Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner is a labyrinth; it's a maze with countless detours and dead ends, paths that lead to a finale and obstacles to overcome to get there. One of these obstacles is the triangular relationship between Henry Sutpen, Judith Sutpen and Charles Bon. This triangle is not equally balanced and the parties involved, each desperately seeking a means to a different end, cling to each other with a proportionately strong grip. They see in each other, or rather they see in the position that the other occupies, possibilities that will satisfy their needs as individuals. However, they are always interconnected and ultimately not everyone's needs are met nor motivations implemented. Henry and Judith Sutpen allow themselves to be manipulated and captivated by Charles Bon's fantastical aura, knowing full well that it can lead to disaster, but still needing to be part of it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayHenry Sutpen, a walking cauldron of seething emotions, doesn't know how to regulate, it seems, how to manage his actions to suit his emotions. is thus caught in a torrid torment of frustrating compulsive behavior. “Henry, the provincial, almost the clown, more inclined to instinctive and violent action than to reflection” (76) is guided by a conscience which has none. An inner core lined with conceivable motives or intentions does not seem to exist in his person and he is therefore subject to the whims of his feelings, wild and visceral as they are. It is from this guidance through emotion that Henry is drawn into the kingdom. by Charles Good. “This man is handsome and elegant. . . and too old to be where he [is]. . . with a tangible effluvium of knowledge” (76) contracts Henry’s loyalty, forcing him to devote his life to a cause that, in his (Henry’s) case, is actually self-destructive. But Henry does not look to logic and foresight to guide this relationship; he relies on his powerful confidant ready for action: emotion. “Yes, he [loves] Bon, who [seduces] him as surely as he [seduces] Judith” (76). He becomes "a disciple and dependent on the rejected suitor for four years" (79) living not with and by him, but through and in him, dictating his action to imitate that of Bon, counting on the hope that Bon will renounce her marriage and will confront her husband. father. Henry's feelings, Henry's love for Charles Bon become a black hole into which Henry falls very early and from which he seems to have no desire to escape. He is consumed by this man, this situation that can give him something his life before had never offered him: a purpose. Conforming to his father's design model gives Henry no outlet for his personal beliefs or decisions. By becoming enveloped and distorted in this strange twisted twist of existence, the once trapped and committed son is able to be, within himself. However painful and ruinous such a path may prove to be, he has chosen it and can act not as a puppet-son, reading lines previously written for him, but as a man-son-individual whose "repudiation violent behavior of his father" and his birthright", (76), the fact that he "had to kill Bon to prevent [him and Judith] from getting married", the fact that it was he "who seduced Judith » (79) are actions that he considers to be seditious and powerful means of asserting his individual being, even if he does not come out of an already cast mold. Especially with Kill Bon: Henry knows his father wants this done, so he considers it almost to the point of torturing him, but atAt this point he has become so entangled in various webs of other people's designs that even he will never know which one he would kill his brother by. Judith Sutpen plays almost no role in the triangle, seeming merely to occupy a position, a third point that geometry can work out on its own. Sure, she's a person trapped in the Sutpen design pins, but more like her father, she lives more in a state of peaceful observation, letting the world kneel around her as opposed to barbaric action like that of his brother. "Mrs. Sutpen had already engaged Judith and Bon from the time she saw Bon's name on Henry's first letter, "(215) a circumstance involving her, thus necessitating some sort of reaction and her being a reactor as opposed to the one to whom one reacts, obliges She falls in love with him (216) Being in love with an idea is not a concept foreign to humanity, but Judith's affection or submission. seems more to come from a convoluted conception of Charles Bon and the possibilities he represents than from any general notion associated with a single individual "There does not even seem to have been a courtship" (78) between her and. Well, seeing herself “on average for an hour a day for twelve days . over a period of a year and a half” (79). that she would mourn his death for the rest of her life, are clear signs that she worked her life around the idea of ​​Charles Bon, a sophisticated friend of her brother's, an abstract other who could erase all that which had been planned as her future and to build for her a bridge by which to escape from the Hundred of Sutpen and its constraints. “The fact that [he kisses her perhaps] the first time as [his] brother would do” and that she responds only with “a kind of peaceful and empty surprise” (264) shows his willingness to succumb, to to subjugate oneself, to submit, to subjugate one's person. , to the other and his ability to move away. “They [separate] without even saying goodbye” (79). She is docile; she is docile in realizing a hidden motive. She will wait, she will love, she will refuse to cry to try to achieve the impossible. But without the power or desire to initiate any intention, she becomes the terceric member of this triumvirate of doomed innocents. It was not Judith who was the object of Bon's love or Henry's concern. It was only an empty form, the empty vessel in which each tried to preserve, not the illusion of himself nor his illusion of the other, but what each conceived the other to believe. - the man and the young man, seducer and seduced, who had known each other, seduced and seduced, victims in turn of one another, conqueror defeated by his own weakness, before Judith entered their lives common if only under her maiden name. (95) She is the means, the means to Henry's desired end of somehow uniting with Bon, the means to Bon's goal of retaliation against a father who disowned him he so many years ago. She does not appear to be considerable, or rather considered by the other actors in certain aspects of this play, but in fact, if she did not exist, no play would exist. The triangle would be inaccessible and perhaps even lines would not form, only dots floating in the sea of ​​tragic circumstances without any means, violent or otherwise, to reach the shore. Henry does not dismiss Judith as a non-entity – quite the contrary. opposite. In certain facets of his life, of their relationship, this brother and this sister are implicitly linked "as through a telepathy with which, as children, they sometimes seemed to anticipate each other's actions like two birds leaving a branch at the same moment” (79). Henry finds himself, withoutsurprised, in a confused position. To think explicitly about Bon, he is fooled and everything else is secondary. Thinking of Bon marrying his sister, he is torn between the allowance due to love and loyalty to his soul mate. He becomes obsessed with his sister's virginity and the connection between this state and Bon. He is also in love with his sister. The Good Suitor fantasy provides "pure and perfect incest: the brother realizing that the sister's virginity must be destroyed for having existed, taking that virginity in the person of the brother-in-law, the man who he would be if he could become. . . the lover” (77). As a lover – a lover of Judith – he cares not so much for Bon's morality as for the well-being of those involved in Bon's intentions; he worries "not that Bon's intention [is] to commit bigamy, but that she [is] apparently to make his (Henry's) sister a sort of junior partner in a harem” (94). He implores Good to think of their sister (272). He is caught between love and respect, between purpose and duty, but to whom and for whom is unclear. He acts to please as well as to diminish, and his final actions would tend to indicate which side he is most loyal to. Or would they? Judith “is determined to marry [Bon] to the point of forcing her brother to resort to the last resort, homicide. . . to prevent it” (79). Is it to Judith that he shows loyalty by killing his love and erasing any chance she might have of happiness? Is it to Good that he pledges allegiance by committing suicide and destroying the opportunity to taste the revenge he plotted against his estranged father? Is it to himself that he remains faithful by breaking the ties that seem so strong but turn out to be delicate with the two people who matter most in his life and by ensuring a future of anguish and solitude? Henry wallows in the distorted nature of his state of mind and, perhaps, relishes the fact that he does not know to whom he must remain loyal, thereby foregoing any potentially justifiable blame. Judith could take a stand, formulate a decipherable motive, propose an action, but she does not and like these two, who in some cases delight in an inherent capacity to understand the other, languish in a web of lack of communication, the lines that connect them. they dissipate and fray. Although all three points of a triangle are equally important, Charles Bon is the vertex, the point at which all connecting sides converge. He becomes involved in Henry and Judith's lives with only a limited amount of action on his part, wandering around campus to be noticed and admired by the brother, to be mentioned in letters home, to be related in marriage discussions with sister. His ideal situation involves being recognized by the father, but over the course of four years, Bon, the man who knows and who masters passivity, embodies “[does] not know what he [is] going to do and [must] ] say: pretend, he [does it]” (273). Bon lives these four years on hold in the hope of hearing from Thomas Sutpen, thus regarding Henry and Judith and everything else as secondary to his existence. When Henry speaks of his sister whose existence he (Bon) may not have even realized at first (78), he (Bon) thinks: "I don't hear of a young girl, virgin ; I have heard of a virgin field, narrow and delicate, fenced in, already furrowed and covered with boards, so that all I will have to do is lay the seeds there” (261). Henry is not a person that Bon listens to, he (Bon) only processes the words spoken to him and synthesizes them to adapt them to his intentions. Judith is not, it seems, a person toward whom he directs his love. However, “he [knows] all the time that love would take care of itself. It is.