of hay? (74)
  • You got to keep in mind he is a northerner. [...] betwixt Jackson and the Tennessee line apparently. (88–89).
• For next time ...
  • You've met Eula, Jody's sister, a soft ample girl with definite breasts eeen at thirteen and eyes like cloudy hothouse grapes and a full damp mouth always slightly open ... (11–12); you should read her section and the section The Long Hot Summer for Tuesday.
  • Ratliff will continue to be an important character; pay attention to him.
  • Be thinking about your term papers.
• Today's whiteboard snapshots
  • Ways of thinking about money
  • Economic transactions so far in The Hamlet