Faulkner uses his character in order to recreate the mentality which existed in the south right before the Civil war. Thomas gets a heir from his first wife, but the fact that she is half black makes him reject her and abandon both her and the baby. Sutpen is a symbol of the south, in which the color of man's skin was determinant of his value. Therefore, being half black, his son is unworthy of his attention and his fortune. Henry, his other son almost convinces himself that his half brother Charles Bon is appropriate to marry their sister Judith until he finds out that he is half black- which leads to his killing. All these details come to the readers from different voices in the novel making the reading experience thrilling and constructing the characters in a complex manner. Through the voice of the characters who tell the story the readers travel back and forth on the temporal axis. Rosa Coldfield becomes the link between the past and the present, belonging to both dimensions. The intervention of the author is made under the form of comments coming from an omniscient third person author. We understand that the writer has a complete knowledge of both the story and the character and that

3

these will be revealed through a puzzle like technique, allowing us to understand the actions which led to the denouement, but also the motivations supporting them.

It must be underlined that the various characters which tell the story have various attitudes towards Thomas. This, together with their different disposition on the time scale (which corresponds...

Actually, the plot is created by the different episodes told by the various characters who have insight upon the story. The technique also helps create a certain mood and atmosphere to the book- which highly contribute to its value, despite the difficulty to follow the thread of action.
Bibliography:

"Absalom, Absalom! Review" in Book Club Classics, Retrieved from http://bookclubclassics.com/Blog/sunday-salon-absalom-absalom / October 3, 2010

Faulkner, W., Hobson, F. (editor). William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: A casebook (Casebooks in criticism). Oxford University Press, 2003

O'Donnell, G.M. "Mr. Faulkner flirts with failure," Retrieved October 3, 2010 from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/print/ababgwtw/Faulkrev2.html

Porter, C. "(un)making the father." The Cambridge companion to William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!, Retrieved from http://cco.cambridge.org/extract?id=ccol0521420636_CCOL0521420636A012 October 3, 2010

"Stream of consciousness definition," in Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, Retrieved from http://www.answers.com/topic/stream-of-consciousness on October 3, 2010

"Stream of consciousness definition" in Columbia Encyclopedia, Retrieved from http://www.answers.com/topic/stream-of-consciousness on October 3, 2010