Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom! is a novel by the American author

William Faulkner, rst published in 1936. Taking place
before, during, and after the Civil War, it is a story about
three families of the American South, with a focus on the
life of Thomas Sutpen.

that Charles Bon is his son from an earlier marriage and

moves to stop the proposed union.
Sutpen had worked on a plantation in the French West Indies as overseer and, after subduing a slave uprising, was
oered the hand of the plantation owners daughter, Eulalia Bon. She bore him a son, Charles. Sutpen had not
known that Eulalia was of mixed race until after the marriage and birth of Charles, but when he found out that he
had been deceived, he renounced the marriage as void and
left his wife and child (though leaving them his fortune
as part of his own moral recompense). The reader also
later learns of Sutpens childhood, when young Thomas
learned that society could base human worth on material
worth. It is this episode that sets into motion Thomas
plan to start a dynasty.

Plot summary

Absalom, Absalom! details the rise and fall of Thomas

Sutpen, a white man born into poverty in West Virginia
who comes to Mississippi with the complementary aims
of gaining wealth and becoming a powerful family patriarch. The story is told entirely in ashbacks narrated
mostly by Quentin Compson to his roommate at Harvard
University, Shreve, who frequently contributes his own
suggestions and surmises. The narration of Rosa Coldeld, and Quentins father and grandfather, are also included and re-interpreted by Shreve and Quentin, with
the total events of the story unfolding in nonchronological order and often with diering details. This results in
a peeling-back-the-onion revelation of the true story of
the Sutpens. Rosa initially narrates the story, with long
digressions and a biased memory, to Quentin Compson,
whose grandfather was a friend of Sutpens. Quentins father then lls in some of the details to Quentin. Finally,
Quentin relates the story to his roommate Shreve, and
in each retelling, the reader receives more details as the
parties esh out the story by adding layers. The nal effect leaves the reader more certain about the attitudes and
biases of the characters than about the facts of Sutpens
story.

Henry, possibly because of his own potentially (and mutually) incestuous feelings for his sister, as well as quasiromantic feelings for Charles himself, is keen to see the
two wed (allowing him to imagine himself as surrogate
for both). When Sutpen tells Henry that Charles is his
half-brother and that Judith must not be allowed to marry
him, Henry refuses to believe it, repudiates his birthright,
and accompanies Charles to his home in New Orleans.
They then return to Mississippi to enlist in their University company, joining the Confederate Army to ght in
the Civil War. During the war, Henry wrestles with his
conscience until he presumably resolves to allow the marriage of half-brother and sister; this resolution changes,
however, when Sutpen reveals to Henry that Charles is
part black. At the conclusion of the war, Henry enacts
his fathers interdiction of marriage between Charles and
Judith, killing Charles at the gates to the mansion and then
Thomas Sutpen arrives in Jeerson, Mississippi, with eeing into self-exile.
some slaves and a French architect who has been some- Thomas Sutpen returns from the war and begins to repair
how forced into working for him. Sutpen obtains one his dynasty and his home, whose hundred square miles
hundred square miles of land from a local Native Ameri- have been reduced by carpetbaggers and punitive northcan tribe and immediately begins building a large planta- ern action to one. He proposes to Rosa Coldeld, his dead
tion called Sutpens Hundred, including an ostentatious wifes younger sister, and she accepts. However, Sutpen
mansion. All he needs to complete his plan is a wife insults Rosa by demanding that she bear him a son before
to bear him a few children (particularly a son to be his the wedding takes place, prompting her to leave Sutpens
heir), so he ingratiates himself with a local merchant and Hundred. Sutpen then begins an aair with Milly, the
marries the mans daughter, Ellen Coldeld. Ellen bears 15-year-old granddaughter of Wash Jones, a squatter who
Sutpen two children, a son named Henry and a daughter lives on the Sutpen property. The aair continues unnamed Judith, both of whom are destined for tragedy.
til Milly becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter.
Henry goes to the University of Mississippi and meets Sutpen is terribly disappointed, because the last hope of
fellow student Charles Bon, who is ten years his senior. repairing his Sutpen dynasty rested on Milly giving birth
Henry brings Charles home for Christmas, and Charles to a son. Sutpen casts Milly and the child aside, telling
and Judith begin a quiet romance that leads to a pre- them that they are not worthy of sleeping in the stables
sumed engagement. However, Thomas Sutpen realizes with his horse, who had just sired a male. An enraged
1

4 NOTES

Wash Jones kills Sutpen, his own granddaughter, and Sut- The use of Quentin Compson as the primary perspecpens newborn daughter, and is in turn killed by the posse tive (if not exactly the focus) of the novel makes it somethat arrives to arrest him.
thing of a companion piece to Faulkners earlier work The
The story of Thomas Sutpens legacy ends with Quentin Sound and the Fury, which tells the story of the Compson
taking Rosa back to the seemingly abandoned Sutpens Family, with Quentin as a main character. Although the
Hundred plantation, where they nd Henry Sutpen and action of that novel is never explicitly referenced, the
Clytemnestra (Clytie), the daughter of Thomas Sutpen Sutpen familys struggle with dynasty, downfall, and poby a slave woman. Henry has returned to the estate to tential incest parallel the familial events and obsessions
that drive Quentin and Miss Rosa Coldeld to witness the
die. Three months later, when Rosa returns with medi[5]
cal help for Henry, Clytie mistakes them for law enforce- burning of Sutpens Hundred.
ment and starts a re that consumes the plantation and
kills Henry and herself. The only remaining Sutpen is
Jim Bond, Charles Bons black grandson, a young man 3 Inuence and signicance
with severe mental handicaps, who remains on Sutpens
Hundred.
Absalom, Absalom, along with The Sound and the Fury,
helped Faulkner win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In
2009, a panel of judges called Absalom, Absalom! the
best Southern novel of all time.[6]

Analysis

The title refers to the Biblical story of Absalom, a son

of David who rebelled against his father (then King of
Like other Faulkner novels, Absalom, Absalom! allego- Kingdom of Israel) and who was killed by Davids general
rizes Southern history; the title itself is an allusion to a Joab in violation of Davids order to deal gently with his
wayward son ghting the empire his father built. The son, causing heartbreak to David.
history of Thomas Sutpen mirrors the rise and fall of
Southern plantation culture. Sutpens failures necessar- The 1983 Guinness Book of World Records says the
ily reect the weaknesses of an idealistic South. Rigidly "Longest Sentence in Literature is a sentence from Abcommitted to his design, Sutpen proves unwilling to salom, Absalom! containing 1,288 words. The sentence
honor his marriage to a part-black woman, setting in mo- can be found in Chapter 6; it begins with the words Just
tion his own destruction. Discussing Absalom, Absalom!, exactly like father, and ends with the eye could not see
Faulkner stated that the curse under which the South from any point. The passage is entirely italicized and
labors is slavery, and Thomas Sutpens personal curse, or incomplete.
aw, was his belief that he was too strong to need to be a
part of the human family.[2]
Absalom, Absalom! juxtaposes ostensible fact, informed
guesswork, and outright speculation, with the implication
that reconstructions of the past remain irretrievable and
therefore imaginative. Faulkner stated that although none
of the narrators got the facts right, since no one individual can look at truth, there is a truth and the reader
can ultimately know it.[3] Most critics have tried to reconstruct this truth behind the shifting narratives, or to
show that such a reconstruction cannot be done with certainty or even to prove that there are factual and logical
inconsistencies that cannot be overcome. But some critics
have stated that, ctional truth being an oxymoron, it is
best to take the story as a given, and regard it on the level
of myth and archetype, a fable that allows us to glimpse
the deepest levels of the unconscious and thus better understand the people who accept (and are ruled by) that
mythSoutherners in general and Quentin Compson in
particular.[4]
By using various narrators expressing their interpretations, the novel alludes to the historical cultural zeitgeist
of Faulkners South, where the past is always present and
constantly in states of revision by the people who tell and
retell the story over time; it thus also explores the process
of myth-making and the questioning of truth.

4 Notes

[1] George Salters Covers #5099. Coverbrowser.com.

Retrieved 2012-09-07.
[2] Remarks on Absalom, Absalom!, p.
Books.google.com. Retrieved 2012-09-07.

287.

[3] Remarks, p. 290. Books.google.com. Retrieved 201209-07.

[4] See M. Boyd, The Reexive Novel: Fiction as Critique, p.
68 .
[5] According to count by R. Poplett Jan 2016.
[6] The Best Southern Novels of All Time, Oxford American, August 27, 2009, accessed August 25, 2010.

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