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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Absalom, Absalom!, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling, Perspective, and Truth
The South
The Limits of Ambition
Social Taboos, Racism, and Inherited Trauma
Summary
Analysis
The summer air smells of wistaria. It’s twilight, and Quentin sits outside with his father, Mr. Compson, waiting for it to be time to listen to Miss Rosa. Mr. Compson describes to Quentin the occasion of Colonel Sutpen’s arrival. In Mr. Compson’s telling, Sutpen arrives in town on a Sunday morning in June. The bells ring as everyone exits church. From across the village square, men gathered around Holston House, the town inn, to see a stranger’s arrival. They whisper his name to one another: Sutpen.
This passage, which is told form Mr. Compson’s perspective, portrays Sutpen in a more positive light than the passages told from Miss Rosa’s perspective in the previous chapter. Mr. Compson depicts Sutpen as an enigma of mythic proportions—he romanticizes Sutpen for his mysterious past where Rosa condemns him.
Themes
Sutpen is 25 when he arrives in Jefferson, but this is impossible to tell, as he’s so thin and ill-looking. He has a room in the Holston House and leaves early each morning, though nobody knows where he goes. He never drinks at the Holston House bar, and it’s only years later that General Compson (Quentin’s grandfather) learns that this is because he had no money to pay for drinks. The only place the townspeople can interact with Sutpen is in the lounge.
Sutpen is a mystery to the people of Jefferson, and they hold this against him. They don’t know his age, where he comes from, or what he does all day. That he arrives in Jefferson thin and ill-looking, and the fact that he doesn’t drink at the Holston House because he cannot afford to, suggests that he comes from modest means—at this point, he’s a far cry from the wealthy landowner Miss Rosa knew him to be. Thus, Faulkner establishes the Sutpen saga as the story of a man’s ambition and determination to make a name for himself—and, it seems, given Rosa’s earlier allusion to Sutpen’s “violent” demise, the limitations of that ambition to ensure his success.
Themes
Later, the townspeople find out that Sutpen has bought 100 square miles of untouched land in town from a Chickasaw Indian agent, which he paid for with Spanish coin. Not long after, he leaves town and returns with a man with a “harried Latin face,” an architect he’s hired to build the house who apparently comes from Martinique. The man survives on venison and lives in a tent for two years, as Sutpen doesn’t pay him.
With the purchase of an enormous parcel of land and plans to construct a mansion, Sutpen’s quest to achieve “respectability,” as Rosa puts it, is underway. Meanwhile, Sutpen’s comings and goings continue to be strange and mysterious—it’s unclear where he got the Spanish coin to pay for the land or how he managed to find an architect willing (or perhaps forced) to work for two years with no pay. The more details the reader learns about Sutpen, the more a picture starts to emerge of a man who is willing to forgo personal morals and basic human decency to establish himself and create a dynasty.
Themes
Stories about “Sutpen’s wild negroes” spread after people observe a band of Sutpen’s enslaved men, who speak no English, chase a deer into a swamp. The men were desperate for a meal after going days without food. General Compson once told his son, Quentin’s father, that Sutpen didn’t raise his voice to his enslaved men—instead, he controlled them by “forbearance rather than by brute fear.” It takes Sutpen and his 20 enslaved men two years to complete the mansion, which is located 12 miles from Jefferson in a grove of cedar and oak trees. The house remains empty and unpainted for three years, puzzling the townspeople.
This passage, which describes a seeming urban legend about “Sutpen’s wild negroes,” reveals a number of key details about Sutpen’s character. Though he enslaves people, the fact that he doesn’t raise his voice to these men and exercises “forbearance” rather than controlling them “by brute fear” suggests that he sees them, in some regard, as equals (though, of course, regardless of how Sutpen treats or thinks of the men, it doesn’t excuse the inhumanity of the act of owning other humans as property). In turn, this suggests that his motivation for enslaving people isn’t necessarily an underlying sense of racism and entitlement—instead, his enslaving the men seems to be yet another way in which Sutpen’s ambition (his drive to achieve respect in the culture of the pre-war South) is so great that he’s willing to forgo his personal morals and basic human decency to achieve it.
Themes
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Not long after, Sutpen starts to invite men to his land, Sutpen’s Hundred, to hunt, drink, play cards, and camp out in the empty rooms of his mansion. On rare occasions, he orders his enslaved men to fight, sometimes participating in the fights himself. This goes on for three years, during which Sutpen also plants seed cotton, which General Compson loaned him. General Compson also offered to lend Sutpen money for furniture for the mansion, but Sutpen declined the offer. The women in town guess what Sutpen’s next goal will be: finding a wife. They start to assess the young women around town to predict which woman’s dowry Sutpen will covet to achieve the “respectability” that Miss Rosa believes is his main goal.
Sutpen’s invitation to local men seems to represent the next phase of his quest to achieve respectability in the South—later in the novel, General Compson will refer to this quest as Sutpen’s “design.” At this point, the reason for Rosa’s deep hatred of Sutpen becomes clearer: it seems (in this telling of Sutpen’s story, at least) that Sutpen used Rosa’s family as a means to an end, marrying Rosa’s older sister Ellen not out of love but to solidify his standing in town through the Coldfield family’s shining reputation.
Themes
Sutpen begins the next “phase” of his plan three years after the mansion’s completion, walking into the Methodist church and selecting Goodhue Coldfield as someone he can use to successfully complete his next project. The decision shocks the town at first, as Mr. Coldfield is a merchant of modest means and seemingly has little to offer Sutpen. Then they remember that he has a daughter of marriageable age, Ellen, though the villagers find it hard to “think of love in connection with Sutpen.” From that day forth, no more hunting parties gather at Sutpen’s Hundred. Now, they only see Sutpen around town, and he’s no longer “loafing, idling.” Instead, he visits Mr. Coldfield’s store.
Sutpen’s ambition leads him to objectify people, treating people as means to an end—he sees the Coldfield family as the key to the next “phase” of his plan rather than as future in-laws. The detail of villagers struggling to “think of love in connection with Sutpen” reinforces this point, underscoring Sutpen’s disconnection from others.
Themes
Sutpen then abruptly leaves Jefferson for the second time. However, things are different upon his second return, which happens a few months after his departure: now, he returns as “a public enemy” due to the many luxury goods he brings with him. Through rumors, they hear that he acquired these things through shady business dealings.
Sutpen continues to be an enigmatic figure—he returns to town with newly acquired wealth, yet nobody can say exactly how or where he got it. This glaring gap in Sutpen’s story reinforces how unreliable the novel’s presentation of Sutpen is in general: everything it presents as truth about him is in fact rumor and speculation.
Themes
One day, the sheriff and a group of men head to Sutpen’s Hundred to arrest Sutpen, figuring he must have made his fortune illegally. On their way there, they encounter Sutpen headed into town. They accompany Sutpen into town and confront him on the village square. Sutpen removes his new hat and uses it to gesture grandly in the posse’s direction. Then, with a bouquet of flowers in hand, he marches inside Mr. Coldfield’s house and remains there for a long time. When he emerges, he’s no longer carrying the flowers. He proposed to Ellen, but the crowd arrests him on the spot and so doesn’t learn this detail until later. General Compson and Mr. Coldfield go to the jail later to pay Sutpen’s bond and free him.
The detail of Sutpen’s arrest immediately after proposing to Ellen underscores the cold convenience of their marriage: aside from the bouquet of flowers Sutpen brings with him (which itself seems a rather shallow, empty gesture rather than a symbol of Sutpen’s genuine affection for Ellen), the proposal is wholly devoid of romance. Sutpen is merely executing his grand plan to be successful. Having successfully proposed to Ellen, his subsequent imprisonment is merely a temporary bump along the way to his ultimate goal of wealth, fame, and success.
Themes
Ellen and Sutpen’s wedding takes place in the Methodist church in June of 1838, exactly five years after Sutpen first arrived in Jefferson. Sutpen’s arrest was the direct result of business dealings in which Mr. Coldfield joined him, though Coldfield pulled out once his “conscience refused to sanction it” any longer. Still, Mr. Compson stresses in his telling, Mr. Coldfield allows his daughter to marry this man of whom he doesn’t approve.
It’s still not entirely clear what illicit business dealings Sutpen was involved in. The withholding of information recurs throughout the novel, which assembles its portrait of Sutpen and his life little by little, with bits and pieces of often contradictory information. This passage also reveals some of its narrator’s (General Compson, via Mr. Compson) bias, presenting a somewhat sympathetic portrayal of Sutpen by criticizing Mr. Coldfield. Effectively, the narrator is suggesting that while Sutpen may have wronged the Coldfield family, Mr. Coldfield brought his family’s misery upon himself by allowing his daughter to marry a man he knew had dubious morals.
Themes
Ellen cries at the wedding. It’s a grand affair, something “the aunt” convinced Mr. Coldfield to fund. Sutpen didn’t ask for a big wedding but welcomed it, wanting everyone to see “the stainless wife and the unimpeachable father-in-law” he’s gained. Still, on the outside, he feigns disapproval, and in the end it’s Ellen’s tears and the aunt’s persuasiveness that make Mr. Coldfield agree to fund the elaborate affair.
Sutpen’s secret desire for a grand, showy wedding despite his outward show of indifference reveals more about his character. His chief concern is doing whatever it takes to achieve a high status and reputation in the pre-war South’s plantation culture. He wants a grand, showy wedding because it gives him a chance to flaunt “the stainless wife and the unimpeachable father-in-law”—his tickets to the esteemed reputation he so desires.
Themes
The night before the wedding, the aunt goes to every house in town and demands that the townspeople attend the wedding, hysterically daring them not to come. The next day, a large crowd gathers outside the church, but only 10 people enter to attend the ceremony. Ellen pretends not to notice—perhaps out of pride.
The townspeople’s seeming boycott of the ceremony makes their animosity toward Sutpen abundantly clear. Though he’s ingratiated himself with a well-respected family in town—and therefore has himself joined the town’s well-respected ranks—that doesn’t mean the town has to like him.
Themes
After Ellen exits the church, people throw clumps of dirt at her, and the crowd watches as she “shrink[s] into the shelter of [Sutpen’s] arm.” Sutpen leads Ellen into the carriage. Nobody throws anything else. Mr. Compson, in the present, suspects that Ellen likely erased her memory of that evening with all her tears.
This passage further establishes Sutpen’s ambition as an isolating, antisocial project. Though his marriage into the Coldfield family has allowed him to join the town’s well-respected ranks, it doesn’t guarantee that the townspeople will like him. And Sutpen is fine with this—it’s ambition he’s after, not human connection. This scene foreshadows the toll the marriage will take on Ellen, though—when she “shrink[s] into the shelter of [Sutpen’s] arm,” she symbolically turns away from the town and the sense of community and connection it represents and toward the isolation and coldness she’ll endure throughout her marriage to Sutpen.
Themes
