First engaged to and later rejected by Rosa, Sutpen impregnates the young granddaughter of Wash Jones, a poor white plantation hand on his property. Sutpen abandons her when she bears a daughter. Wash kills Sutpen as well as his granddaughter and her child. Years later, Henry returns to Sutpen's Hundred and lives with Clytie, Sutpen's daughter by a slave, for four years as he waits to die. Fearing Henry's imminent arrest when Rosa learns of his presence and returns to care for him, Clytie sets the house on fire and kills them both.
The novel ends with Quentin, a Harvard student and the grandson of Sutpen's only friend General Compson, and his Canadian roommate Shreve trying to make sense of the story and the South. Each does so in his own way. In the end, the only remaining Sutpen is Jim Bond, the black grandson of Charles Bon.
Many critics see the story and structure of Absalom, Absalom! as a metaphor for the South. Critics have also noted that Faulkner explores the ideas of racism through Sutpen's rejection of Charles Bon and his mother because of her partially black ancestry, a concept that drives the narrative.
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