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Quentin Compson is a fictional character created byWilliam Faulkner. He is an intelligent, neurotic, and introspective son of theCompson family. He is featured in the classic novelsThe Sound and the Fury andAbsalom, Absalom! as well as the short stories "That Evening Sun" and "A Justice". After moving north to study atHarvard College, he eventually commitssuicide by drowning himself in theCharles River.
In 1929, Faulkner publishedThe Sound and the Fury which chronicles Quentin's childhood in postbellum Mississippi as well as the last months of his life inCambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University, before hurling himself off a bridge on June 2, 1910. Quentin's thoughts are articulated with Faulkner's innovativestream-of-consciousness technique. In 1936, Faulkner publishedAbsalom, Absalom!, which takes place before Quentin left for Harvard, in which Quentin attempts to solve and reflect on a mysterious tragedy in the past.
Quentin Compson is also the name of his niece, the illegitimate daughter of his sister Candace (Caddy).
A plaque on theAnderson Memorial Bridge (commonly but incorrectly called Larz Anderson Bridge) over theCharles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, commemorates his life and death. The small brass plaque, the size of one brick, is located on the brick wall of the Eastern (Weld Boathouse) side of the bridge, just north of the middle of the bridge span, about eighteen inches from the ground in a small alcove. The text on the plaque has slightly changed as a result of renovations to the bridge; its original and current (as of 2017) text reads:[1]
"QUENTIN COMPSON III
June 2, 1910
Drowned in the fading of honeysuckle."
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