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Alexander Austein
AML-4261
Prof. Roberts
12/7/15

Absalom, Absalom! And the role of truth

In the works of William Faulkner, tales of Southern families

ranging from the aristocracy to poor plantation farmers are imbued
with a sense of fantasy. In his own Yoknapatawpha County, the setting
for practically all of his major works, Faulkner blurs the lines of fiction
and reality, creating urban legends and mythos that transcend the
confines of singular novels. Like living people, characters cross over
from one book to the next, inhabiting the same physical environment,
and serving as witness to the same generationally inherited tales. Like
the ancient Greek myths that inspire many of the stories populating
the region, the temporal realm distorts and corrupts the truth of
events, rendering Faulkners writings as malleable, with characters
possessing different interpretations given their contextual experiences.
In Absalom, Absalom!, when Quentin tells Shreve all that hes
learned in the first half of the book from the combined sources of his
father and Rosa Coldfield (Miss Rosa, I tell you; pg. 143), Shreve is
delighted to take the opportunity to improvise and construct his own,

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dramatized version of the material rife with references to things hes
read in his Classics curriculum (because if he hadnt been a demon his
children wouldnt have needed protection from him and she wouldnt
have had to go out there and be betrayed by the old meat and find
instead of a widowed Agamemnon to her Cassandra an ancient stiffjointed Pyramus to her eager though untied Thisbe; 144). Remarkably,
his imprint romanticizes the tale, giving the relatively grounded events
as understood by Quentin an atmosphere reminiscent of the
burgeoning Hollywood film industry of the era. In response, Quentin
becomes similarly enamored, and embraces the ample opportunities
for creativity within the layered family history. Shreve, notably a
Canadian exchange student at Harvard, spends his time in Absalom,
Absalom! translating a True Story into an exploit, complete with
canned drama and heighted emotionality (facing one another in grim
armistice after almost thirty years in that rich baroque drawing room in
that house which he called home; 263), and the spirit of the South
most commonly associated with the region and its people in a
recognizably stereotypical sense.
Throughout the novel, Faulkner practically urges the reader to
challenge his authenticity. In a rare case of fiction writing, he presents
a complex narrative wherein each character lacks the complete picture
as it happened, but nevertheless is capable of providing his or her own
biased account that, in some way, contradicts everyone else. In

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Absalom, Absalom!, the sense of a definitive truth fades away more
the further down the books trenches the reader reads. Swirling,
repetitive, neurotically designed diatribes spill onto the pages as the
hearts and minds of obsessives are captured verbatim into the text.
The effect is manic and disorienting until it becomes unrelentingly
absorbing, luring the spectator into its murky depths. Yet, for all its
tantalization, its central mysteries (those of what really happened
between Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen, as well as the enigmatic
demon Thomas Sutpen) are predicated on half-truths and
misconceptions worn down by time.
The pain of remembering looms over the stories like so many
other works of Southern literature wherein individuals are mercilessly
haunted by their past. Guilt, shame, and even anger is felt towards the
resolution of conflicts that people had no stake in, much like people in
the real world who still feel burdened and resentful towards the
outcome of the Civil War in a show of familial resilience, and in their
minds, Southern pride. Absalom, Absalom! not only questions the
significance of stories transmuted by time, but also ponders what it
means to carry the weight of circumstances outside of ones own
sphere of control. The consideration becomes an investigation to
ascertain whether its worthwhile to hold a grudge for decades and
pass it on to younger generations or to simply level with the
happenings for what they were and push to move onward. Characters

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are haunted by reverberations of the past, which in turn urges the
question of whether the truth is even relevant. In support of this,
Faulkner constructs the South as an interpretative platform, by which
reflections of the past are carved.
And yet, in this fiction, nothing resembles such an easy answer.
Faulkners weaving narrative indulges in the manic neuroses of its
panicked, hateful, scared, and inquisitive ensemble cast, dabbling in
sentiments of the gothic and staving off clear resolutions. Masterfully,
as convoluted as the story within the story is, Absalom, Absalom!
begins simply enough, with Quentin Compson tasked by letter to listen
to an old story from a seemingly innocuous elderly woman in the
neighborhood. And yet, the knowledge that this would be a far heavier
undertaking than hed bargained for takes hold quickly, first with the
description of her sisters husband and patriarchal looming spirit of the
entire novel Thomas Sutpen (out of the quiet thunderclap he would
abrupt (man-horse-demon)with grouped behind him his band of wild
niggers like beasts half tamed to walk upright like men; 4) and then
her sly insistence that maybe some day you will remember this and
write about it(5). The world cracks open in complexity as the narration
loses form and devolves into stream-of-consciousness, Faulkner
becoming like a stenographer with the text, and capturing every word
of Coldfields dilapidated, pained memories. Whether its her intention
or not, her bitterness and affectation leaves holes in the story that the

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reader, like Quentin himself, cant help but become hopelessly
engaged in. For chapters, the state of Sutpens Hundred is teased as if
it were out of a nightmare, legitimately housing a ghost within its
paneled architecture. The segment in which Quentin and Rosa finally
travel to the infamous, old home (a favorite of Shreves, which he loves
repeating) is hence filled with the creeping dread of Poe, with the
tension that theyll find something unexpected and terrifying lying in
wake.
Those gothic elements are indebted to Poe in the same sense
that there is a Southern tradition of literature writing similarly prone to
preserving the tales of old. Like each person that speaks to Quentin,
and then Quentin himself, the remembrance of the lengthy tale of the
Sutpen family takes on the role of a burden that, like an ancient Greek
myth or a traditional Gospel song, has to be passed on for the singer
to become actualized. Thus, theres a sense that the South as an
entity possesses its own system of codified morals and values by which
its people abide by, regardless of their own affiliations or experiences,
but for the sake of the land in which they reside. In terms of human
geography, that idea of the South would render it an ideological region,
whereas its actual form is likely closer to being a perceptual region: a
space broadly recognized by a large number of people, with in-specific
borders, generalized conditions, and contingent on media
representations and contextual influence. Interacting with others,

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especially those unfamiliar with the traditional practices of the culture
and the families within it lets the truths of the place change hands
and survive longer than they ever could otherwise.
Sutpens Hundred becomes analogous to Poes own House of
Usher; both of these homes are defined primarily by their massiveness
and the cold, desolate quality of the people living within them. They
are each framed like haunted mansions (Poe: with the first glimpse of
the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.), rife
with the secrets of generations past (a delightfully Southern horror),
and tantalizing with the aroma of revelations undiscovered. Each lure a
suspicious, but innocent figure into their retches to uncover the truth,
and each at last fall into ruin after being accessed by that designated
figure. But beyond this, where the short Poe story The Fall of the House
of Usher finds its closest companion amongst Faulkners own works is
actually within his most widely celebrated novel, The Sound and The
Fury. The tale of Southern aristocracy is per Faulkner standard inclined
to present an array of viewpoints, with four chapters separated not
only by perspective but by time, sometimes even decades dispersed,
(or in the case of Benjys, all of time, overlapping). Herein, at the
present day 1929 of its setting, the Compson family is at the precipice
of collapse, periled by the lack of an heir to pass on the family name,
and clinging onto the various grudges of whom to blame their
predicament on, in a desperate attempt to avoid culpability. Though

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Roderick Ushers physical house falls into the neon-green, swirling
embers of the surrounding tarn, the short story is ultimately a
metaphor for the ruin of the Usher family name, as the final members
of its die in a cataclysmic, classically ghoulish embrace. The same
sentiment is echoed in both of the major Faulkner novels discussed so
far, though we only see the literal collapse of the family house in
Absalom. Despite the ostensibly nightmarish imagery not transferring
over, the Sutpen and Compson families, linked together by a centuryold friendship between the iconoclastic head/fictitious demon spirit
Thomas Sutpen and General Compson, an old and valiant patriarch,
each undergo a disassembling intentionally analogous to the classic
Poe short story. And yet, in what amounts to essentially a grand irony,
though Poes telling of the tale concerns fantastical elements and
horrific, imaginary details, the truths of it arent up for debate: one
version of that insane visit to the House of Usher stands, without
anything to challenge it. In contrast, no Faulkner novel offers the same
luxury, as every recollection of personal memories stands to be
contested by someone elses own account. As stories pass on from
person to person, with bias giving way to decades upon decades of
passed time, interpretations crumble and coalesce, taking on a new
form. Truth erodes into a fiction different from the fiction that
describes everything that happens in the region of Yoknapatawpha into
a new beast, a meta-fiction, if you will. It often seems as if Faulkner

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holds his work to a standard of truth that is self-evident: that those
closest in relation, time, and context to the actual story are those
whom accuracy is most directly reliant. With each retelling, the story
becomes a third, fourth, fifth person and so on account, and that
aforementioned confidence of verity is no longer reserved. As such, its
purposely difficult to decode Shreves interpretation of Quentins bythe-books oration as anything other than purely entertainment. If, for
example, Shreve were to pass his version of the tale onto his children
(with the caveat that Quentin is long dead from suicide at this point
making its way into the story), theyd inevitably corrupt the truth of
the matter even further past its already barely recognizable roots. But,
this isnt a problem; this is the nature of preserving mythology, and the
way in which the effects of time and human experience are equally
recorded as well.
But, what does true mean anyhow? In the famous 1996 Coen
Brothers film Fargo, the opening screen spells out the line this is a
true story. And yet, the darkly comical, grisly tale contained within the
movie is anything but nonfiction. In wake of the films cultural impact,
discussions have often centered on whether the Coens were simply
lying with those opening words in service to a comedic ruse, or rather,
if they were instead exemplifying the sort of truth that only fiction is
allowed to possess: that of a contingency with the vision of the auteur.
By the real worlds standard of truth as an approximation for things

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that legitimately happened, obviously all works of fiction can be
qualified as untrue. But in that sentiment, so perfectly expressed by
Fargo and, I believe, shared by Faulkner sixty years earlier in Absalom,
Absalom!, everything within the boundaries of the created, fictitious
universe becomes true by default. Faulkners characters are thereby
people, with wrongheaded ideas and conceptions as people are wont
to have, but rendered no less verifiable than anyone else in the
constructed realm where, brilliantly, an objective voice just doesnt
exist.
Faulkners mythology of his fictitious South posits that it is
impossible for individuals to tell a story without that person, in some
capacity, making it about themselves. This holds explicitly true
throughout both Absalom, Absalom! in which characters mostly tell
others their impressions of age-old events, and The Sound and the
Fury, wherein members of the Compson family literally speak on the
world from the stance they are integrated into it (It was Grandfathers
[watch] and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the
mausoleum of all hope and desire; 76). Yet, an element of particular
significance is how the fourth and final section of The Sound and the
Fury is actually spoken from an omniscient, third-person point of view
(the day dawned bleak and chill; 265), a voice that can be
conveniently interpreted as Faulkner himself. Following the
aforementioned conjecture, this would assert that the author is

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conflating the idea of himself with that of his characters within the
novel. And so, even despite the objective position that the fourth
segment posits itself in, by its inclusion Faulkner still allows the conceit
of a standardized truth in The Sound and The Fury to be capable of
divisive interpretation.
Bigger than stories about singular characters and their
protagonist impressions are works that strive to be about their entire
world. Though Quentins perspective in Absalom is shaped by his
grounding as, essentially, the rightful heir to the information he
receives, he refuses to gloat or brag about that. Instead, he uses his
status to become more factually accurate and less emotionally
invested than his predecessors, understanding the myth with an
unprecedented ethos. As a storyteller of the Sutpen-Compson-Coldfield
chronicle, there will never be a more valid source than Quentin
Compson in that year prior to his suicide.
The evidence suggests that in Faulkners dedication to accurately
depicting his characters point of view, he doesnt expect the reader to
view them as trustworthy, but instead, as complex humans. The
biases, opinions, and varying contexts that the characters across his
works inhabit collaborate to engender a Yoknapatawpha County as true
in its own right as the Mississippi its based off of. This is what has
allowed Faulkners novels to be capable of such long-lasting appeal and
relevance. They reward deep analysis, in the sense that examination

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can effectively change the entire meaning of the work. Whereas the
more straight-laced As I Lay Dying doesnt benefit from this type of
research as much, Absalom, Absalom! proves itself to be a work of
literature imbued with Gothic sensibilities, indebted to the role of the
narrator, and ultimately, a lengthy, epicurean study into the
construction of mythology through the lens of the American South. And
so, it can be said that there has been nothing so ceaselessly obsessed
with the role, value, significance, and acquisition of truth before or
since.

Works Cited

Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner; the Yoknapatawpha Country.

New Haven: Yale UP, 1963. Print.

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! New York: Modern Library,
1951. Print.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text.

New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.

Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text. New York:
Vintage, 1990. Print.

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Poe, Edgar Allan. The Fall of the House of Usher: And Other Tales.

N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Rollyson, Carl E. Uses of the past in the Novels of William

Faulkner. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research, 1984. Print.

Shimanuki, Kayoko. Absalom, Absalom! Reconsider: A Story of
Canadian Shreve. Kyoto University, Doctoral Student.