William Faulkner's Absalom

Part I of Essay
William Faulkner came from an old, proud, and distinguished Mississippi family, which included a governor, a colonel in the Confederate army, and notable business pioneers. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi which he later renamed Jefferson, Mississippi in his novels. Alth ....

Part II of Essay
.... reader. Faulkner says that the duty of an author, as an artist, is to depict the human heart in conflict with itself. This attitude is revealed in the conflicts that Henry Sutpen undergoes in Absalom, Absalom. Thomas Sutpen is the son of a poor mountain farmer who founded the Sutpen estate. Thomas Sutpen stands for all the great and noble qualities of the South, and at the same time represents the failure of the South by rejecting the past and committing the same types of acts that his ancestors did (Brodhead 34). He rejects his ow ....