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Chapters
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Contents
Chapters
Chapters at a glance
Absalom, Absalom! has 9 chapters.
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Chapters9 items
Chapter 1
Rosa Coldfield summons Quentin Compson to her house and begins telling him the story of Thomas Sutpen, a man who arrived in Jefferson, Mississippi decades earlier and built a plan…
Chapter 2
The narration shifts to Quentin and his father, Mr. Compson, who offers his own account of Sutpen's arrival in Jefferson.
Chapter 3
Mr. Compson continues his account, now focusing on Sutpen's courtship and marriage to Ellen Coldfield, Rosa's sister.
Chapter 4
Mr. Compson tells Quentin about Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon, the two young men whose friendship and eventual conflict will become the novel's central tragedy.
Chapter 5
Rosa Coldfield takes over the narration again, and this chapter is the most emotionally raw in the novel. Rosa describes her own strange relationship with Sutpen after the war, wh…
Chapter 6
Shreve takes over the storytelling as he and Quentin sit in their Harvard dorm room. He retells Rosa's account and the early Sutpen history with comic irreverence, pushing Quentin…
Chapter 7
This chapter goes deepest into Thomas Sutpen's own account of his origins, filtered through what Sutpen told Grandfather Compson, who told Mr.
Chapter 8
Shreve and Quentin push further into speculation, now imagining the inner lives of Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen as they move toward the Civil War and its aftermath.
Chapter 9
The novel's final chapter returns to Rosa and then closes with Quentin alone in his dorm room after Shreve has gone to sleep.
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