"Ancient Myths and the Moral Framework of Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom

THE STUDY OF FAULKNER'S Absalom! against its cultural background, seen in the light of classical ideas of tragedy, is not new. Although three critical essays-by Ilse Dusoir Lind, Cleanth Brooks, and Richard Sewall-have discussed the tragic elements in the novel, none of examines in detail Faulkner's allusions to ancient mythology, and none therefore successfully illuminates the concrete elements of plot and character that constitute the author's ethical analogies.' most common explanation as to why Faulkner employed ancient myths has been that he attempted to create characters of heroic stature and to give the story historic dimensions. True. But previous studies have failed to emphasize the essential role that the fusion of the three major Western cultures-the Greek, the Hebrew, and the Christian-plays in Faulkner's tragic vision and the moral framework in which he sees Colonel Sutpen, perhaps his foremost tragic figure. In Absalom! Faulkner has succeeded in creating a man of the heroic magnitude necessary to originate a myth: the little boy, who at the age of fourteen did not lose his innocence but did discover his social position when he was turned away by a broadcloth monkey Negro from the door of the rich planter for whom his father worked; the little boy who made up his mind to take revenge on them-with them meaning the human puny mortals under the sun that might lie in hammocks all afternoon with their shoes off-and in order to do so needed money, a house, a plantation, slaves, a family-incidentally of course, a wife; who with this design in mind set out for Haiti, where, a few years later, he quelled a slave revolt and was rewarded with the 1 See Ilse Dusoir Lind, The Design and Meaning of Absalom!, PMLA, LXX, 887-912 (Dec., I955); Cleanth Brooks, Absalom, Absalom!: Definition of Innocence, Sewanee Review, LIX, 543-558 (Autumn, I959); Richard Sewall, Vision of Tragedy (New Haven, I959), pp. I33-I47

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