Welcome, Family

There are two ways to look at any entity, but these two different ways apply especially to families. We can look at them either from the inside of from the outside. Most of the quotes we responded to examine families from the outside. How does a "happy" or an "unhappy" family function in public; how do we perceive it? More specifically, we look at the "roles" that each person seems to have in the family. What is each person's function? We seem to look at everyone's "place." "What is a parent's place, or a dad's place?" we ask. I see this in the quotes about dad playing golf, and about children putting their parents in their places. In my opinion, it is more interesting to look at a family from the inside. The potato quote begins to get at this. It notices that the best parts of a family is hidden. When we look at everything from society's vantage point, we see everybody's "roles" and "places," yet we fail to see the interactions within a family. These interactions actually define the "outer" image that we see. The importance of understanding these hidden interactions is especially evident in The Sound and The Fury, where we see the completely screwed up Compson Family's situation from the eyes of three of its members. It's even more screwed up than we first thought. The final chapter of The Sound and the Fury takes a small step back, written in third person by Faulkner. We do not completely see the family from the outside, though, as we still follow around Dilsey, arguably the only "true" member of the Compson family (after all, she does everything and raises the kids, etc.).

So how does our point of view influence our overall perception of a family? I dunno, that's the question...