Abstract

This study attempts to examine Absalom, Absalom! in terms of Henri Bergson's metaphysical arguments concerning time and reality. It is first argued that the absolute truth behind the events in the Sutpen material is absent from the text because Faulkner did not intend for the sum of his narrative views to coalesce into a whole. It is then suggested that Faulkner's insistence on keeping all knowledge of the Sutpen material relative to the individual narrative points of view reflects Bergson's distinction between metaphysical, or absolute, knowledge and mental, or partial, knowledge. The failure of the narrators to account for the truth behind the whole duration of events is then shown to be the result of the same intellectual errors which Bergson has pointed out in the failed attempts of philosophers to account for the real nature of time, its whole and continuous mobility, or duration, which brings about change. A summary of major philosophical efforts, from Aristotle to modern-day, analyzing the nature of time elucidates Bergson's argument that the problems which have plagued philosophers result from the confusion of time with the mental concepts of math, space, and language. Bergson's insistence that time, as well as all objects of reality, are distorted by the intellect's attempt to freeze the mobility of reality by representing the absolute, unique "thing itself" in terms of repeatable, conceptual expressions is emphasized to explain the repetitive nature of the narrative accounts of the Sutpen material, as well as the failure of the individual characters who appear doomed to repeat their experiences. Studies in cognition and thinking disorders similar to Bergson's argument concerning the faulty intellectual attempt to identify the real object in terms of partial expressions, or conceptual attributes, are also used to explain the cognitive processes of Absalom's characters. ;The relevance of Bergson's major points is extended to As I Lay Dying, Light in August, The Sound and the Fury and "The Bear" in the conclusion of this study