Judith's passage

   The passage from Judith on page 100 seems a bit cynical, but also imaginative and philosophical. She says "Because you make so little impression, you see. You get born and you try this and you don't know why only you keep on trying it..." This is a very dreary and pessimistic outlook on life. Basically, that every one is just passing through, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Judith says that we are like puppets all jumbled up together with no one to pull the strings or untangle them. "like trying to, having to move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way..." This is like saying that people who are in one another's life are not their for a reason or with a cause; they are simply in each other's life because they cannot help but be there or change the situation. Very unromantic or happy.
   But it doesn't seem horribly scornful, because of the slightly poetic idea of words and marks by people living on in history. "At least it would be something just because it would have happened, be remembered even if only from passing from one hand to another, one mind to another..." Even something so small as a scrap of paper could be more meaningful, merely because it is written down and therefore written in history forever. Words and things left behind, like a scratch on a stone, are more permanent than people themselves. These things written in history are remembered through the minds of people therefore "it cant ever die or perish"; though, this seems strange to say since this is a story remembering Judith and all the people involved in her life as if they were written in Jefferson's history with ink rather than memory.

Myth versus truth

Interpreting page 80 from Absalom, Absalom? To me, it sounds like he is saying that words on a page can never convey the real story. Even though your personal experiences with similar situations can help you infer what happened, you may never know the real truth. Time makes heros out of people who really don't deserve herioc worship. Words on a page can conjure up the story in your mind, but only the story as you percieve it. Nothing can bring the events to life again. Once they have occured, they are just memories. Even in the minds of those who experienced those events first-hand or second-hand. Time has a way of tinting how we remember and percieve things. Also, with each added experience and with aging, our visions of how we view the world also changes.