preview

Absalom Literary Analysis

Decent Essays

The novel, Absalom, Absalom, written by, William Faulkner, illustrates the various perceptions regarding the inhabitants of this new established area in antebellum Mississippi. Race and class plays a significant role as it explains the different level of boundaries one could not exceed because of status and race. It offers numerous ways to directly understand and decipher the different categories amongst the people. In the novel, one could see a sufficient amount of echelons of individuals ranging from slaves (later African Americans), lower-level whites (poor), middle class whites, to somewhat a wealthy elite. Also, one could detect that race had a very significant stance in the novel as it illustrates an initial era to the forming of class. It created a correlation. Thomas Sutpen, owner and founder of the plantation Sutpen's Hundred, in Yoknapatawpha County, near Jefferson, Mississippi is the main character in the book. He was married to Ellen Coldfield and bared three children: Henry, Judith, and Clytemnestra Sutpen, and Charles …show more content…

Clytie is Henry and Judith's half-sister. Their father, Sutpen, brought her as a slave to Jefferson from Haiti. Though she is black, Clytie has many of the advantages of a white person at the time. It is ironic for this period. She lived at Sutpen's Hundred longer than anyone. She was the most powerful member of the family by the end. She is the only one that could restrict Wash Jones from entering the house. “Stop right there, white man. Stop right where you is. You aint never crossed this door while Colonel was here and you aint going to cross it now.” (Faulkner, 226) As a woman and black person, she changed the perspective of blacks as being inferior to society in the old South. She demonstrated strength, considering how the characters generally treat the non-whites around

Get Access