A Study Of The Images Of Intruders Represented In Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner is one of the most acclaimed literary masters in the world. As a novelist and short-story writer who got the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards, Faulkner won both fame and respect from the whole world.Throughout his whole life, Faulkner wrote 19 novels, among which 15 were related to his familiar Southern land. Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkner's ninth novel. Since its publication in 1936, Absalom, Absalom! has been under the focus of study by a large number of researchers at home and abroad. In America, the existing body of criticism covers almost every aspect of the novel such as characters, themes, narrative techniques, mythological models and so on. In recent years, more and more scholars have begun to study the novel from its postmodern characteristics and its impact on postmodern Southern writers. In China, most of the studies on this novel also focus on the themes, the unique narrative techniques, the Biblical mythological models and the comparative studies between Faulkner and some Chinese novelists, such as Yu Hua and Mo Yan.Although the studies achieved by previous scholars are quite a lot, there is one viewpoint that has been somehow neglected but plays a crucial role in interpreting Absalom, Absalom!: the images of intruders represented in different forms in the novel. With the unfolding of the plot, it is not difficult to find that many characters in the novel have experienced the changes of identity, social status, psychology and so on and the changes are not the specific ones only belonging to them but represent the whole picture of the American South before and after the Civil War. Therefore, it is significant and necessary to give a study of the images of intruders represented in Absalom, Absalom!.The main body of the thesis is divided into four chapters, represented respectively by the analysis of four major characters in the novel: Thomas Sutpen, Charles Bon, Quentin Compson as well as Rosa Coldfield.The first chapter starts with the analysis of the protagonist Thomas Sutpen's intrusion into the antebellum South. In this chapter, the problem of social caste and the consciousness of Southern region in the antebellum years are discussed. This chapter begins with Thomas Sutpen's psychological changes in the process of his intrusion into the social reality and gives an analysis of the overt division of social castes which drives the little boy out of his innocence and leads him to be a realistic social climber by casting off his humanity and emotions. In his following intrusion into the antebellum South, Sutpen starts his way of establishment. Thomas Sutpen's intrusion into the antebellum South represents the force which thrusts into the traditional Southern society from the outside in the antebellum years. The intrusion is a challenge to the authority represented by the Southern upper class and it is also a declaration of the establishment of a new class represented by the poor white people in the agricultural Southern region. In addition, the intrusion is the social confrontation of two forces in the antebellum South: the force from the outside represented by Thomas Sutpen and the traditional inner force of the Southern region. In the conflict and contact of the two, the force from the outside gradually becomes Southernized and changes into a part of the Southern force; on the other hand, the outside force slowly disintegrates the inner force of the South and breaks the inherent social order of the old South.Chapter Two gives an analysis of the racial problem in the antebellum South. By employing the "one-drop rule" which was laid in the early 1800s, this chapter traces the reason for Charles Bon's dilemma in his identity. As a mulatto, Charles Bon intrudes into the white world and tries his best to get the acknowledgement of his identity from his father. But the racial prejudice together with the unchangeable class division inherited from the old South finally drives him out of it and sets him in the black identity. The racial problem is a crucial problem in the growth of plantation economy. It defines the Southern society as a dual-structural society only composed by the white and the black people, in which mulattoes are naturally regarded as black ones. Therefore, the intrusion of the colored people represented by Charles Bon is indeed the black people's subversion of the world dominated by the white people and the intrusion is also a reflection of the irreconcilable racial conflicts existing in the old South.Chapter Three approaches the inner conflicts of the Southern young generations through Quentin Compson's intrusion into the Sutpen story. Intruding from The Sound and the Fury into Absalom, Absalom!, from the narration of other people's story into his own feelings and emotions, Quentin is indeed reentering into his own mind and telling the loss and despair of his time. In this chapter, Quentin's mirror images in Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon and his split self in Shreve reveal to us a split Quentin: the one buried in the illusion and glamour of the former South and the one living in the post-bellum South. The split self is actually the inner conflicts resulted from the changes and subversion of the two different social orders. Lost in the illusions between the old and the new, between tradition and transition, the young generations represented by Quentin reveal the blankness and confusion of souls resulted from the gap between the perdition of the old social order and the new order.Chapter Four is dedicated to ideological changes of the Southerners in the post-bellum South through Rosa's intrusion into it. As a woman who has inherited the traditional Southern ideology, Rosa witnesses the destructive force of the Civil War and the maladies and loss of humanity of the old South. Disappointed and helpless in facing a wasteland of the South, Rosa sees humanity from Clytie, the mulatto servant in the family, and casts off the racial prejudice and bondages of the old South. Rosa's intrusion into the post-bellum South is an epitome of the Southerners' lives in the period of historical transition. It shows the oppression and bondages of the convention on the Southerners. On the other hand, it indicates the possibility of setting up a new kind of relationship between the white and the black people and shows the hope for a new South which is established upon equality and freedom.In Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner chooses a series of characters who can represent the different developing stages of the South to show the vicissitude of the American Southern region. The images of intruders in different forms are virtually the epitomes of the Southerners living before and after the Civil War. Their intrusion in class, race, psychology and ideology, and the changes brought by the intrusion disclose the conflicts, transition and integration between the old and the new, the White and the Black, the wealthy and the poor and fantasies and reality. The transition or integration basically reveals the changes of social structures, values and ideologies at the two different stages of the Southern society. The traditional Southern ideologies and values adopted by the Southerners in the antebellum years penetrated into the deep hearts of the Southerners, becoming a part of their lives and their codes of conduct. On the other hand, the changes brought by the outbreak of the Civil War together with the failure of the South made the ethics and values of the old days unable to meet the demands and social development of the new society. The former brilliant culture, tradition as well as the ideological wholeness of the South became fragmented and the past changed to be burdens upon the young generations.In Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner examines the vicissitude of the whole Southern society through the rise and fall of a family. He joins the past and the present together and explores the present and the future through the past. Focusing on the fortunes and souls of the characters in the novel, Faulkner was indeed penetrating into the social changes that Mississippi State and the whole South were undergoing in the nineteenth century and pondering on the fate of the South.