Narrative Structure on ABSALOM
Narrative Structure on ABSALOMYARN OF ABSALOM, ABSALOM!
There are many unanswered questions concerning the novel Absalom, Absalom!, what exactly its author intended to get across through it or what he actually did with it. Many critics believe he just never reached a single and final intention, so he just left the final authorities in question, and he may have liked it that way (Parker 16). While others believe he was just careless and forgetful, leaving dangling ends with the elements of earlier designs that obtrude themselves on what appears as a finished fabric (Brooks 302). They also believe that he wrote contradictory passages that disturbed the consistency and coherency of the novel, and still others believe it to be his greatest work (Parker cover). Even so, William Faulkner's narration, whether internal or external, in the novel Absalom, Absalom! has caused much controversy and has mystified some of the best critics, as well as many readers.
To truly begin to understand Faulkner's narrative in Absalom, Absalom!, one must first understand the history behind it. This novel, begun in Oxford, Mississippi around 1933 or 1934, was written in a bombastic and learned language with a passionate immersion in the past. It was set from the 1820s until around 1910 at Harvard, Yale, and Oxford in Mississippi, New Orleans, Virginia, and Haiti. This novel is also the sixth of Faulkner's novels set in the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County, and is considered by many to partly be a sequel to The Sound and the Fury. Although these two novels may be related, they do not rely on each other. However, some concerns that appear in The Sound and the Fury are echoed in Absalom, Absalom!
An important part of the novel's history involves the economy and local Indians in Mississippi. Faulkner's land, in north Mississippi, had been home to the Chickasaw Indians in the early 19th century, and they appear frequently throughout much of his fiction and even turn up briefly in Absalom, Absalom!. The Chickasaw's only roles in this novel, however, are to surrender their land and silently disappear. It was because of the federal and state governments that Mississippi experienced a �boom' in its economy. The governments pressured the Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians into leaving, thus opening up the fertile Indian hill country for the settlement of poor, southern white folk. The economy in the early 1830s was independent from slaves and was actually little more committed to slavery than the north. In the 1940s, however, this changed when the plantation system, slavery, cotton industry, and population all grew tremendously. The population in Mississippi grew until most were black slaves, 52 percent actually.
Another major occurrence in the novel's history is war. When the Civil War broke out most of the white settlers only owned and worked small farms. And what few plantations there were, had not been there more than a generation....
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