"Sweet Fascism in the Piney Woods": Absalom, Absalom! as Fascist Fable

The fascist dictator, like the Cavalier and the Southern demagogue, supplied William Faulkner with a set of tropes that shaped Absalom, Absalom! The parallels between Thomas Sutpen and fascist dictators emerge from and reveal contemporary anxieties about the rise of an American Hitler. Moreover, the novel's structure, by emphasizing the oral transmission of history, dramatizes the constitutive role of storytelling in constructing a national myth and demonstrates the production of fascist subjects. This process depends on Rosa Coldfield, who, by serving as the fascist "mother" to Sutpen's fascist "father," mediates the erotic identification of white Southern men with Sutpen.