William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom Research Paper

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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.

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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….....

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