Blocked Doors in "Absalom, Absalom!"

Paper Summary:

This paper takes a close look at two major scenes in William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" in which white bodies are denied entrance by black bodies. The paper looks at how this affects the characters' understanding of their racial identity and examines how these images of doorways and thresholds relate to the murder of Charles Bon.

From the Paper:

"In his article, ?Behind Closed Doors: The Unknowable and Unknowing in Absalom, Absalom!,? Herberden Ryan states, "the most crucial moments of the story involve the crossing of some thresholds, and the threshold between narrated events (past) and the narration of them (present) is perhaps the most basic" (295). In particular, Ryan examines two key door scenes, the young Thomas Sutpen's attempt to enter the slave-owner's front door in Tidewater, Virginia in 1820; and Rosa Coldfield's attempt to pass Clytie Sutpen at Sutpen's Hundred in 1865. In their own way, both Sutpen and Rosa make it through their doorways, but at a great price, and in many other ways what they find on the other side is not always what they thought they would find. Furthermore, as Ryan argues, the readers of Absalom, Absalom! are often faced with their own doors as some events are hidden or witheld from them by Faulkner as means of narrative technique."

More papers on Blocked Doors in "Absalom, Absalom!":

• Book Review # 120407 : "Absalom, Absalom!": A Southern Gothic Novel"
• Book Review # 104448 : "William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!"
• Book Review # 65465 : "A Study in Faulkner: "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom! Absalom!"

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