The Polyphonic Features Of Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom! is the ninth long novel by American great writer William Faulkner. It reflects both the confusion and complication of American South in the early twentieth century and Faulkner's contradictory ideas. The characters in the novel interpret the past from their own points of view, according to their own personality, experience and value. This thesis employs Bakhtin's theory of polyphony to study the polyphonic features of Absalom, Absalom! including dialogism, theme plurality and indeterminacy.The polyphonic novel is the product of the collapse of an extremely homogeneous society and the artistic reflection of a pluralistic and diverse changing society. The unified world turns to a pluralistic world. That transformation in American South is obvious. The South in the fierce clash between tradition and transformation endows Faulkner with the idea of "broken world". The era itself makes the polyphonic novel become possible. Faulkner's age is full of complication and contradiction. The polyphonic novel is the perfect artistic technique to interpret that confused age.Faulkner considers the objective contradiction of the age as the co-existed strength, fuses different contradictory ideas, causes them to converse with each other, and creates the works with openness and plurality. This thesis analyzes the dialogism of Absalom, Absalom! in two aspects: great dialogue and micro-dialogue. The great dialogue refers to the dialogic relationship in ideology. The characters make full use of independent and equal consciousness like the author to realize the dialogue. Different consciousnesses clash each other to produce the great dialogue in different levels. The micro-dialogue refers to the double-voiced words in form and inner dialogue in content—monologue caused by split personality. The dialogue between different independent consciousnesses creates the theme plurality of the novel. Absalom, Absalom! covers numerous themes, such as, the family's decline, the failure of the Old South, slavery, racialism, incest, murder and the destructive influence of the tradition and the past on the young generation, etc. This thesis emphasizes the issues of the racialism and the South. Readers are difficult to obtain a fixed answer in the novel, which results from the different interpretations by different narrators with different values, experiences and positions. Each narrator is independent separately and has full self-consciousness, so it forms theme plurality which makes the reader think freely. It results in the indeterminacy of the novel. Faulkner let different narrators tell a story of the Old South in dialogic form. He has no authoritative words in it. The narrators make a large amount of conjecture and fabrication to the mysteries, so it is the plot's indeterminacy that determines the meaning's indeterminacy. Therefore, the readers can give their own interpretation with the same material. The indeterminacy of the plot and meaning gives the novel eternal charm and makes the reader read numerous meanings. These polyphonic features of Absalom, Absalom! influence each other. The dialogues full of conflicts between the narrators make the novel plural and indeterminate. The novel loses its unity in meaning and forms the openness and plurality. There is no fixed conclusion and meaning in Absalom, Absalom!.In a word, Absalom, Absalom! is a typically polyphonic novel. This thesis employs the theory of polyphonic novel to analyze the text and to study its polyphonic features in three aspects: dialogue, theme plurality and indeterminacy. The polyphonic theory endows special charm on Absalom, Absalom!.