Whereas Benjy is completely oblivious of time, Quentin expends all his energy trying to understand time. As the section opens, he is remembering his father's comments about the futility of trying to keep up with time. One of his first acts is that of tearing off the hands of his watch. By this act, Quentin hopes to escape into a timeless world. But he cannot remove himself from time. At the jeweler's, he sees a whole window full of watches. He constantly hears his own watch ticking even though it has no hands. He asks the boys at the river if they know where a clock is. And in the midst of all these connections with time, Quentin is constantly remembering various cynical comments that his father made about time.
The time motif carries significant implications about Quentin's character. Whereas Benjy made no distinction between time past and time present, Quentin is more concerned with trying to understand how time in the past can influence time in the future. His major problem is that his father has told him that time will make a person forget all sorrow and remorse. But Quentin's problem is that he does not want to forget. He must remember his present feelings of bereavement because if he forgets them, the feelings will have no meaning and, as a consequence, Quentin's life will have no meaning. Thus, Quentin tries to stop time from passing, and the only way he can do this is by committing suicide, which he does at the end of his section.
For Jason, time plays such an important role that every second counts. In his section, we have Caddy returning for a five-second glimpse of her child, we see Jason watching the clock and timing his every act, and we have undelivered telegrams, wild chases, and various assignations. Unlike Quentin, Jason sees no importance to the past — except that certain events occurred that deprived him of a position in Herbert Head's bank. Jason's world is in the immediate present. He has rejected all ties and allegiances to the past; he exists only for his own selfish aims in the present moment.
