William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom

¶ … Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner. Specifically it will analyze what makes the novel Southern Gothic. "Absalom, Absalom!" is the story of Thomas Sutpen, a larger than life hero who wants to create his own southern dynasty in the years before, during, and after the Civil War. It is considered one of Faulkner's greatest novels, and an important example of Southern Gothic fiction, as well. William Faulkner is most known as a southern writer who chronicled life in mythical Yoknapatawpha County Mississippi, a place he wrote about often in his fiction.

"Absalom, Absalom!" is one of the best examples of his work, and it represents the best in Southern Gothic fiction, as many critics contend. Southern Gothic is a form of American Gothic writing that morphed from true Gothic writing which began in the 18th century in Europe with such writers as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and many others. Edgar Allen Poe is a good example of the American Gothic writer, so the reader begins to see some of the characteristics of Southern Gothic and how it applies to Faulkner.

The editors of the Oprah.com Web site note, "Southern gothic writers leverage the details of the American South -- the lonely plantations, aging Southern belles, dusty downtowns, dilapidated slave quarters, Spanish moss and Southern charm -- to bring life to their slice of history" (Editors). Clearly, there are several elements of Faulkner's work that emulate Southern Gothic fiction, in fact, it is considered to be the classic of the genre by many experts.

As one critic notes of the book, it "had been seen largely as a particularly harrowing specimen of southern Gothic, or in some circles, as a work of southern 'social realism' to be place alongside Erskin Caldwell's "Tobacco Road" and other novels" (Hobson 5). What makes Faulkner's works Southern Gothic combines many elements to create a story of a tragic hero, convinced of his own greatness, who tells a macabre and highly emotional tale of southern history and culture. One major characteristic of Southern Gothic literature is the characters themselves.

Often, there is something decidedly wrong with them, either in their souls or in their minds, and they are often tragically flawed or tragic heroes in some way. At the heart of Faulkner's story is Thomas Sutpen, a southerner whose only goal is to build a dynasty and make everyone remember his name.

Sutpen fits the model of an unbalanced character, as he constantly searches for an heir, throws aside his female children, and commits acts of murder and mayhem, even though he is long gone before the book's narration takes place. As one literary critic notes, "The deaths of Sutpen himself, Charles Bon, and three generations of Joneses can be laid at Sutpen's door. The blighted lives of Ellen, Henry, Judith, Rosa, and perhaps the first Mrs. Sutpen, are ultimately attributable to Sutpen's single-minded effort to establish a lily-white planter dynasty" (Yamaguchi 212).

In his quest for greatness and immortality, he throws aside his own children, and ultimately leads to his own death when he fathers a child out of wedlock hoping for a male heir, and the girl's grandfather murders him and his own granddaughter and great-granddaughter, as well. The characters are often strangers, as well, as Sutpen was when he came to Mississippi and build Sutpen's Hundred, another aspect of this story that makes it a prime example of this type of work.

Tragedy is another important element of Southern Gothic tales, and this story certainly is filled with tragedy and sadness. Some of it is extremely macabre, as is Sutpen's murder, and Henry's murder of his friend, Charles Bon, after they have managed to survive the rigors of the Civil War. Henry then disappears, leaving his sister to dispose of her fiances body. Faulkner makes the scene extremely memorable and bizarre at the same time, another element of this genre. He writes, "I'm the nigger who's going to sleep with your sister.

Unless you stop me Henry. Suddenly Henry grasps the pistol, jerks it free of Bon's hand and stands so, the pistol in his hand, panting and panting.. (Faulkner 286). This grotesque situation is made all the more tragic because Henry truly loves Bon in his own way, and cannot accept him because of his "black" mistress and his black heritage, indicating the dark reality of life in the South and their irrational hatred of the blacks who had served them for so long.

There is also a distinct sense of place in this novel, the reader cannot mistake it takes place in the South, from the attitudes about color and caste, to the setting of the Civil War and the suffering it caused in the Sutpen family. At one point in attempting to unravel the story, Mr.

Compson says to Quentin, "We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales...we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting...performing their acts of simple passion and violence,.