Absalom, Absalom!: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Shreve and Quentin’s retelling of the story portrays Bon in a far more sympathetic light than Mr. Compson’s version—they seem to see Bon as a victim of his mother and the lawyer’s scheming rather than the main instigator of a plot to get back at Sutpen. They also seem to sentimentalize Bon and Henry’s friendship. Meanwhile, their suggestion that Henry could have remarked that he’d want to have a brother like Bon could be seen as an attempt to shift some of the blame for the tragedies to come onto Henry—as though Henry, if only subconsciously, sensed that Bon had deep ties to the family and chose to ignore these thoughts. 

Shreve wants to romanticize or dramatize the Sutpen saga more than Quentin, pushing for a version of the story that portrays Henry and Bon’s relationship as more akin to romance than platonic friendship. It’s clear that Shreve sees the Sutpen story as entertainment—he doesn’t associate it with the inherited burden of the South’s history as Quentin does. Bon’s teaching Henry to don feminine clothes and perform feminine behavior becomes a seduction of sorts. This version of the story portrays Bon far less sympathetically than Quentin’s and Shreve’s other retellings. The multiple and conflicting versions of Bon’s involvement with the Sutpen family reinforces the novel’s broader examination of storytelling and the impossibility of reaching any objective truth, particularly about historical events. 

Here, Shreve somewhat redacts his earlier portrayal of Bon as scheming seducer, suggesting that Bon’s reasons for ingratiating himself with the Sutpen family were reasonable and just—he merely wanted the father who had abandoned him as a child to acknowledge him as his son. In Shreve’s telling, Sutpen is more in the wrong than Bon for cruelly rejecting him a second time. 

Shreve further shifts blame for the Bon-Henry-Judith tragedy away from Bon and toward the Sutpen family as a whole. He seems to propose that the romance between Bon and Judith might not have happened had Ellen not inserted herself in the middle and done everything she could to encourage their engagement. Quentin’s refusal to believe there was genuine love between Bon and Judith indicates his refusal to romanticize the tragedy of the Sutpen family, which hits home for him in a deeper, more personal way as a Southerner than it does for Shreve, for whom the story is simply entertainment. 

In this version of the story, Shreve and Quentin continue to shift full blame away from Bon, suggesting that Bon hardly went out of his way to woo Judith—Ellen was far more interested in their courtship than Bon was. As Quentin and Shreve see it, Bon’s central aim had always been to persuade his father to acknowledge him—a noble aim, in their eyes. 

Shreve further shifts blame away from Bon, reaffirming his earlier guess that Bon’s mother and the lawyer she hired to follow Sutpen’s movement and business activities are the actors truly at the center of the plot against Sutpen. Note that Shreve’s theories repeatedly contradict one another, with some versions claiming that Bon knows Sutpen is his father and knowingly inserts himself into Sutpen’s life, and others claiming that only Bon’s mother and the lawyer know that Sutpen is Bon’s father.

Shreve here suggests that Bon’s mother and the lawyer’s implicit admission to Bon about Sutpen being Bon’s father was what prompted Bon to invest himself in a romance with Judith. He writes his name, intentionally and visibly, on the outside of letters to Judith as though to goad Sutpen with the threat to escalate the situation with Judith if Sutpen doesn’t do as Bon wishes and acknowledge him as his son.

This visit marks a major turning point in Bon’s relationship with the Sutpen family, and each character who addresses it proposes a different version of events. In Mr. Compson’s version, Sutpen tells Henry about Bon’s other family in New Orleans. In general Compson’s story—and seemingly in Shreve and Quentin’s, too—Sutpen tells Henry that Bon is their brother. Readers are left in the lurch, as it’s not clear which version of events comes closest to what actually happened.  

This surreal passage reinforces the transformative, reality-shaping effects of storytelling. Shreve and Quentin’s speculative retellings of the Sutpen tragedy metaphorically transport them back in time. This symbolizes how convinced they are that their version of the story reflects the truth of what happened. As they speculate on the past, that imagined version of the past becomes vivid and alive for them—as though it actually happened, when in fact nobody can say for sure that this is the case.

This version of the story affirms that all three of the possible truths about Bon that Sutpen could have told Henry that fateful Christmas Eve in the library are true—Bon’s mother (and therefore Bon) has Black ancestry, Bon has a mistress and child in New Orleans, and Bon is Henry and Judith’s half-brother. This version doesn’t make clear which truth Sutpen told Henry, though. It also doesn’t specify whether Henry is aware of Bon’s Black ancestry. In addition, one distinct point on which Shreve and Quentin break with Mr. Compson is on how Henry would have responded to Bon’s showing him his mistress and taking him to a brothel. Mr. Compson believes the experience would have scandalized Henry, but Quentin and Shreve, who perhaps represent a more modern viewpoint, believe Bon’s sexual prowess would only have enticed Henry more.

Shreve and Quentin, like General Compson, believe that Bon was aware that Sutpen was his father, but their accounts differ regarding when Bon found out. In Shreve and Quentin’s version, Bon only confirms his parentage now. And Bon’s violent reaction to the lawyer suggests that Bon doesn’t relish taking revenge on Sutpen. To the contrary, he seems to wish that things could be settled peacefully—that Sutpen would just acknowledge him as his son and have that be that.

Once more, Quentin and Shreve portray Bon more sympathetically than Mr. Compson does. Their version of the story suggests that Bon was willing to back down and halt his plans to marry Judith if Sutpen would do him the basic courtesy of acknowledging him as his son—and yet Sutpen repeatedly failed to do so. Read as an allegory for the South, then, Sutpen’s refusal to acknowledge Bon or repent for abandoning him symbolizes the South’s refusal to acknowledge or repent for slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War. 

Rather bizarrely, perhaps, Henry is accepting of the idea of Bon and Judith’s incestuous marriage, rationalizing what would be considered a major social taboo in his day with the notion that “kings have done it,” alluding to historical occurrences of incest. This peripherally references the biblical story that gives the novel its title, too: in that story, which is from 2 Samuel, Samuel’s son Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar. Also of note here is the metal case that Judith sends to Bon—it’s important to remember the detail that it’s originally Judith’s photo in the case, as this will be relevant later on.

Shreve’s confidence in the veracity of his version of the story, in which Henry and not Bon was wounded in battle, is almost laughable: nobody who’s told Bon and Henry’s story thus far can know anything for sure, since they weren’t around to witness it firsthand. What’s more, as a Northerner, Shreve is especially removed from the events he pretends to be an authority on.

Once more, Quentin and Shreve’s story portrays Bon as more sympathetic than Mr. Compson’s story—they suggest that Bon anguished for years about the decision he eventually would have to make, should Sutpen refuse to acknowledge Bon as his son. He didn’t want to draw Judith into an incestuous marriage but sees no alternative way to impose on Sutpen the hurt and betrayal that Sutpen has imposed onto him.

If Henry is accepting of Bon’s choice to marry Judith at this point, it’s unclear what happens next that makes Henry prohibit the marriage and betray and murder Bon. The one thing that all versions of the story agree on is that Henry shoots Bon, yet it remains unclear what happened to make him betray the dear friend for whom he earlier repudiated his family.

Sutpen seals his fate when he clearly recognizes that Bon is his son but refuses to acknowledge him as such. Read as an allegory for the South, his stubborn refusal to acknowledge Bon mirrors the South’s refusal to acknowledge its legacy of slavery. It’s not yet clear why Sutpen wants to see Henry, but given it’s mere months before Bon’s death (which happens in June of 1865), it’s likely that this critical meeting will be where Sutpen says something to Henry that persuades Henry to break with Bon. 

The narrative abruptly shifts away from the buildup to Sutpen’s climactic second encounter with Henry, creating tension in the process. The sudden shift to this scene from the recent past with Clytie, Quentin, and Rosa also serves to remind the reader that they’re listening to Shreve and Quentin’s speculations—nothing may be considered factual.

Recall that Henry hasn’t seen his father since their argument in the library about Bon four years prior. Sutpen’s admission about Bon’s Black ancestry here confirms that (at least in Shreve and Quentin’s version of events) Henry hasn’t  known this detail about Bon—and that Bon’s mixed-race background is what ultimately turns Henry against him. Thus, while Henry is apparently accepting of the social taboo of incest, the social taboo of interracial marriage is ultimately where he draws the line.  

Interestingly, the narrative doesn’t describe Henry’s immediate response to Sutpen’s admission about Bon. This adds to the general uncertainty surrounding the nature of the Bon-Henry conflict and reaffirms the novel’s stance that it’s difficult if not impossible to reach objective truths regarding history.

Bon’s remark that Sutpen didn’t need to disclose Bon’s race (thereby turning Henry against Bon) to stop him—he only needed to acknowledge Bon as his son, and Bon would’ve halted his courtship of Judith—shows that Sutpen had a choice to acknowledge that he wronged Bon to retain an image of respectability in the racial hierarchy-governed Old South, yet he chose not to do that. By refusing to do that, he initiated a chain of events that would lead to the demise of his own design, turning one son against the other and ultimately depriving himself of a male heir to carry on his legacy.

The language Bon uses here is ugly and direct, using a racial slur to explicitly call attention to the simple fact that Henry’s commitment to the racial hierarchy of the pre-war South is what has caused him to turn on Bon and prohibit Bon’s marriage to Judith.

In this story, someone replaced Judith’s photo in the metal case with a photo of Bon’s mistress and child. It’s unclear who did this—it could be Bon or Henry, or it could be anyone who got to Bon’s body before Judith. Regardless, it’s possible that whoever swapped the photos did so to conceal Henry’s true reason for killing Bon—Bon’s race—from Judith. It also could be to inspire anger in Judith to prevent her from grieving for Bon. Without proper context, however, it’s impossible to know who swapped the photos or what their reasons were for doing so.

Shreve assumes it was Bon himself who swapped the photos, and that he did so to inspire in Judith similar feelings of disgust and disapproval as his race inspired in Henry. Judith, like Henry, is a product of the culture of the pre-war South and thus (Bon perhaps assumes) upholds the same beliefs about racial hierarchy and interracial marriage as her brother. In a twisted and tragic way, Bon assumes the worst about Judith (that she would reject him based on his race) while going out of his way to shield her against the pain of grieving him. Thus, Bon ends Shreve’s story a tragic hero of sorts, further indicating how Shreve’s removal from the story’s characters and setting causes him to romanticize it.