Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed contributing to the Yoknapedia. I found the intent interesting and execution successful; it is not only of a considerable size now quantitatively, but I also think the content produced was strong and informative qualitatively. I also like the amount of literary criticism present rather than just encyclopedic fact. I think that the criticism here allows a reader of the site to have a better understanding of Faulkner’s works at a deeper level than just being able to pick up on some mythological allusions or southern slang. I also think that the long entries were a great alternative to a research paper. As an undergraduate, I often find that my research is often limited by general inexperience and a more shallow understanding of the subject matter when compared to real, published work. The part encyclopedia, partially literary criticism nature of the long entry, I think at least, is much better outlet for the capabilities of an undergraduate. As a whole, I believe the Yoknapedia can be used as a great reference for both casual and serious readers of Faulkner.

This electronic medium for a class is progressive and will help future students with getting used to WordPress. Although I consider myself a hip 90’s baby with some internet insight, I found myself a little dated in the struggle to set up wordpress, yoknapedia, dropbox, etc. But, once I overcame those electronic hurdles, I found that the internet proved most useful when I could bounce my own thoughts off of my classmates’. Also, there is more incentive to do well, to write more fluidly if it posted where your classmates can see. But, at the same time, there is something to be said for paper drafts and seeing your own work in ink.

Overall, the Yoknapedia website is a cool addition to a class that dives deep into a single author. Such a system gets the student involved with the subject material and although it can take a little while for a student to get used to, it will probably be one of the ways of the future in education. I think the real question is whether Faulkner would have wanted the class set up this way. If it is progressive enough while sticking to the roots of the class and education, I think it would be deemed alright in the eyes of Faulkner.

There is a line in The Sound and the Fury when Quentin is thinking about home and Roskus and Dilsey and his attitude towards African Americans. “That was when I realized,” he says “that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behaviour; assort of obverse reflection of the white people he lives among” (TSAF, 106). At first glance, it’s a strange statement, especially in the context of The Sound and the Fury where the black men and women who care for the Compson children and work for the family are the antithesis of the cold, austere Jason and Caroline Compson. Obviously the idea was extremely prevalent throughout the story of Joe Christmas in Light in August. Joe is a “nigger” only insofar as he is essentially taught to be by the brutal, bigoted men who raise him. However, I kept thinking back to that remark again as we neared the end of Absalom, Absalom! and were finally introduced to Jim Bond.

The son of Charles Etienne de St. Valery Bon and his “coal black and ape-like” (AA, 166) wife, Bond is described an idiot, “hulking… and slack-mouthed” (AA, 296). The first hint we get of the child’s existence is during a conversation between Judith and Charles Bon II. “I will raise it,” she promises, “It does not need to have any name” (AA, 168). And, indeed, he remains nameless for most of the novel. It isn’t until the final chapter, when Quentin encounters him the night he visits Sutpen’s Hundred with Rosa, that that information is revealed and we learn his fate. Quentin notices him hulking in the dark hallway beyond Clytie and in a pitiful attempt to assert her non-authority yet again, Rosa snaps at him “You aint any Sutpen!” (AA, 297). 

But the truth is, Bond is Sutpen. In fact, he’s “the last of his race” (AA, 300) to remain on earth, the lone survivor of the fire Clytie sets to burn Sutpen’s Hundred to the ground. Just as his father inherits that same relentless “furious protest… acquired… from the walls in which the demon had lived, the air which he had once walked in and breathed in” (AA, 164), Bond too, growing up in that infernal house, possesses the tragedy that mars the Sutpen family. His life exists “within and upon” (AA, 260) that Sutpen line. Left to “lurk around those ashes” (AA, 301), Bond is distinguished by his incessant, mournful howling. Like Benjy’s bellows throughout The Sound and the Fury, Bond’s howls too seem to contain “the grave helpless sound of all voiceless misery under the sun” (TSAF, 366). Beyond the roaring of the fire that tears through Sutpen’s mansion, “somewhere something lurked which bellowed” (AA, 300), comprised of “… more than astonishment… it was horror; shock; agony eyeless, tongueless; just sound” (TSAF, 370).

In the end, Shreve predicts that “in time the Jim Bonds are going to conquer the western hemisphere… of course as they spread toward the poles they will bleach out again… so they wont show up so shard agains the snow. But it will be Jim Bond; and so in a few thousand years, I who regard you will also have sprung from the loins of African kings” (AA, 302). Besides from the obvious connotations of racial mixture, I believe this statement further infers something about the fate of humanity, doomed inherit that same shame and suffering that was passed down through the walls of the mansion from Sutpen to all his descendants. For a writer so concerned with the repetition of history and the inescapability of the past, it’s not a far stretch. Bond’s howling idiocy is not the direct result of his being a “nigger.” Rather, it is the fate he is doomed to inherit, a reflection in the sense that he represents all the horrors of his ancestry and environment – the abuse, the violence, the destruction of the landscape, the rapacious drive for profit at the expense of the lives of others – boiled down to the agonizing sound of the sole “idiot negro left” (AA, 301). Therefore, it is not merely the mixed blood he will pass on but the trauma of that history. The sins of his forefathers, though dead and gone, will not be forgotten but rather will be carried on into the rest of the world. There will be consequences and those consequences will be passed on through the inevitable progress of expansion and movement over time. Like Clytie, Bond “owns the terror” (AA, 295) of his ancestors and, someday, so too will the world.

The theme of alienation within Go Down, Moses permeates through the different McCaslin generations, yet always seems to revolve around the production of a deed, card, paper, or some sort of title. Yet Faulkner is somewhat guarded with his use of documentation, vacillating between documents which carry much symbolic weight and others which provide empty gestures toward meaning. This post offers a few different examples of alienation within Go Down, Moses.

Chronologically, much of the lineage rests on the card games Uncle Buck and Buddy play against Mr. Hubert. This game offers an abstraction by negotiating the exchange of human bodies on the order of ten cards. There is no inherent value in “Possible Strait against three Treys in sigt Not called” but the characters themselves recognize and imbue value onto this “Possible Strait” (GDM, 259).

In some ways the crux of the story seems to rest on Isaac’s disavowal of the purchase of the land. The abstraction of land ownership via a deed, Isaac concludes, should be utterly incomprehensible (indeed, much of the bear exposes the wilderness still inherent in the area, deed or no deed). Yet the deed preempts the clear-cutting and privatization of the forest. With the alienation of the land through the concept of ownership comes Isaac’s refusal of his inheritance. His inheritance offers an example of an empty documentary symbol (both figuratively and also literally as the single silver cup is emptied and instead filled with IOUs).

Lucas’ obsession with the buried money within “The Fire and the Hearth” is fuelled not by monetary value, but by recovering some artifact of the past and connection to Lucas’ lineage. Lucas need not worry about money as he has become more wealthy than even Edmonds, the white inheritor of the McCaslin property.  Yet Lucas shows his distrust of this monetary value in his deposit interaction with the white man who tells him there is too much money to keep under a break in his hearth. Lucas asks “Will the bank keep it for a black the man same as for a white?” and once assured Lucas asks not for his money but “my paper” (106). This distrust is juxtaposed to the original McCaslin’s metal dispatch box which contains coins dated from nearly his time that Lucas does keep under a break in his hearth. The warmth seems to emit out from this box with flames which were “possessing a slow, deep solidity of heat, a condensation of the two years during which the fire had burned constantly above it, a condensation not of fire but of time, as though not fire’s dying and not even water would cool it but only time would” (50-51).

The final two images of alienation both carry much symbolic and practical weight and revolve around Molly. Once Lucas becomes hopelessly obsessed with finding the buried money, Molly walks to Edmonds’ in order to ask for a divorce. The legal divorce paper, while being merely a legal document separating her and Lucas, stands for her autonomy and own self-will despite everyone attempting to shield her frail self from the harsh reality. This is seconded in the final pages of the novel when Molly insists that Samuel’s death be recorded in the newspaper. While Gail Stevens spends the entire length of “Go Down, Moses” trying to keep the story of Samuel’s execution out of the papers, Molly refuses any attempts at paternalism and recognizes the power and implications behind the existence of a printed document, just as, in Absalom, Absalom!, Judith recognizes this power when she gives Bon’s letter to Quentin’s grandmother.

In my previous post, I touched upon the ways in which the ceremony of the duel and the related image of the cloak might help us think about the identity of Henry and Bon in Absalom Absalom! But I think this symbolic thread also extends to the “present” layer of the novel in complex ways. Which stands to reason: After all, it’s Shreve and Quentin who are investigating and imaginatively inventing this intriguing story of the past.

In the novel, Faulkner clearly aligns these sets of characters. Much is made of the fact that “it was not two but four of them riding the two horses through the dark …” in the “tomblike room” in New England (267). That it is “two, four, now two again, according to Quentin and Shreve, the two the four the two still talking—the one who did not know what he was going to do, the other who knew what he would have to do yet could not reconcile himself—Henry citing himself authority for incest  …” (276). And so on. Time collapses in Cambridge. The psyches of Bon and Henry merge with those of Shreve and Quentin.

On an obvious level, Shreve and Quentin engage in a back and forth that is, in ways, a kind of rhetorical duel. I’m encouraged to read it that way because the symbol of the cloak reappears. When Shreve and Quentin head to bed, Quentin begins to shiver, to “jerk all over, violently and uncontrollably,” not from the cold, but from excitement or anxiety (288). Shreve notices:

     “Jesus are you that cold?” Shreve said. “Do you want me to spread the overcoats over you?”

            “No,” Quentin said. “I’m not cold. I’m all right. I feel fine.” (289)

He’s not feeling fine. These are precursors to death throes, we know. But the parallel between this overcoat and the cloak that Bon offers Henry, just before their rhetorical standoff,  is plain. Shreve is conflated with Bon, Quentin with Henry.

The connections between these pivotal scenes extend further. In the closing moments of the novel, as Shreve proposes that “the Jim Bonds”—a mixed race—“are going to conquer the western hemisphere” (302), Quentin repeats “No” in the same way the Henry did when faced with the prospect of Bon marrying Judith. Both characters are also “panting” across time (303, 286). And when Shreve asks, “Why do you hate the South?” Quentin repeats, “I don’t” in a tantrum-like fashion that is similar to Henry’s earlier repetition of “You shall not” in the face of Bon’s resolve.

But while Henry seems to be truly speaking to an “other,” to Bon, Quentin’s not really speaking to Shreve at the closure of the novel, but to himself. That might suggest that, all along, Henry and Bon have been alter egos for Quentin to try on, each as if a cloak.

If this conflation of time and character is at work, then I wonder if we can begin to reinterpret lines such as “the one who did not know what he was going to do, the other who knew what he would have to do yet could not reconcile himself.” Though at first glance we might think the statement alludes to Henry and Bon, a more haunting interpretation is that the line speaks especially to Quentin’s interior: the one self uncertain about his fate, the other who knows the solution is suicide, but hasn’t reconciled to it yet. Clearly there are multiple “one’s” in Quentin. If the novel can be seen as Quentin’s extended suicide note (and perhaps we can see Bon’s letter to Judith in the same light), then here’s a glimpse of that interior duel, the stand off within Quentin, through a shadow or double reading. This duel plays out more fully on the page through his imagination of the story of Bon and Henry.

I begin to hunt for more dual readings. As the books final scene continues, Shreve then begins to rag on Quentin about the South, saying, “I would sure hate to have come from the South. … What is it [about the South that possesses]? something you live and breathe in like air? …” and so on. But Quentin is within himself, hardly listening. He drifts back, we think, to the South:

Quentin did not answer, staring at the window; then he could not tell if it was the actual window or the window’s pale rectangle upon his eyelids, though after a moment it began to emerge. It began to take shape in its same curious, light, gravity-defying attitude—the once-folded sheet out of the wistaria [sic] Mississippi summer, the cigar smell, the random blowing of fireflies. “The South,” Shreve said. “The South. Jesus. No wonder you folks all outlive yourselves by years and years and years.” It was becoming quite distinct; he would be able to decipher the words soon, in a moment; even almost now, now, now. (301)

There’s a bit of trickery here, that clever undefined “it” of the writer’s repertoire. I mean, what is this “it” that emerges, takes shape, becomes quite distinct? “It” unqualified is either sloppy or intentional to allow for multiple readings. On a basic level, this “it” is the memory and atmosphere of the South that his father’s letter about Rosa Coldfield’s death conjures. But perhaps it’s also more menacing: Maybe it’s Quentin’s reconciliation with his final “design,” his coming to terms with suicide (his focus on the window suddenly looming larger). He is about to “decipher the words,” to hear clear instruction for how to act. Thus the “even almost now, now, now” reads very much like the tolling of the bell that figures so prominently in The Sound and the Fury.

From there the text veers into an excerpt from Mr. Compson’s letter about Rosa Coldfield’s death. The suggestion is that this bit of letter is swirling through Quentin’s mind as he lies in the “tomblike room.” I may be misreading Mr. Compson (like Quentin), but his snippet seems to make a case for death as not a space of easy bliss or peace, but of a more direct, truer interaction and judgement. His father writes, “So let it be hope.—that [in the afterlife/death] the one cannot escape the censure which no doubt he deserves, that the other no longer lack the commiseration which let us hope (while we are hoping) that they have longed for …” (302).

There’s that construction of “the one” then “the other” once more. It might also remind of previous “dueling” moments (see my previous post for a fuller discussion). Take, for example, the original description of duel procedure itself: “The customary way is to stand back to back, the pistol in your right hand and the corner of the other cloak in your left hand” (90). Also, the duel-like confrontation of Henry and Bon as the war closes: “There will be a little time yet for them to sit side by side upon the log in the making light of dawn, the one in the cloak, the other in the blanket” (284; emphasis mine).

In the case of Mr. Compson’s letter, “the one” and “the other” also encourages a dual reading. While on a basic level, these subjects refer first and foremost to Thomas Sutpen and Rosa Coldfield respectively (the one who deserves censure, the other who longs for/deserves commiseration), we might also read them as Quentin would, searching for their universality and their reflection on his personal situation. These two selves speak to his interior: the one that “deserves censure” for his illicit thoughts (of incest with Caddy, of murdering Caddy’s lovers) hand in hand (dueling) with the one that “longs for commiseration.” Such a reading is reinforced in that Faulkner writes “he deserves” and “they long for,” instead of the intuitive “he” and “she.” Rosa’s gender is subtly effaced, here, to allow it to more directly speak to Quentin’s duel.

Read in this way, Mr. Compson’s letter seems to argue that these dueling or dual selves will only be reconciled by way of death. That’s the only stable duality, in other words. Unwittingly, he argues for and abets his son’s suicide. Or rather, that’s what his son might hear. It’s clearly established that hyper-nervous Quentin gives enormous credence to the voices of others, most especially his father. Perhaps he’s reading between his father’s lines to a terrible fault.

Of course, Faulkner is after “the one” and “the other” reading more generally, in the way the layers of his narrative compete, are in dialogue, and also “cloak” each other. In the way that “it” invites multiplicity. These strands of time are always dueling for our attention, but Faulkner’s skill is such that they come to seem less dual than simultaneous. But it’s ultimately an illusion. Take for example a line like “the two, four, now two again, according to Quentin and Shreve, the two the four the two still talking …” (276). To my mind, such rapid oscillation represents an attempt to push beyond duality, but it only conveys the impossibility of such through words. I suppose only a nothingness, a non-attempt—an artistic suicide—might achieve something like non-duality. Which is what Quentin desires. He’s after an identity and interiority (and a family line) that’s without fracture, but does it exist?

The Buddha might say yes, but I doubt it. All these competing selves exist within Quentin: The one that would get with his sister, the other that would defend her honor in direct contrast, and still one other that would see a solution in suicide. That his repeated denial, “I don’t hate it,” becomes the internal thought to carry us into the afterlife of the novel is telling: He’s dueling against duality, which is the quickest way to lose.

Alright, so I just finished watching As I Lay Dying and I would have to agree with much of what Allred said about the film. When I first heard about Franco making an adaptation of the film I did my research. I read that when it premiered Franco was given a standing ovation for his efforts, but critics criticized his performance. They said (and I would have to agree) that his performance as Darl was weak.  Throughout the novel Darl is seen as a somewhat mystical character, a character who knows things even though he was not there to witness them. I feel like Franco’s character was not that at all. I feel like if someone were to watch the movie without having read the novel before watching the movie and knowing the digression of Darl, it would almost seem kind of random that Darl decides to set the barn on fire. With the exception of a few times were Darl shouts and repeats himself, I do not think that the viewer can see that Darl is actually mentally-unstable and digressing.

That aside, I would like to give Franco a pat on the back for adapting this novel into a movie. I was somewhat confused by the split screen. At first I was like, “Great! He is using the split screen to show person A’s point-of-view and person B’s point-of-view of the same situation,” but that was quickly shot down once there were screens such as Vardaman saying “My mother is a fish” into the camera ,as well as, Cash listing into the camera as well. I suppose for spectator/cinematic purposes that is what had to be done. That being said, I was also disappointed that much of Addie’s narrative was more of her speaking in bed rather than a voice-over. I personally would have preferred to have seen Addie in a scene near the fountain with the school children, with a voice-over.

Thirdly, I think that if the reader had not initially picked up on the Christian imagery in the novel, Franco pretty much hits you in the face with it. First, we have Addie’s narrative where she mentions that Jewel is her “salvation” (that line is actually not in the text). Second, Jewel’s physical appearance is similar to that of Jesus. Thirdly, the scene in which the barn is on fire and Jewel hauls Addie’s casket onto his back is similar to that of Jesus bearing the cross. I would have liked to have seen a flashback of Jewel earning the horse in order to put more importance on it (i.e. it is the only thing that is truly his and his father chooses to give it away). Also, I think the scenes in the text in which describe Jewel earning the horse also draws upon the type of mother-son-relationship that he and Addie had. In addition, I think that the movie does need a Cora Tull. Cora is a foil to Addie and furthermore having her there displays the ways in which Addie’s motherhood is ‘unsettling.’

Fourthly, I, like Allred am disappointed with Franco’s lack of “examination of modernization in a rural space.” I feel like much of the novel is about the Bundren’s displacement in modern society (i.e. the town). As we discussed in class, Faulkner was attempting to write about a different kind of class system, one that is poorer among the whites of the time. I feel like the film does not depict their living situation and that in comparison to the rest of Southern society.

Lastly, I thought Allred was kidding in his blog post when he asked about Franco’s adaptation of TSAF. I looks like he is keeping most of the cast from As I Lay Dying (with a few exceptions, one being his brother Dave Franco is playing Quentin. I don’t know how I feel about that). Also, no-one is listed on IMBD as having been cast for the role of Benji… so I’m assuming that is James Franco himself, attempting yet again to play another crazy.

In Mr. Compson’s rendering of Bon and Henry’s visit to New Orleans, Bon takes Henry to a dueling ground, for lack of a better description. This is a place behind high walls where men square off, one assumes for the sake of honor, “the strip of bare earth combed and curried with powdered shell, raked and immaculate and only the most recent of the brown stains showing now” (90). As imagined, Bon, the mysterious sophisticate, explains to Henry, the wide-eyed country kid, how duels work in a “casually and pleasantly anecdotal” fashion:

The customary way is to stand back to back, the pistol in your right hand and the corner of the other cloak in your left hand. Then at the signal you begin to walk and when you feel the cloak tauten you turn and fire. Though there are some now and then, when the blood is especially hot or when it is still peasant blood, who prefer knives and one cloak. They face on another inside the same cloak, you see, each holding the other’s wrist with the left hand. But that was never my way …  (90)

A curious moment, to be sure: Through the lens of Mr. Compson’s narration, it’s as if Bon is planting the idea of duel in Henry’s addled mind, as if both to warn him against such action and goad him toward it, providing a model for what their ultimate confrontation might look like. “What would you—they be fighting for?” Henry replies in this fantasy, but Henry already knows (as that quickly revised “you” suggests). Mr. Compson explains: “Yes, Henry would know now, or believe that he knew now …” (90). In other words, he has a sinking that he’s been trapped. What’s also worth noticing, I think, is the intimate “ceremony” (90) of the duel etiquette, in which each man is to hold the other’s cloak. Especially the “peasant” version: The hand in hand duel seems nearly an embrace. A wedding. In this deadly moment, oddly, two duelers would never be closer.

Fast forward to Shreve and Quentin’s imagining (so much imagination) of a duel-like confrontation between Bon and Henry as the war draws to a close. The Confederate army is on its heels, in retreat. According to Shreve and Quentin’s rendering, Henry has just learned from his father that Bon’s mother is “part Negro” and, reeling with this news and the further prospect of in-family miscegenation, he stumbles back to Bon at the campsite:

.. there was light somewhere, enough of it for him to distinguish Bon’s sleeping face from among the others where he lay wrapped in his blankets, beneath his spread cloak; enough light for him to wake Bon by and for Bon to distinguish his face  … he merely rises and puts the cloak about his shoulders and approaches the smoldering fire and is kicking it into a blaze when Henry speaks:

            —  Wait.

Bon pauses and looks at Henry; now he can see Henry’s face. He says,

            —You will be cold. You are cold now. You haven’t been asleep, have you? Here.

He swings the cloak from his shoulders and holds it out.

            —No, Henry says.

            —Yes. Take it. I’ll get my blanket.

Bon puts the cloak about Henry and goes and takes up his tumbled blankets and swings it about his shoulders … (284)

It’s worth tracking the recurring cloak imagery, I think, and exploring it as symbol.  On the surface level, Bon’s gesture is gentle, truly brotherly; a cloak is a warm shelter and Bon is sacrificing in this moment for Henry’s comfort, an act of generosity and intimacy. Of a shared life.

Yet the cloak has more significance. They are often an instrument and symbol of disguise, which is the case here: Bon’s identity has been cloaked throughout the novel, most of all his racial identity (until now). When Bon gives his cloak to Henry, then, we might see it as a metaphor for both the lifting of his burden, his secret, and the passing on of that secret and burden onto another: If Henry allows Bon to marry Judith, he will have to bear, but also hide that knowledge and stigma of a mixed family (the “brown stain” of the dueling grounds comes to mind). Bon would pass his racial baggage on to Henry. In this regard, the sharing of the cloak is also an act of enmity or aggression from Henry’s perspective. Thus the scene has clear parallels to hand-in-hand, cloak and dagger duel: an intimate, but irreconcilable confrontation.

This scene almost lapses into duel, but it’s staved off for the time being. Faulkner writes, Quentin and Shreve imagine: “There will be a little time yet for them to sit side by side upon the log in the making light of dawn, the one in the cloak, the other in the blanket” (284). Again, the image suggests that a torch has been passed, that the burden has been lifted to an extent from Bon—his secret revealed to his brother—and placed on the shoulders of Henry to try on. Then the tension escalates toward something like a duel. Bon says, of his prospective marriage to Judith:

Who will stop me, Henry?

No, Henry says.— No. No. No.

Now it is Bon who watches Henry …. His hand vanishes beneath the blanket and reappears, holding his pistol by the barrel, the butt extended toward Henry.

            — Then do it now, he says.

Henry looks at the pistol; now he is not only panting, he is trembling; when he speaks now his voice is not even the exhalation, it is the suffused and suffocating inbreath itself:

            — You are my brother.

            — No I’m not. I’m the nigger that’s going to sleep with your sister. Unless you stop me, Henry. (285-6)

Here we have two side of the same coin, the cloaked and uncloaked version of Bon. But take your pick as to which is which: The driving question of the novel, arguably, is centered around which identity is more important and will carry the day: Is their racial difference or brotherly bond stronger? The story is tragic because the reader is made to feel it should be the latter, but the former—the prejudice—prevails over Henry.

In this heated moment, Henry “grasps” the pistol as if to kill Bon, but then hurls it away, grabs Bon by the shoulders, repeating, “You shall not” (286). In light of the earlier explained duel etiquette, perhaps he does so because there is only one gun: To kill Bon here and now would be dishonorable, an acknowledgement that they aren’t on equal footing. Still in shock, he is not quite ready to acknowledge that is true of his idol, his own brother, although he must, per everything society has taught him.

The reprieve from decisive action, as we know, is only temporary. Henry’s hand is forced, but he waits as long as possible, almost as if obeying duel etiquette: “Then at the signal you begin to walk and when you feel the cloak tauten you turn and fire.” The cloak tightens for Henry psychologically at Sutpen’s Hundred, when the specter of having to carry this stained identity permanently becomes most real.

One could argue that this protracted duel was fair, that Bon knew and played by the rules. Alternately, when Henry “turns and fires”, in essence claiming the moral high ground, one could argue that what was a duel-ish standoff instantly trips into an act of murder (there is only one gun) and is inherently dishonorable. Bon, then would have gained the moral high ground, proven his own worth beyond the limitations of race by an act of what is essentially stoic suicide. And Henry seems caught in a double-bind according to this own personal code, which is also society’s. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Faulkner uncloaks such hypocrisy.

I began this semester disturbed and upset by Quentin Compson so it seems only fitting that I should end it the same way. I have not become any less uncomfortable with Quentin or his manners. If it is at all possible to believe Absalom, Absalom has made me more disturbed by Quentin. I had somehow wrongly assumed that within this text Quentin might be more sane and put together. Perhaps it was foolish of me to believe that in a time before his suicide Quentin might be more possessed of his own voice. He is not. He continues to be interrupted by the voices of those who are not there. Though the story of Absalom, Absalom is not as claustrophobically connected to Quentin as his chapter in The Sound of the Fury there is still a closeness with him that forces the reader to once again be immersed in his incompleteness. This is particularly evident in the final moments of the novel when we, the readers, are left alone with no one but Quentin and Shreve and their almost manic extrapolations about the Sutpin story.

Though the typical structure of Quentin and his multiple mental intrusions is present throughout the entire novel it seems somehow closer in its final moments. Perhaps it is simply that we are no longer hearing other people narrate the story for them but are finally left with just our two “historians.” But perhaps it is more that Quentin’s imaginations are so vivid and convincing that we are once again forced to inhabit Quentin’s own mind. It does not matter that the person telling the story is Shreve. In fact, this might make the situation even more uncomfortable. As though Shreve has completely subsumed Quentin and so we are forced to see Shreve’s ideas through Quentin’s mind’s eye. Somehow the Quentin’s disturbing habit of allowing others too much space in his mind becomes even more so when we are experiencing Shreve’s manic theories through Quentin.

This disturbing trend all leads up to the final moment wherein Quentin has practically allowed Shreve to completely eclipse him. He is not simply repeating, “I don’t hate. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it.” (Faulkner 303). He is exorcising Shreve and his terrifying racial dystopia. Quentin has allowed Shreve to completely take him over and so must insist upon his love of the South in order to once more separate himself from his friend. Quentin is almost painfully aware of how completely he has allowed Shreve to enter into his own consciousness. One can see in this last moment precisely how Quentin has allowed himself to be so pushed aside that he eventually has no choice but to kill himself. His cries of “I don’t hate it” become a haunting cry that sets up his inevitable end. He has become almost completely separated from his own identity. His efforts to fight it are almost entirely futile. He cannot in one small moment recapture his abandoned Southerness. He has allowed himself to become too much the New England student, too much the completely un-Southern Shreve to ever reclaim the identity of Quentin Compson.

As we have learned in our studies of other Faulkner novels, Faulkner likes to saturate his work with biblical references and Absalom, Absalom! is no different. The biblical reference that stood out to me the most was the name of the character Judith. The Book of Judith is a story about a heroine, Judith, who beheads a foreign invader who threatens to take over Jerusalem by using her powers of beauty, intelligence and seduction in order to do so.

In the beginning of Absalom, Absalom! there is a proclamation for the protection of Judith, “Protect her, at least. At least save Judith” (14). Also, Judith is described as a beautiful and sexual being. She is youthful and in a transitional phase between childhood and womanhood. The description of her “floating and seeking but merely waiting, parasitic and potent and serene” [52] is somewhat mesmerizing. Through further reading of the novel the reader also learns that Judith becomes the object of Henry’s affection. In addition, I also found a correlation between the description of their dress. Biblical Judith, when not on an adventure, wears a sackcloth and widow’s dress. Judith Sutpen, in essence, also wears a widow’s dress. Much of the descriptions of Judith throughout the novel are centered around the making and wearing of her wedding dress, which in turn, turn into her widow’s dress after Bon is shot.  These few things aside, after getting further into the novel I struggled trying to keep the connection between biblical Judith and Judith Sutpen.

Biblical Judith is described as a warrior, a woman who knows her power over men, is strong, and a woman of action. I do not see Judith Sutpen as a heroine. In fact, I think that Judith is a woman more of stasis than action. She is described as “just a blank shape” (95).  Throughout the narrative Judith seems to be in constant waiting (i.e. she waits to hear the news in which her father will deliver about Bon’s faithfulness, she awaits the letter from Bon). She is much more of a character that somewhat adapts to her situation rather than reacting and fighting against it. One of the most monumental moments in Biblical Judith’s story is her seduction and then beheading of Assyrian general, on the bed, in the bedroom. In high contrast to this scene is the scene with Bon being shot in the bedroom. Bon, unlike the Assyrian general, was not killed by Judith. (But maybe was killed by Judith in essence since Henry would not have killed Bon if he was not going to marry Judith and furthermore take her virginity?)  The description of Bon’s death as  the “bedroom long-closed and musty, that sheetless bed (that nuptial couch of love and grief) with the pale and bloody corpse in its patched and weathered gray crimsoning and bare mattress, the bowed and the unwived widow kneeling beside it…” (110) mirrors the same scene in which the general is killed. However,instead of the scene of defiance being in the hands of Judith (as it is in the biblical story) it is in the hand’s of Henry. In fact, Judith is somewhat calm when she finds out that Bon is dead. She does what she needs to in order to prepare for dinner as well as assists in getting Bon’s dead body out of the bedroom. It is not until later when Sutpen asks about Bon that Judith breaks down.

I am not really sure entirely what exactly to make of the connection between Biblical Judith and Judith Sutpen. Perhaps the connection is more so like the connection between Byron Bunch and Lord Byron (where the character is the opposite of the allusion)?

                Early in “Delta Autumn,” as the hunting party drives to the woods, the audience witnesses a political discussion that situates the narrative against the backdrop of totalitarianism. Edmonds cynically suggests that there will be no more hunting trips, asking, “After Hitler gets through with it? Or Smith or Jones or Roosevelt or Wilkie or whatever he will call himself in this country?” (322). In these lines, he suggests that the specter of Fascism transcends individual figures and nations, implying that its rise may be inevitable. After Legate counters that Americans are strong enough to resist such a takeover, Edmonds shoots back, “How?… By singing God Bless America in bars at midnight and wearing dime-store flags in our lapels?” While we learn later in the story why Edmonds behaves so cantankerously, he does make a potent critique of patriotism here, one that resonates 70+ years later. Ike refuses to accept this stance, however, curiously using the Civil War as an example of the nation’s strength in the face of adversity. A number of issues complicate the positions taken by these men—the racism of the South juxtaposed with Hitler’s notions of racial purity; pride in America vs pride in their ancestors who fought to destroy it; a sense of American exceptionalism tinged with the sense that the country is falling apart. These hypocrisies offer insight into the shifting attitudes of people in the South as history moves further from the Civil War and closer to Civil Rights.

                Continuing his political commentary, Edmonds rattles off a litany of complaints about the state of the country—it is almost disturbing how closely many of his statements resemble present-day attitudes:

“And what have you got left?… Half the people without jobs and half the factories closed by strikes. Half the people on public dole that wont work and half that couldn’t work even if they would. Too much cotton and corn and hogs, and not enough for people to eat and wear. The country full of people to tell a man how he cant raise his own cotton whether he will or wont, and Sally Rand with a sergeant’s stripes and not even the fan couldn’t fill the army rolls. Too much not-butter and not even the guns—“ (323)

A nascent Tear-partier, Edmonds seems to be overflowing with complaints about both government intrusion and the inequalities produced by the American system. What I find fascinating about his rhetoric—and that of contemporary politicians of the same mindset—is the co-mingling of patriotism with a “sky is falling” attitude about the state of the union. While Edmonds is depicted as cynical beyond compare, we often hear from contemporary pundits who claim to love America and see any government action whatsoever as a threat to what the country “actually” stands for. Yet the same exact complaints were, apparently, being leveled in the 1930s and 40s (and earlier). It seems ironic that those who profess their love of this country with the greatest vigor (with lapel pins shining) take such issue with the fundamental mechanisms of the government itself. Meanwhile, anyone left of center who raises questions about the American system is castigated as someone who “hates” America. Juxtaposed with Edmonds’s harsh critique, Ike’s romantic view of America—expressed through his attitudes about the wilderness—appears naïve and trite. Perhaps this demonstrates that even a figure as seemingly noble as Uncle Ike is powerless as the world moves towards Fascism, world war, and eventually, nuclear destruction.