SOURCE: Radloff, Bernhard. “The Fate of Demonism in William Faulkner.” Arizona Quarterly 46, no. 1 (spring 1990): 27-50.

In the following essay, Radloff discusses the concept of demonism in Faulkner's works.

The spirit of revenge, my friends, has so far been the subject of man's best reflection; and wherever there was suffering, there punishment was also wanted.

—Nietzsche

In Absalom, Absalom! the calculative and vindictive mentality which characterizes Sutpen in his devotion to a “design” constitutes the archetype of demonism definitive of the novel and the entire tradition of design in Faulkner's work. In a literal sense, Sutpen's “design” is simply his determination to transcend the meanness of his poor-white roots and to found a dynasty. Yet the meaning of his design far outweighs this simple story. The design is defined by the semantics, the rhetoric, of a historical tradition. This rhetoric weaves Sutpen's moral blindness, what he calls his “innocence...