Luster

The young groom who accompanies Mr. Compson and Quentin on their hunting excursion in Chapter 6 is named Luster. Mr. Compson teases him for being superstitious about graveyards and ghosts (173). In The Sound and the Fury Luster is Dilsey's grandson, the young black boy who watches Benjy Compson in the late 1920s. In that novel, however, Luster was born after Quentin's suicide, so his presence with Quentin in Absalom is inexplicable. Shreve is speaking the first time Luster's name is mentioned - "what was his name? . . . Luster" (152), but later Quentin (quoting his father) uses the name as well (173). The most likely explanation for this inconsistency is that Faulkner himself forgot exactly who "Luster" was. If he'd chosen "T.P." or "Versh," Luster's uncles, who are also Dilsey's sons and Compson servants in the earlier novel, there would be no discrepancy.