Introduction

Summary

When the train carrying Quentin Compson home from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Jefferson, Mississippi comes to a halt at a road crossing in Virginia, Quentin observes out the window an elderly Black man astride “a mule in the middle of the stiff ruts, waiting for the train to move.” “[M]otionless and unimpatient,” man and mule have “that quality about them of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity,” something only thrown into relief by the train that “wound through rushing gaps and along ledges.”¹ Unimpatient.