Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Absalom, Absalom is one of the most successful novels by William Faulkner. Its success, along with the success of The Sound and The Fury paved way for the Nobel prize of literature for William Faulkner. Like his other novels, the story of Absalom, Absalom depicts the deterioration of Southern American society, before, during, and after the American Civil War. It is a southern gothic novel. As the name suggests, Absalom, Absalom is a novel based on Biblical allegorical content. The story involves three families while the central character of the novel is Thomas Sutpen. The title is an allusion to the Biblical King David and his son Absalom, who fought against the empire of King David. The story is narrated by Quentin Compson to his co-student and roommate Sherve at Harvard College. Quentin was also a notable character of The Sound and The Fury and hence, these two novels can be correlated.
Characters of Absalom Absalom!
Thomas Sutpen is the major character of the novel. He buys and develops a plantation named Sutpen’s Hundred at Yoknapatawpah county near Jefferson, Mississippi. He marries Ellen Coldfield to make a dynasty. He is an indomitable, wilful, and powerful man, a shrewd and daring businessman. He is murdered by Wash Jones in 1869.
Charles Bon is the son of Thomas Sutpen and Eulalia Bon. Eulalia is a part-colored daughter of the owner of a Haitian plantation where Thomas Sutpen was an overseer. When Sutpen learns Eulalia’s part black ancestry, he leaves her and their son Charles. Eulalia and Charles then move to New Orleans Henry Sutpen is the son of Thomas Sutpen and Ellen Coldfield. He is the legitimate heir of Sutpen’s Hundred. Judith Sutpen is Thomas and Ellen’s daughter. She is a strong-willed and determined young girl who falls in love with Charles Bon. Goodhue Coldfield is a methodist and respectful merchant, father of Ellen and Rosa Coldfield. Rosa Coldfield is the younger daughter of Goodhue, she is 27 years younger than Ellen. Clytemnestra (Clytie) is another daughter of Thomas Sutpen by a slave woman.
General Compson is the grandfather of Quentin Compson, a friend of Thomas Sutpen. He tells a great deal about Sutpen. Jason Compson III (Mr. Compson) is the son of General Compson, the father of Quentin Compson. He tells part of the story of Thomas Sutpen. Quentin Compson is a young student at Harvard College who tried to tell what the South is like by telling the story of Thomas Sutpen to his friend and roommate Sherve.
Summary of Absalom, Absalom!
The novel depicts the story of Thomas Sutpen which is narrated by various narrators in parts and each part offers a different insight into the life, success, and failure of Thomas Sutpen. Quentin Compson tells this story to Sherve, his roommate with his own interpretations. Quentin learned about Sutpen through Rosa Coldfield. His grandfather was a close friend of Sutpen and he also told his stories to Quentin. Mr. Compson, father of Quentin also narrates a part of Sutpen’s story.
The story of Sutpen is offered in nonchronological order and it begins with Sutpen arriving in Jefferson, Mississippi with some slaves and a French architect whom he managed to work for him. Sutpen buys 100 square miles of land from a local native American tribe and starts building his plantation along with a huge mansion within it. From his early days, Thomas Sutpen had learned that money and power can let a man have all the pleasures that they want. His only desire is to create a huge fortune and have able an able heir to establish his dynasty. To achieve his aim, he decides to marry. He makes friends with a local reputed merchant Mr. Coldfield and proposes to marry his elder daughter Ellen Coldfield. With time, Ellen offers him two children, a son named Henry and a daughter named Judith. Thomas loves his kids and cares a lot for them.
As Henry grows young, he decides to go to the University of Mississippi for higher studies. At the University, he meets Charles Bon and though Charles is ten years senior to him, Henry makes a close friendship with him. He invites and takes Charles to Sutpen’s Hundred for the Christmas leaves. At Sutpen’s Hundred, Charles wins the hearts of everybody with his suave mannerism. Judith starts liking him and soon they fall in love. Charles and Judith express their desire to marry and initially, everybody agrees to the engagement. However, Thomas realizes that Charles appears too much familiar to him. He decides to know more about him and realizes that Charles Bon is his own son from his earlier marriage during the days he used to work as an overseer at a Haitian plantation.
He remembers how he married the daughter of the owner of the Haitian plantation where he used to work. He had a son from his first marriage. However, soon he came to know that his wife, Eulalia Bon was of mixed breed and she had 1/16th lack blood in her birth. Thomas Sutpen couldn’t accept this betrayal and decided to nullify his marriage with Eulalia and leave his wife and son. However, he leaves all his wealth and fortune that he made in Haiti to his wife and son as moral compensation. Eulalia takes her son Charles to New Orleans to start a new life.
Though the family accepts Thomas Sutpen’s decision to cancel the engagement of Charles and Judith, Henry is not satisfied by it and Judith turns rebellious. Henry decides to confront his father and ask for the reason for his opposition to Judith’s marriage with Charles. Sutpen reveals that Charles is Henry’s and Judith’s half-brother, his own son. Henry feels heartbroken. He refuses to believe Thomas and repudiates his birthright. Then he goes away with Charles to his home in New Orleans.
After some time, Charles and Henry return to the University of Mississippi where they enroll as soldiers in the Confederate Army to fight in the Civil War. During the war, Henry continues to face the dilemma of love between his sister Judith and his friend and half-brother Charles. Ultimately, he takes the side of Judith and Charles and decides to let them marry. When Thomas Sutpen comes to know this, he meets Charles and tells him why he left his first wife Eulalia and son Charles. He reveals that Eulalia had part-colored black ancestry and hence Charles is also not pureblood but a mixed breed. This changes Henry’s view about Charles and Judith. Thomas says that Henry must do everything possible to stop them from marrying and Henry agrees. As the Civil War ends, Henry enacts his father's interdiction of marriage between Charles and Judith, killing Charles at the gates to the mansion and then fleeing into self-exile.
Thomas Sutpen also returns from the war and finds out that wanderer northerner Carpetbeggars have captured most of his land and his famous Sutpen's Hundred is now limited to only a square mile area. His wife has already died and his son Henry is in exile. To repair his dynasty again, he proposes Rosa Coldfield, the younger daughter of Ellen to marry him. While Rosa accepts his proposal of marriage, Thomas Sutpen lays a strange and insulting demand that Rosa must bear him a son before the wedding takes place. Rosa declines and she is forced to leave Sutpen Hundred. Thomas makes a cordial relationship with Wash Jones, a squatter who lives on Sutpen’s plantation, and makes an affair with Milly, the 15-year-old granddaughter of Wash Jones. He only desires to have a son, an heir to his fortune but much to his dismay, Milly gives birth to a daughter. On the same night, a female horse in his stable sired a male horse. In his disappointment, Sutpen insults Milly and casts her out of his mansion. He tells her that she and her daughter is not worthy of sleeping even in his stable where a horse gave birth to a male. Milly goes to her grandfather and when Wash Jones hears all this, he feels betrayed and anguished. In his anger, he murders Thomas Sutpen before murdering his own granddaughter and her daughter. Finally, he commits suicide while resisting arrest.
When Quentin comes to know about these tragedies, he decides to visit Sutpen’s Hundred and takes Rosa back to her home. There Quentin and Rosa find Henry and Clytemnestra. Henry is very ill as he suffers in his exile. Clytemnestra, being his half-sister tries to help him. When Rosa finds them, she feels very sad and returns to bring back some medical aid to help and save Henry. However, when Rosa returns with medical men after some three months, Clytemnestra mistakes them to be law enforcement men trying to capture the remaining of Sutpen’s Hundred. She starts firing against them and soon a gunbattle erupts in which Henry and Clytemnestra both die. Now, none of the Sutpen’s family members remains alive except one black grandson of Charles Bon, a young man who is mentally handicapped. His name is Jim Bon and he lives on the Sutpen’s Hundred.
Analysis of Absalom, Absalom!
The story of Thomas Sutpen is told by different characters with their perspective while none of them know the truth about Sutpen. Rosa Coldfield depicts him as a harsh coldblooded man with no compassion. She blames him for ruining Sutpen’s family by rejecting Charles Bon’s marriage to Judith. However, she is unaware of the truth of Charles Bon and doesn’t know that Judith and Charles had the same father and their relationship was incestual. She further doesn’t know that Charles Bon was of mixed breed. Henry opposes his father and agrees to the marriage of Judith and Charles even after knowing that they are brothers and sisters. But when he comes to know about the part black blood of Charles Bon, he decides to oppose their marriage and murders Charles Bon.
The whole story is allegorical and reminds the story of King David and his son Absalom. Absalom was the third son of biblical King David who also had a sister named Tamara. Absalom was the most handsome man in King David’s empire while Tamara was the most beautiful girl. Her half-brother Amnon, who was the eldest son of King David rapes her. Absalom decides to take revenge against him and kills him after two years. In the novel, Thomas Sutpen is depicted as King David while Henry allegorically appears like Absalom who murders Charles Bon, the eldest son of Thomas Sutpen for having an incestuous relationship with his sister. However, while Henry decides to accept incest between Judith and Charles, he couldn’t accept Charles Bon’s partial black blood. This shows the typical hatred of the South against blacks during the times of the Civil War.
This is it about Absalom, Absalom! We will continue to discuss American English Literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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