Absalom In Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury

In relationship to Faulkner's entire Yoknapatawpha saga, Absalom, Absalom! with its maps, chronological time table, and cast of characters, solidifies the entire Yoknapatawpha series. Thematically, the novel looks back to Quentin Compson's dilemma in The Sound and the Fury (1929) in that the problem of incest in the Charles-Judith-Henry relationship bears directly upon Quentin's own behavior in the earlier novel. The philosophy of cynicism, detachment, and determinism advocated by Mr. Compson in The Sound and the Fury is utilized and expanded upon in Mr. Compson's narration of the Sutpen myth. The use of Quentin, an already established character of sensitivity and feeling, as a central narrator adds unity to the entire Yoknapatawpha series. The novel also looks forward to Intruder in the Dust (1948) in that a fratricide is correlated with the question of the Negro's rights. Bon's search for a father and Sutpen's search for recognition are further variations of ideas used in Light in August (1932) and the idea of man's relation to the past is of consequential importance throughout Faulkner's fiction.
In most of Faulkner's earlier fiction, however, the question of man's relation to the past functioned as a minor theme. In Sartoris (1929) this question pervaded the entire novel. In Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner devotes his mature powers to a full spectrum examination of man's reliance on the past and of the extent to which man is responsible for the past. In this novel, Faulkner also attempts to connect or show the relationship between man's present actions and those of the past. In previous novels, Faulkner's characters have struggled to achieve a significant and meaningful relationship with the past. In some instances, as with young Bayard Sartoris, too much reliance upon the past prevents the character from securing a firm grasp on the present and leads ultimately to disaster. Other characters reject the past too completely and, like Jason Compson in The Sound and the Fury, become the product of a materialistic age which has neither meaning nor virtues.
The past, for Faulkner, cannot be completely rejected, but neither should it be the dominant influence on one's present life. Sartoris expresses this view perhaps with more forthrightness than does Absalom, Absalom!: "Yet the man who professes to care nothing about his forebears is only a little less vain than the man who bases all his actions on blood precedent." In looking back into the past, Absalom, Absalom! investigates man's efforts to reconstruct the causes which influence man's present actions and tries to determine whether or not these causes stem from the old virtues or from opposite motives.
Absalom, Absalom! is often considered Faulkner's greatest achievement. It is also his greatest condemnation of the morals, mores, and ethics of his own southern culture. In this story of incest, fratricide, lust, ambition, and slavery, Faulkner presents a cumulative view of man being defeated by passions and ambitions beyond the scope of humanitarian ethics. Yet, even in condemning the values of the southern culture, Faulkner is able to present his material with excellent control and esthetic distance.
Faulkner's strong condemnation of the values of the South emanates from the actual story which he has Quentin tell in response to a Northerner's question: "What is the South like?" Quentin then tells the story of the Sutpen family whose history must be seen as analogous to the

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