“ Around December 1910, human nature changed. All human relationships have changed… and when human relationships change there is at the same time a change in religion, politics and literature”; thus Modernism was born (Woolf qtd in Galens 175). Modernism was a movement that pursued a truthful depiction of the world by focusing on human experience through the subconscious. William Faulkner's novel, Absalom, Absalom! it is an excellent representation of Modernism. Through the narrative technique of stream of consciousness, Faulkner addresses specific aspects of Modernism, including allusions and attention to the past. Faulkner is able to construct the story of Thomas Sutpen's influence on Jefferson, Mississippi through this unique narrative structure. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The modernist movement was a reaction to realism. Modernists did not believe that realists' methods of simply writing about the actions of everyday life truly represented the real world. The Modernists argued that it was “impossible” to describe real life without focusing on the character's subconscious, because “the narrator's psyche will always be influenced by unknown forces and will therefore never be able to capture reality without any kind of bias or alteration. Rather, people should simply attempt to record thoughts, because that way the reader can understand things about the narrator that the narrator himself does not understand” (Galens 181). Therefore, modernists emphasized how people think and how these thoughts can influence characters' decisions and the world around them. To illustrate how the human mind really works, modernist writers use a narrative technique known as stream of consciousness. Stream of consciousness attempts to record how dispersed and confusing the experience of the world really is, and at the same time how deeper patterns of thought can be discerned by those (such as readers) who are at some distance from them. That human beings are alienated from true knowledge of themselves is the implicit thesis of the stream-of-consciousness form of storytelling. (Galens 183) Writers are able to create this complex structure by including elements that have become the signature of modernist works, including allusions and a heavy reliance on the characters' pasts. These elements allow the author to "remove all certainty and draw attention to the ways in which minds create the world" (Galens 191). This portrays the uncertainty people felt coming out of World War I and those seeking the stability of the past, a common theme in modern literature. William Faulkner's novel, Absalom, Absalom! engages these specific aspects of modernism through narrative voices that tell the story of Thomas Sutpen and his influence on the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Faulkner's novel has many different narrators, each telling pieces of Thomas Sutpen's story, leaving the reader to put these pieces together to create and decipher the entire story and its meaning. What characterizes Absalom, Absalom! it is the “multiple and interpenetrated chorus of voices, with one or the other rising shrillly over the others always present” (Rio-Jelliffe 84). There are a total of six narrators in Absalom, Absalom!, including Rosa Coldfield, Quentin and Mr. Compson, Thomas Sutpen himself, Quentin's Harvard roommate Shreve, and an omniscient narrator who helps the reader orient themselves in the novel and in the many different stories that compose it. exist inside. All these storytellers areseparated by time and place, but are brought together by the story of Thomas Sutpen's existence in Jefferson. For this reason and the way it treated the narrative structure of Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner is able to use allusions in his writing and portray the characters' strong reliance on the past throughout the novel. Thomas Sutpen's story eventually comes through Quentin after he gets information from Rosa and her father about the past events of Sutpen's life. Both Rosa and Mr. Compson orally tell the story to Quentin, who in turn tells the story to both the novel's readers and his roommate, Shreve. Since readers receive the story through a third party, they must take into account that much of what Quentin conveyed was influenced by his own thoughts and opinions on the subject. The same goes for the version of the story that Rosa and her father tell Quentin. Like Shreve, readers must question these past events and come up with their own theories about what really happened. For example, in chapter seven, Shreve creates many of his own theories: “Wait,” Shreve said. “You mean she had the child she wanted, after all that trouble, and then she turned her back and…” “Yes. Sitting in Grandpa's office that afternoon, head thrown back a little, explaining to Grandpa how he could explain arithmetic to Henry in fourth grade: "You see, all I wanted was a son." Which seems to me, when I look at the contemporary scene, that there is no exorbitant gift of nature or circumstance to require -'" "Will you wait?" Shreve said. "...who with the son has taken all going to the trouble of lying down right behind him in the cabin, should have provoked the grandfather to kill him first and then the child too?" "-What?" Quentin said. “It wasn't a son. It was a girl. “Oh” , Shreve said.(Faulkner 234) These theories usually turn out to be false, but they come from the memories and stories of the past that Quentin passes on to him as readers we are able to figure out where Shreve finds these details to create his theories for us to see his thought process; we have to guess the interactions between the characters, as well as the interactions that occur in the minds of the characters to show how these past events influence their present actions and thoughts, thus developing a narrative of the flow of consciousness. The past and allusions become important elements in Faulkner's novel, their meaning is developed through narrative structure. According to critic R. Rio-Jelliffe, “Sutpen's story takes on a semblance of 'historicity' of 'reality'” (76). In other words, Faulkner manages to successfully incorporate allusions into his writings, so much so that it appears that Thomas Sutpen's story is actually true. For example, Sutpen's story is set in real states (Mississippi and West Virginia), and while not all of the counties and cities referenced are real, readers are likely to believe a story that takes place in a familiar state. Furthermore, Quentin bases Rosa's need to tell Sutpen's story on the outcome of the Civil War and why the South lost: it's because she wants him to be told that he thought the people she would never see and whose names he would never have heard and that I have never heard his name nor seen his face they will read it and in the end they will know why God let us lose the war: that only through the blood of our men and the tears of our women could he stop this demon and erase his name and lineage from the earth. (Faulkner 6) Faulkner is able to create the illusion that Sutpen's story is true because he connects it to a real event: the Civil War. Theallusions to historical events are not the only allusions Faulkner uses in Absalom, Absalom! Each of the characters constantly alludes to past events in their own lives or the lives of others. According to critic Eric Casero, “The narrative language of Absalom, Absalom! depends on constant reference to the past, as we see that Quentin's story refers to that of his father, which refers to Sutpen's story, which refers to Sutpen's real, lived experience, which in turn refers to the experiences and to the ideologies of the community and history within which he lives. lived his life” (89). Faulkner's narrative technique easily allows for these allusions because Quentin needs to reflect on the different stories he hears and piece together the information he receives from Rosa and his father to make sense of what happened in the past and how it affects his present and its future. The past not only makes its way into Absalom, Absalom! through allusions, both historical and fictitious, but also through the memories of the characters. The novel's narrative and this idea of ​​multiple voices telling a single story relies on the memories of both Rosa Coldfield and Mr. Compson, as well as her father, and their ability to convey the story as accurately as possible. Yet Sutpen himself must rely on his own childhood memories to develop his plan for how he will live his life as an adult. For example, when he and Quentin's grandfather search for the architect, Sutpen tells Compson that as a child he had never known a world in which people owned their own property. He states that it was only at the age of fourteen that he took the time to evaluate the stories he did not hear as a child: When he was a child he did not listen to the vague and cloudy tales of Tidewater splendor that penetrated even his mountains because then he could not to understand what people meant and when he became a boy he did not listen to them because there was nothing in sight with which to compare and evaluate the stories and thus give the words life and meaning, and no chance that he ever would (certainly no conviction or thought that one day he might do it), and because he was too busy doing the things boys do; and when he became young, curiosity itself exhumed the stories he didn't know he had heard and speculated on them, he became interested and would have liked to see those places once, but without envy or regret, because he only thought that some have generated in a place and sometimes in another, some produced rich (lucky, he might have called it: or perhaps he called lucky rich) and some not, and that (so he told his grandfather) the men themselves had little to do with the choice and less remorse because ( he even told his grandfather) it had never occurred to him that a man should take such a blind incident as that as an authority or a mandate to look down on others, any other. So he had hardly heard of such a world until he fell into it. (Faulkner 180) It was only when Sutpen "fell into" the world he had lived in and looked back at his childhood that he remembered having actually heard stories of a similar world, but had pushed them out of his mind; I avoided thinking about it too deeply then. This method of reviewing the past is important to the development of Sutpen's story, as it shows how small events that one may overlook in life can have a huge impact on their lives in the future. This revision process is not only visible in Sutpen's childhood memories. , but also in the discussions Shreve and Quentin have about Sutpen's story, as well as when Rosa Coldfield tells the story to Quentin. Shreve and Quentin spend much of the novel analyzing and piecing together Thomas' storySutpen and its meaning. As mentioned above, Shreve theorizes the outcomes of each of the events and both hypothesize the reasons for Sutpen's actions. It is only through the narrative structure that we are able to see specifically how Quentin arrives at his speculations and what he had been thinking prior to what he says in his discussions with Shreve. It is also thanks to the novel's narrative structure that we can see how Quentin feels about the story Rosa is telling him, and how he initially interprets it in his mind before reevaluating what he has been told. For example, at the beginning of the novel we see Quentin arguing with himself whether or not to tell Rosa's story, and how it should be told: ...the two separated Quentins now talk to each other in the long silence of non-people in non- language , like this:It seems that this demon is hishis name was Sutpen (Colonel Sutpen) - Colonel Sutpen. Who came out of nowhere and without warning to the earth with a band of strange niggers and built a plantation – (violently tore up a plantation, says Miss Rosa Coldfield) – tore up violently. And he married his sister Ellen and begat a son and a daughter who (without kindness he begot, says Miss Rosa Coldfield) - without kindness. Which was supposed to be the jewels (except they destroyed it or something. And they died) - and they died. Without regret, Miss Rosa Coldfield says: (Saved by her) yes, saved by her (and by Quentin Compson) Yes. And by Quentin Compson. (Faulkner 4-5). These “two separate Quentins” struggle between the amount of detail and whether or not Rosa Coldfield's prejudices should influence her interpretation of the story: “These seemingly individual narratives are filtered through Quentin's memory, refracted, and reshaped in his way of seeing and to say” (Rio-Jelliffe 82). These arguments that Quentin has within him help shape how he tells the story to Shreve, and also allow readers to see both the "original" text and Quentin's version by allowing readers to decide which version(s)( i) wish(s) believe as the correct interpretation of the life of Thomas Sutpen. The strong connection that the characters and the novel have with the past allows the reader to better interpret the influence that Sutpen had on his relatives and citizens. The reader can infer from Rosa Coldfield's desire to tell the story and the fervor with which she tells the story to Quentin that Sutpen has had, and still has, a wide sphere of influence on the people in her life. Rosa maintained a hatred for Thomas Sutpen for much of her life, even after his death, because he had "created two sons not only to destroy each other and his own line, but my line as well. ." (Faulkner 12). . Sutpen's actions when he was alive continued to affect Rosa even after his death because it destroyed not only his own family, but also any future Rosa might have had. We can see here that the chains of events and changes in consciousness that form the core of Absalom, Absalom! extend across multiple historical levels: the social environment of Sutpen's childhood directly determines the condition of his conscience, which shapes his design, which determines his interactions with others in the novel, including Rosa, whose conscience is made bitter , resentful and broken, causing it to pepper Sutpen's narrative which, as the novel seems to imply, runs like an undercurrent of human consciousness through human history. (Faulkner 96) The path of destruction that Sutpen left after his death consumed Rosa's entire being, and she was never able to free herself from her past until her visit to Sutpen's One Hundred and Forty-Three Years Later. This eternal influence in turn influences not only Rosa, but 2015.