Absalom, Absalom! characters

Appears from the start

An elderly woman of Jefferson who summons Quentin to hear her account of the Sutpen family. She is Thomas Sutpen's sister-in-law and has spent much of her life preserving a bitter, intensely personal version of his rise and the ruin of his household.

Appears from the start

A young man from Jefferson preparing to leave for Harvard. Rosa chooses him as her listener because his family knows the Sutpen history and because she wants someone from a later generation to carry the story beyond her lifetime.

Appears from the start

A powerful, inscrutable stranger who arrives in Jefferson in 1833, acquires a vast tract of land, and builds the plantation called Sutpen's Hundred with enslaved labor. His determination to found a lasting dynasty governs the history Rosa recounts.

Appears from the start

Thomas Sutpen's wife and Rosa's older sister, raised in a respectable Jefferson household. Her marriage draws the Coldfields into Sutpen's ambitious and increasingly isolated family enterprise.

Appears from the start

The son of Thomas and Ellen Sutpen. As a student at the University of Mississippi he forms an intense friendship with the polished Charles Bon and brings him home, where Bon begins courting Henry's sister Judith.

Appears from the start

The daughter of Thomas and Ellen Sutpen, self-contained and resilient amid the collapse of the household. Charles Bon's courtship of her becomes the point around which the conflict between her father, brother, and Bon turns.

Also known as Clytie

Appears from the start

Thomas Sutpen's daughter by an enslaved woman. She remains at Sutpen's Hundred through war and family disaster, occupying an uneasy place within the household while guarding its surviving members and secrets.

Also known as Jason Compson III

First appears in chapter 2

Quentin's father, who passes on stories and documents inherited from General Compson about Sutpen and his children. His reflective narration supplies much of the family's history while repeatedly acknowledging how much remains uncertain.

First appears in chapter 2

Henry Sutpen's sophisticated university friend from New Orleans. He visits Sutpen's Hundred and courts Judith, but Thomas Sutpen opposes the match for reasons he does not initially explain to his children.

First appears in chapter 3

A poor white tenant and devoted follower of Thomas Sutpen who lives in an abandoned fishing camp on the estate. He admires Sutpen's aristocratic image and serves him faithfully despite the severe distance between them.

First appears in chapter 6

Quentin's Canadian roommate at Harvard. He listens to the Sutpen story, questions Quentin closely, and joins him in imaginatively reconstructing motives and scenes that none of the surviving narrators can directly verify.

First appears in chapter 7

Wash Jones's teenage granddaughter, living in poverty on Sutpen's land. In Sutpen's old age she becomes central to his renewed attempt to produce a male heir.

First appears in chapter 8

The mentally disabled young man who is the last known male descendant of Charles Bon. He lives at Sutpen's Hundred under Clytie's care, largely excluded from the white family history whose consequences his existence embodies.