Why does Absalom, Absalom! have several conflicting narrators?

In Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner employs multiple, conflicting narrators to explore the inherent difficulty of reconstructing the past. Because the story is constructed speculatively and inconclusively by various characters—each possessing sharply divergent, self-interested perspectives—the novel emphasizes the process of its own telling rather than a singular, objective truth.1

These gaps and contradictions serve a specific purpose: they raise fundamental epistemological questions regarding how we know what we know about historical matters. By presenting the history of Thomas Sutpen through these competing voices, Faulkner forces the reader to confront the subjectivity of memory and the ways in which personal biases and regional culture shape our understanding of history and the "sins of the past". Ultimately, this technical approach is what leads many to consider the work a supreme example of modernist fiction.21