Sutpen
Text:
Character Key:
Display Name:
Sutpen
Sort Name:
Sutpen
AKA:
Thomas Sutpen
Colonel Sutpen
Race:
White
Gender:
Male
Class:
Upper Class
Rank:
Minor
Vitality:
Alive
Family:
Sutpen
Family (new):
Occupation:
Management
Specific Job:
Planter
First Mentioned:
Other Texts:
Biography:
Sutpen arrives in the settlement with "thirty-odd" slaves from the Caribbean and a Parisian architect whom he also holds captive. Sutpen's grandiose ambitions include a magnificent house at the center of a vast plantation. The narrative describes him as "a big gaunt friendless passion-worn untalkative man" with an air of "anonymity and violence" (30). Sutpen is one of the principal early settlers of Yoknapatawpha (8) and he looms dominantly large as the central character of Absalom, Absalom! (1936), but he remains a minor character in Requiem.
Note:
It is not unreasonable to locate Sutpen's arrival in Yoknapatawpha County circa 1830. In the earlier novel (<em>Absalom, Absalom!</em> 1936), Faulkner's added chronology shows Sutpen's plantation to have been established in 1833.
Individual or Group:
Individual
Character changes class in this text:
digyok:node/character/18963