Gerald Bland
Character Key Number:
878
Display Name:
Gerald Bland
Sort Name:
Bland, Gerald
Parent Character Key:
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?:
No
Biography:
The only son of Kentucky aristocrats, Gerald Bland is a Harvard University classmate of Quentin Compson. In The Sound and the Fury they come to blows, violently but anti-climatically, when Quentin projects his rage against Caddy's suitors onto him. In many ways Bland is Quentin's polar opposite, the Fortinbras to Quentin Compson's Hamlet-like character: Gerald is adored by his mother, an accomplished lady's man, athletic and decisive. He makes another appearance in "Ad Astra," the war story in which, after going to England as a Rhodes Scholar, he serves as an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. His appearance there is decidedly unheroic.