How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
There now. Just look at what your grandpa did to that poor old nigger." "Yes," I said. "Now he can spend day after day marching in parades. If it hadn't been for my grandfather, he'd have to work like whitefolks." (2.28-29)
The Civil War looms in the background of most of the racial relations depicted in this text. The after-effects of Reconstruction are discussed here.
Quote #5
But I never knew even a working n***** that you could find when you wanted him, let alone one that lived off the fat of the land. (2.30)
Quentin’s often blatantly over-generalizing – and often racist. Here’s a great example. That’s not to say, though, that he’s also capable of some searing commentaries on the after-effects of slavery.
Quote #6
[…] with that quality about them of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity: that blending of childlike and ready incompetence and paradoxical reliability that tends and protects them it loves out of all reason and robs them steadily and evades responsibility and obligations by means too barefaced to be called subterfuge even and is taken in theft or evasion with only that frank and spontaneous admiration for the victor which a gentleman feels for anyone who beats him in a fair contest, and withal a fond and unflagging tolerance for whitefolks' vagaries like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and troublesome children, which I had forgotten. (2.61)
Is this a positive comment or another overly-generalizing one? It’s hard to tell. Perhaps that’s Quentin’s weakness – or perhaps it’s Faulkner’s.