s and events in motion with understanding coming in a later chapter.Even though Absalom, Absalom! is a pivotal story in the Yoknapatawpha stories and is mainly about Thomas Sutpen's life, it consists of several journeys or travels by different characters. There are Thomas Sutpen's travels from the mountains to Tidewater and then to Haiti and Mississippi, along with his psychological quests of his attempt to escape the threatening past and create a ‘design' of safety and security. These are followed by Charles Bon's migration from Haiti to New Orleans and Oxford, then on to Sutpen's Hundred, including his search for a father. Henry Sutpen's travels take him from Oxford to New Orleans, to Loor, to Texas, then back to Mississippi. He is searching for his personal and cultural identity. And Quentin Compson takes a trip to Harvard, hoping desperately to understand himself and the South. Plus, other various characters' travels back and forth in between Sutpen's Hundred and Jefferson.Probably the most well-known and important feature of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! is his Yoknapatawpha Map that is located at the very end of the novel. This map consists of several ironies, metaphors... Some examples of the irony that occur in this map are that most of the personal quests throughout the novel end in failure or futility. Such as Thomas Sutpen dies frustrated with the design, Bon dies unacknowledged by a father, Henry dies a condemned outcast, and Quentin is about to die still troubled and confused about the meaning of existence. The map underscores the plot, shows history of the town and human condition, charts failed ambitions, and points the way to death. More than a graphic representation of an actual place or a guide for travelers, the map is a metaphor that remains a distortion of the actual, a substitution of the real, an evocation of an order, or a harmony that exists and exists only in the mapmaker's imagination (Hamblin ...
