Absalom Absalom

♦ SOCIAL SENSITIVITY ♦

The plot of Absalom, Absalom! focuses on so many sensitive situations that the story seems almost too sensational to be true. However, each of the themes in Faulkner's masterpiece have existed in human societies throughout history. Faulkner deals with lust, greed, incest, miscegenation, discrimination, slavery, and murder, all of which have been considered sins and have caused societal upheavals. Faulkner's characters profess to uphold the ideals set forth for a Southern society, yet they expose Southern society as a place of hypocrisy. Jefferson, Mississippi, as a representative of the South in general, emerges as a place where those who fought to create a grand society did so by cornmitting heinous crimes against humanity and thus betrayed the very values they strove to uphold.

One of the hypocrisies Faulkner reveals is that Southern societies profess to value a strong sense of family, yet they forfeit family readily in favor of upholding some predetermined social structure. They let community values rule their thinking and undermine their regard for human feelings. The fact that Henry was willing to condone incest, yet killed to prevent miscegenation, reveals the nature of this social structure as one based on hatred and illustrates Faulkner's staunch criticism of the segregation and discrimination that permeated Southern society during the Civil War era. Even more telling is the fact that Sutpen, who claims to be a "Southern gentleman," denies his own blood in order to carry forth his design. Charles Bon did not fit into the design because he was part black, even though he

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Absalom, Absalom!

was one of Sutpen's sons. Image was more important than family, and morality, tolerance, and even human kindness simply got in the way of creating a "perfect" society, or a perfect design.

An examination of the significance of "Sutpen's design" forces an evaluation of humanitarian ethics. The controversy surrounding slavery dominated the South and Faulkner outlines the evils that result from the Southerners' inhumane treatment of black people. The slave owners in the novel are particularly cruel. Thomas Sutpen engages in savage fights with his slaves, and thus he not only condones racism but treats his black slaves as beasts. If the act of denying Charles Bon is viewed as an analogy for the act of denying Southern Negroes, then this one incident serves as the pivotal incident that illustrates Faulkner's condemnation of Southern morals. Thomas Sutpen, as the stereotypical "Southern gentleman," violated the very structure he claimed to create, and thus Sutpen's design was doomed to failure.

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