The Oxford Companion to American Literature | Absalom, Absalom!
Absalom, Absalom!, novel by Faulkner, published in 1936.
The story of Thomas Sutpen and the intricate patterns of other lives involved with his are narrated mainly through Quentin Compson, the grandson of Sutpen's befriender, General Compson. Born to a poor-white family in the West Virginia mountains in 1807, Sutpen runs away at 14 and makes his way to Haiti. There he later marries Eulalia Bon, a planter's daughter, and they have a son, Charles. Discovering his wife's partial black ancestry, Sutpen leaves her and the child, and two years later (1833) appears in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, with a band of wild Haitian blacks. He obtains 100 acres of land questionably from the Chickasaw Indians, creates a plantation, and builds a large house on “Sutpen's Hundred.” As a further part of his grand design to achieve aristocracy, Sutpen marries Ellen Coldfield, of a respectable family, and they have children, Henry and Judith. Years later, at...
[The entire page is 503 words long]
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