If you have read Absalom Absalom, then you know how much of a difficult read it is. We are soon to find out how chaotic everything feels and how each character is complex and difficult to understand. At times it was hard for me to keep track of Sutpen children along with their thoughts and intentions. It seemed like almost every character had these huge personalities that made me have to go back and re read. I was constantly thinking “wait what did he say and what the heck does that mean” or I would literally just stare at the page waiting for the understanding to hit me. Which most of the time I didn’t.
Of course there are the recurring themes of race, revolting/rebelling, the south and etc but one thing that stood out to me specifically was Sutpen’s house, the plantation. The house seems to have a personality of its own, especially in regards to how the narrator displays it to us. It is definitely easy to put the house on the back burner and try to focus more on the characters and dissecting the text. We see the characters as insane, perhaps even evil, and I wondered if that energy tainted the house somehow.
When doing outside research I found out that the original title of the book was going to be called “Dark House” due to the fact that the house itself was ruined and said to be possibly haunted. Absalom refers to the biblical story of Absalom, the son of David, who rebelled against his father. Both titles fit with the gothic theme and aspects of the book. I believe that Faulkner, in the end, didn’t use “Dark House” because it seems to put the blame on the house, like the house possessed the characters which made them do the unthinkable. Everyone of the characters can relate to the biblical story of Absalom, especially Sutpen’s son, Henry.
“Sutpen’s presence alone compelled that house to accept and retain human life; as though houses actually possess a sentience, a personality and character acquired not from the people who breathe or have breathed in them so much as rather inherent in the wood and brick or begotten upon the wood and brick by the man or men who connived and built them – in this one an incontrovertible affirmation for emptiness, desertion; an insurmountable resistance to occupancy save when sanctioned and protected by the ruthless and the strong” [p67] . The house sucks up the energy from the family and they definitely don’t have the most positive vibes. Within the family secrets, possible implications of incest, murders, racism, suicide, there is an overwhelming feeling of darkness and the lingering feeling of death. I think that humans in general are the ones who can make something so dark. The characters obviously did not have good intentions. The house represents the South, slavery within it, and the sins that lie around it.
Boba Gal Books 