| Setting: the college dorm room Quentin and Shreve share. Most of this chapter is in Quentin's voice (though Shreve takes up the narrative for one paragraph, pp. 224-25). The story Quentin tells is (mostly) the story that Sutpen told his grandfather at two separate times 30 years apart: first in 1834 (while the two men are hunting down the French architect), and then in 1864 (in General Compson's office, on the one day that Sutpen has come home from fighting the War to put the tombstone on Ellen's grave). Quentin presumably heard most of the story from his father, but adds information that, he tells Shreve, his father didn't know until he (Quentin) visited Sutpen's decaying house with Rosa in September 1909 -- see p. 214. |
| Thomas Sutpen born in a log cabin in the mountains of western Virginia ("he did not know within a year on either side just how old he was") |
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| with his father and siblings, Sutpen moves east and down to Tidewater region of Virginia his father becomes some kind of overseer on a large plantation |
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| Sutpen is sent by his father "to the big house with a message" before he delivers it, he is told by a house slave "to go around to the back" door that evening he conceives his "design" and decides to run away to the West Indies |
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| Sutpen "goes to sea" | ||
| working as an overseer on a Haitian sugar plantation, Sutpen puts down a slave uprising he marries the daughter of the plantation's owner |
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| Sutpen "puts his first wife aside" because she cannot "forward his design" he "repudiates that first wife and that child" |
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| the French architect tries to escape from Sutpen while hunting him, Sutpen tells [General] Compson the story of his early life |
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| Sutpen and Mr. Coldfield pull off some shady financial deal Coldfield refuses his share of the profits; Sutpen uses his to furnish his house |
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| when his son Henry comes home for Christmas, Sutpen realizes the college "friend" who comes with him (Charles Bon) is the son he repudiated 28 years earlier |
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SUMMER |
learning that Henry is bringing Bon home again, Sutpen leaves for New Orleans | |
XMAS |
Sutpen tells Henry he forbids the marriage between Judith and Bon | |
| Bon and General Compson wounded at the battle of Pittsburg Landing | ||
| Sutpen (now a Colonel) comes home to put tombstone on Ellen's grave visits General Compson in his office in Jefferson to tell the story of his first marriage |
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| Sutpen visits Henry's regimental camp and speaks to him | ||
| Sutpen returns from the War, and "suggests what he suggests" to Rosa | ||
1869 |
Sutpen courts Wash Jones' granddaughter Milly | |
| General Compson goes out to Sutpen's and overhears Wash's talk with Sutpen about Milly, which ends with Wash saying he knows Sutpen "will make hit right" |
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| on a Sunday Milly gives birth to a girl hearing Sutpen say "if she was a mare [he] could give her a decent stall" Wash kills him when Major de Spain and a posse surround him, Wash murders Milly and her daughter then dies charging the posse with the scythe |
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| Quentin (in Mississippi) and Shreve (in Canada) born "within the same year" | ||
| Quentin accompanies Rosa Coldfield to Sutpen's house |