On Absalom, Absalom! From The Perspective Of Criminal Psychology

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is one of the greatest American men of letters, whose works root in American South and explore the fate of American society and the spiritual crisis of human beings. Taking American South around the Civil War as its background, Absalom, Absalom! presents the tragic course of Sutpen family from prosperity to decay, in which Faulkner reveals the unsavory root of southern morals and ethics.Criminal psychology is a subject which studies psychological tokens and psychological elements in relation to crimes. Criminal mind is an important mark exposed through Sutpen’s design of a dynasty with pure white ancestry. From the perspective of criminal minds, this paper attempts to analyze the cause of Sutpen family’s tragedy in virtue of explaining the characters’states of criminal minds. The first chapter analyzes criminal minds and behavioral characteristics of Wash Jones, Thomas Henry and Thomas Sutpen. Different personalities and social control result in their criminal behavior. The second chapter discusses relationships between different criminal minds and Sutpen family’s tragedy. Sutpen’s abnormal psychology, Wash’s murder stimulated by Sutpen, and Henry’s murder lying dormant variously catalyze the fragmentation of Sutpen’s great dream. Proceeding with the aspect of ciminal psychology, the third chapter seeks to dig into the causes of Sutpen family’s tragedy from the angles of racism, womenfolk and paternalism, and research on Faulkner’s meditation on human nature by analyzing the motivation and implementation of criminal behavior.As a traditional literator and moralist, Faulkner possesses the originality in the depiction of criminal minds different from other criminal novelists. Absalom, Absalom! presents the conflicts between traditional codes and modern society, amplifying on the conductive significance of the construction of ethnical morality and human nature in the modern world.