John P. Anderson

Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: Uncertainty in Dixie John P. Anderson

This non-academic author, a retired lawyer, brings William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! to life as uncertainty in Dixie. He traces Faulkner's portrait of the efforts of Thomas Sutpen to create a family dynasty in wealth and community respect and of Rosa Coldfield to revenge Sutpen's treatment of her as a mere reproduction tool. Both efforts are analyzed as life sterilizers inevitably doomed to failure by the uncertainties in life and as examples of the tension between control of the future and love, a choice Faulkner had to make in his own personal life. Line by line analyses of critical portions of the novel reveal its subtleties to the reader. The explanation points out the intentional gaps and spaces in the story that invite reader participation as to what happened. This author gives you his interpretation. You are invited to create your own version of what "really" happened in this archetypal setting in Faulkner's famous Jefferson, Mississippi.