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Analysis

Like other Faulkner novels, Absalom, Absalom! allegorizes Southern history; the title itself is an allusion to a wayward son fighting the empire his father built. The history of Thomas Sutpen mirrors the rise and fall of Southern plantation culture. Sutpen's failures necessarily reflect the weaknesses of an idealistic South. Rigidly committed to his "design", Sutpen proves unwilling to honor his marriage to a black woman, setting in motion his own destruction.

Absalom, Absalom! juxtaposes ostensible fact, informed guesswork, and outright speculation, with the implication that any and all reconstructions of the past remain irretrievable and therefore imaginative.

By using various storytellers/narrators expressing their interpretations of the facts, it alludes to the historical cultural zeitgeist of Faulkner's South, where the past is always present and constantly in states of revision by the people who tell and retell the story over time, which give the story a strong magical-realist element, as well as an underlying exploration of the process of myth-making and the problematization of truth.

The use of Quentin Compson as the primary perspective (if not exactly the focus) of the novel makes it something of a companion piece to Faulkner's earlier work The Sound and the Fury, which tells the story of the Compson family, with Quentin as one of the main characters. Although the action of that novel is never explicitly referenced, the Sutpen family's struggle with dynasty, downfall, and potential incest parallel the familial events and obsessions that drive Quentin and Miss Rosa Coldfield to witness the burning of Sutpen's Hundred.