Choosing Connnection; Choosing Control Anonymous College

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner is a maze; it is a maze with innumerable detours and dead ends, pathways that lead to a finale and obstacles to be overcome on the way there. One such obstacle is the triangular relationship between Henry Sutpen, Judith Sutpen, and Charles Bon. Not equally balanced is this triangle and the involved parties, each desperate for a means to an end that is other, clinging to one another with proportionally strong grips. They see in one another, or rather, they see in the position one another holds, possibilities that will satiate needs they have as individuals. They are always interconnected, though, and, in the end, no one’s needs are met or motives are exercised. Henry and Judith Sutpen allow themselves to be manipulated by and caught up in the fantastical aura that is Charles Bon, knowing full well it may lead to disaster, but needing to be a part of it just the same.

Henry Sutpen, a walking cauldron of seething emotion, knows not how to regulate, it seems, how to minister his actions to fit his emotions so is thus caught in a torrid torment of frustrating compulsive behavior. “Henry, the provincial, the clown almost, given to instinctive and violent action rather than to thinking, “ (76) is...