Colonel Sutpen

Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2016-07-15 17:42
Text: 
The Unvanquished
Character Key: 
Thomas Sutpen
Display Name: 
Colonel Sutpen
Sort Name: 
Sutpen, Colonel Thomas
AKA: 
Thomas Sutpen
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Male
Class: 
Upper Class
Rank: 
Minor
Vitality: 
Alive
Family: 
Sutpen
Family (new): 
SutpensInUV
Occupation: 
Armed Forces
Specific Job: 
Confederate Colonel
First Mentioned: 
Sartoris Plantation in The Unvanquished (Location)
Other Texts: 
"Wash"
Absalom, Absalom!
Go Down, Moses
Requiem for a Nun
The Reivers
Biography: 

Like John Sartoris, Thomas Sutpen is a large land- and slave-owner and a Confederate Colonel. Sutpen, in fact, replaced Sartoris in command of the Yoknapatawpha regiment after the battle of Second Bull Run. He is the central character in Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner started to work on The Unvanquished short stories in 1934 in part because he needed a break from working on Absalom!; he had finished that novel by the time he wrote "An Odor of Verbena," where Sutpen's character appears in The Unvanquished. In the conversation that Bayard and his step-mother Drusilla have in that chapter, they juxtapose the two Colonels - Sartoris and Sutpen - as epitomes of the Old South, and Faulkner uses Sartoris to take another, less ambivalent view of Sutpen. Bayard calls him "underbred, a cold ruthless man" whom his father "hates" (222).

Note: 
CUT: Colonel Sutpen was originally second-in-command of John Sartoris' regiment; after the battle of Second Bull Run he was elected commander by the troops. ; . In <em>Absalom!</em> readers learn that while Sutpen was the largest plantation owner in Yoknapatawpha, he was born to a poor white family in the mountains of western Virginia.
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/10592