Top 30 Modern Classics - X

Absalom, Absalom!

By William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! written by American author William Faulkner was published in 1936.

Thomas Sutpen, a white man born into poverty comes to Mississippi with the quest of becoming a wealth and influential man. 

Thomas Sutpen obtains one hundred square miles of land from a local native American tribe. He marries a local merchant's daughter, Ellen, who bears him a son, Henry, and a daughter, Judith.

Henry goes to the University and meets fellow student Charles Bon. Henry brings Charles home for Christmas, and Charles and Judith begin a quiet romance. However, Thomas Sutpen realizes that Charles Bon is his son from an earlier marriage with a Plantation ownrer's daughter, Eulalia, and moves to stop the proposed union of Charles with Judith.

Due to certain circumstances, Henry and Charles join the Cofederate Army to fight in the Civil war. On knowing from his father that Charles was half black, Henry kills Charles and flees.

Thomas Sutpen returns from the war and begins to repair his dynasty and finds his hundred square miles reduced to one. He proposes to Rosa Coldfield, his dead wife's younger sister, and she accepts. However, Sutpen insults Rosa by demanding that she bear him a son before the wedding takes place, prompting her to leave Sutpen's Hundred. Sutpen then begins an affair with Milly, the 15-year-old granddaughter of Wash Jones, a squatter who lives on the Sutpen property. Milly becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. Sutpen is terribly disappointed, because the last hope of repairing his Sutpen dynasty rested on Milly giving birth to a son. Sutpen casts Milly and the child aside. An enraged Wash Jones kills Sutpen, his own granddaughter, and Sutpen's newborn daughter, and is in turn is killed by the posse that arrives to arrest him.

What happens thereafter is for the reader to find out.

A story masterfully narrated.

Namaste

Prabir