Unnamed Someone 4

To explain his father's decision to move east to the Tidewater, Sutpen speculates in Absalom! about a "somebody" who might have influenced the decision, and comes up with three different possibilities: "somebody, some traveler," who praised the quality of life in the Tidewater; or "perhaps somebody his father knew once . . . [who] happened to think about him; or "someone kin to him . . . [who] had sent for him" (181). Sutpen's musings here resemble the novel's larger pattern of speculation, as Rosa, Mr. Compson, Quentin and Shreve all try to define 'Thomas Sutpen' or 'Charles Bon.'