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    Absalom, Absalom!: 1 Plot Summary

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    Alexandra Aly Simion
    Absalom, Absalom! is a 1936 novel by William Faulkner that tells the story of Thomas Sutpen and his attempt to establish a dynasty in Jefferson, Mississippi before, during, and after the Civil War. The story is told through multiple narrators in a nonlinear fashion, with differing details that are pieced together over time. This results in uncertainty about the true facts of Sutpen's life, which mirrors how the past is constantly revised through retellings. Sutpen's ambitions and rigid views on race ultimately lead to the downfall of his family and plantation, reflecting the weaknesses of the idealistic Old South.

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    Absalom, Absalom!: 1 Plot Summary

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Aly Simion
    675 views3 pages
    Absalom, Absalom! is a 1936 novel by William Faulkner that tells the story of Thomas Sutpen and his attempt to establish a dynasty in Jefferson, Mississippi before, during, and after the Civil War. The story is told through multiple narrators in a nonlinear fashion, with differing details that are pieced together over time. This results in uncertainty about the true facts of Sutpen's life, which mirrors how the past is constantly revised through retellings. Sutpen's ambitions and rigid views on race ultimately lead to the downfall of his family and plantation, reflecting the weaknesses of the idealistic Old South.

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    Absolom

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    Absalom, Absalom!

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    Absalom, Absalom! is a 1936 novel by William Faulkner that tells the story of Thomas Sutpen and his attempt to establish a dynasty in Jefferson, Mississippi before, during, and after the Civil War. The story is told through multiple narrators in a nonlinear fashion, with differing details that are pieced together over time. This results in uncertainty about the true facts of Sutpen's life, which mirrors how the past is constantly revised through retellings. Sutpen's ambitions and rigid views on race ultimately lead to the downfall of his family and plantation, reflecting the weaknesses of the idealistic Old South.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    675 views3 pages

    Absalom, Absalom!: 1 Plot Summary

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Aly Simion
    Absalom, Absalom! is a 1936 novel by William Faulkner that tells the story of Thomas Sutpen and his attempt to establish a dynasty in Jefferson, Mississippi before, during, and after the Civil War. The story is told through multiple narrators in a nonlinear fashion, with differing details that are pieced together over time. This results in uncertainty about the true facts of Sutpen's life, which mirrors how the past is constantly revised through retellings. Sutpen's ambitions and rigid views on race ultimately lead to the downfall of his family and plantation, reflecting the weaknesses of the idealistic Old South.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    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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