Study Questions
1. What type of land did Thomas Sutpen buy from Ikkemotubbe?

2. Why was Ellen Coldfield crying during her wedding ceremony?

3. In what month and year were Thomas and Ellen Sutpen married?

4. Is Thomas Sutpen a moral character?

5. How many years did the French architect work on the mansion at Sutpen’s Hundred?

6. Why did the French architect live in a tent and eat venison for two years in the wild?

7. The slaves (called “wild negroes”) that Thomas Sutpen owned came from what country?

8. From what viewpoint is Chapter Two narrated?

9. What happened to Thomas Sutpen just before he got married?

10. Why was Sutpen arrested?

Answers
1. The land that Thomas Sutpen bought from Ikkemotubbe is “a hundred square miles of the best virgin bottom land in the country.”

2. Ellen Coldfield was crying because only a few of the 100 guests she had invited attended the wedding.

3. Thomas and Ellen Sutpen were married in June of 1938, five years after Thomas rode into town.

4. Thomas Sutpen is not a moral character because he has no conscience.

5. The French architect worked on the mansion at Sutpen’s Hundred for two years.

6. The architect did not leave because Sutpen did not pay him until it was finished.

7. Thomas Sutpen’s slaves were from Haiti.

8. Chapter Two is narrated first by an omniscient narrator, then through the eyes of Quentin, and later through the words of Quentin’s father, Mr. Compson.

9. Just before he got married, Thomas Sutpen was arrested and thrown in jail, but his future father-in-law bailed him out.

10. It is never told in the novel why Sutpen was arrested.