Paired images manifest themselves in parallel with other paired characters as well. The novel is rich with images of doubleness that can be traced with many characters like Henry, Judith, and Charles Bon. Henry is doubled by his part-black brother Charles Bon, and Judith is doubled by her part-black sister Clytie which echo the formula of the white versus the black. Ultimately, the two races or factions seem in struggle whereby the white Henry commits fratricide and murders the part-black Charles. The part-black Clytie sets the house into fire and kills both herself and her brother Henry. Brooks argues that Charles Bon is the double image of his father Sutpen “a reversed shadow of his father” both of them came in to Mississippi with no family background, no ties to any past, and the son has an octoroon wife like the father ((191). This doubling in terms of characters undermines the stability of definition or the unity of one person and creates multiple possibilities. From a carnivalesque point of view, characters like Bon and Clytie play the role of an alter ego to the protagonist Sutpen because they always remind him of his injustice. Indeed, the appearance of Bon marks the beginning of a …show more content…
As such, Absalom finds parallels with many Biblical and mythical sources. The title itself recalls King David’s son Absalom from the Bible. In the Biblical story, King David’s son Absalom murders Amnion who rapes his sister Tamar, then Absalom leads a rebellion against his father but King David shows no will to forgive his son. When Absalom dies, the father cries bitterly. This story indicates a conflict between fathers and sons and the downfall of the father from within his own house very much like Sutpen’s legend of rise and fall (Sundquist, 2003, 144). Likewise, Charles Bon in Absalom rebels against his father Sutpen and ruins his "design" but ultimately he dies like King David 's son