The shadow motif refers chiefly to Quentin and, to a lesser degree, to Benjy. It refers to the events of the past that are only vaguely understood. As a person, Quentin is obsessed with both the past and the significance that the past has for him. But these actions of the past appear to him only in shadowy form. Thus we return to a Shakespearean line that occurs in the passage in which the title was taken: "Life's but a walking shadow." One critic of Faulkner's writings has pointed out that the word "shadow" appears at least forty-five times in Quentin's monologue (See Carvel Collins, "The Interior Monologues," English Institute Essays, 1952, pp. 29-56). Quentin senses all through this section that he is only a shadow of his ancestors. There are no more generals and governors left among his family. Furthermore, when Quentin tries to accomplish something, the act always seems ridiculous. For example, he tries to make Caddy commit a double suicide, but it is Quentin who fails to bring the act to completion; he tries to make Dalton Ames leave town but, instead, he faints; he tries to convince his father that he committed incest with Caddy, but his father merely laughs at him. All of Quentin's actions are only shadows of real actions, and unlike a tragic protagonist who loses his life at the end of the drama, Quentin takes his life at the mid-point in the novel. The implication is that modern man cannot bring himself to cope with the problems of the final act of the drama and destroys himself in the middle of the drama. Quentin's final act is that of jumping into the river, where his shadow rises from the water below to meet him.
