Backwards Essay

It was interesting while writing my essay for this class, which focuses on the topic of Religion and the Episcopalian hymnal's influence prevalent in Quentin's section of The Sound and the Fury, that all the hymn references Faulkner makes occur on the very first pages of Quentin's section. In my essay I began discussing the hymn verses which Quentin relates to Caddy and the original reason of his shame. This is John Keble’s poem “The voice that breathed o’er Eden,” set to music which discusses the pure bond between a man and woman joined in matrimony and is commonly sung at weddings. I go on to relate it to Genesis 3:8 in the bible of Adam and Eve hiding in shame. Both this hymnal allusion and bible reference, however, happen to be the very last religious allusions Quentin makes if you are going in succession. The next religious reference that I spoke of was the one only paragraphs before that in which Quentin briefly reflects upon Christ and his crucifixion. I relate this latter quote to the direct reference made (again) only paragraphs before where Quentin is recalling his father speaking cynically of St. Francis's "The Canticle of Brother Sun." Here I said that Quentin reflects on sister death as his only other available option. All of these references occur in succession to each other, however, the way that I ended up presenting them in my essay were backwards. At first I was irate thinking that I would have to restructure the entire essay when I went back to put in page numbers to the direct quotes. After some reflection and laughing at myself, however, I realized how indirectly Modernist of me to structure an essay in a backwards manner as if for a tribute to Faulkner. I had connected the dots in my mind to points I wanted to make in my essay using the quotes unknowingly putting them in order backwards, which in the end kind of made sense when related to the backwards novel I was writing the paper about.