To truly begin to understand Faulkner's narrative in Absalom, Absalom!, one must first understand the history behind it. This novel, begun in Oxford, Mississippi around 1933 or 1934, was written in a bombastic and learned language with a passionate immersion in the past. It was set from the 1820s until aro

William Faulkner's type narrative has had a major influence, not only in America, but all over the world. As a metafiction writer, his influence actually shows more outside of the United States, especially in Latin America and France where his unclassifiable "either neither" writing has flowered the most lavishly (Parker 11). Faulkner's influence is so strong that Absalom, Absalom! is the peak of one movement in art and literature, and it predicts and prepares for another. It makes such a memorable example of such movements partly because Faulkner never confines himself to represent the winds of any passing trend.

Even though Absalom, Absalom! is a pivotal story in the Yoknapatawpha stories and is mainly about Thomas Sutpen's life, it consists of several journeys or travels by different characters. There are Thomas Sutpen's travels from the mountains to Tidewater and then to Haiti and Mississippi, along with his psychological quests of his attempt to escape the threatening past and create a 'design' of safety and security. These are followed by Charles Bon's migration from Haiti to New Orleans and Oxford, then on to Sutpen's Hundred, including his search for a father. Henry Sutpen's travels take him from Oxford to New Orleans, to Loor, to Texas, then back to Mississippi. He is searching for his personal and cultural identity. And Quentin Compson takes a trip to Harvard, hoping desperately to understand himself and the South. Plus, other various characters' travels back and forth in between Sutpen's Hundred and Jefferson.

exhumed.... almost indecipherable, yet meaningful, familiar

chancing of human affairs (Bloom 250).

It's just incredible. It just does not explain or perhaps that's it:

called for, but nothing happens; you re-read, tedious and

Secondly, for the narrative to be more than just characters conversing, one must know the importance of the parts of the novel. As the storytelling begins, it depends more upon the character's actually telling the story to each other, which suggests a commentary on the art of storytelling itself. This is called metafiction, or fiction about fiction. Absalom, Absalom! is considered the greatest work of America's greatest novelist, one of that handful of American writers who challenged readers the most pleasurably and provocatively (Parker 11). Its capacity to challenge does not lie literally between the covers of the book, but rather in the exchange of language and thought between the words on the page. Such as, the later characters' speculative uncertainty setting the earlier characters in a like position as the reader's. As one reads and speculates about both sets of characters, it provokes an awareness of how one's shifting judgements and knowledge about the story itself becomes a story as much as the actions and judgements of the characters. This effectively exposes the way any story is an act of mind. Absalom, Absalom! is mainly remembered for its lavish experiments with language and form, its anguish over personal, regional, national, and social fears. And its celebration of storytelling. Not to mention the way it layers story on top of story until it is as much about storytelling as any individual stories. Plus, the action of the novel is seemingly always in motion, moving forward and backward in time and constantly adding meanings. It is similar to a vortex, the characters and events in motion with understanding coming in a later chapter.

In Absalom, Absalom!, there are four main areas of controversy. The first area is about whether the novel centers on the Compsons or the Sutpens. Parker feels that the novel is about both the Compsons and the Sutpens, and that it serves as no useful purpose to try and keep score or rank one family over the other (14). The second area of controversy is whether the novel should be considered all by itself or in combination with The Soun

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Approximate Word count = 2625
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)