A Companion to the American Short Story
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of social, economic, and political order are fast being thwarted. Sarty ’ s gradual dis-
covery of his father ’ s true nature in “ Barn Burning, ” along with the choices it forces
on him, gives the story much of its force and poignancy.
Faulkner uses child narrators on several other occasions to describe and comment
on older adult characters who struggle against the forces of order and conformity, or
who at least stand in contrast to these forces. In “ Uncle Willy, ” for example, a child
narrator admires an adult character, a pharmacist, who resists the town ’ s efforts to
cure his drug addiction.
“
That Evening Sun
”
is narrated by Quentin Compson,
remembering as an adult events that took place when he was about 10 years old. His
sister Caddy, little brother Jason, and his parents, all from The Sound and the Fury ,
appear as minor characters in the story, which is focused primarily on the fear of a
black woman named Nancy. Nancy is married to a man named Jesus who she fears
plans to murder her out of anger and jealousy that she has become pregnant with
another man ’ s child (possibly a white Baptist deacon ’ s child). The story portrays her
fears and her efforts to fi nd help from the Compson family. It is apparently set around
1890, a year corresponding with early events in The Sound and the Fury . That the story
is told from a future vantage point is made clear by Quentin ’ s two - paragraph intro-
duction, which remarks on the change that has come to the town, the paved sidewalks,
the telephone poles that have replaced trees, the city laundry that has replaced the
Negro women of some fi fteen years before: “ balanced on their steady turbaned heads,
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bundles of clothes tied up in sheets, almost as large as cotton bales, carried so without
touch of hand between the kitchen door of the white house and the blackened washpot
beside a cabin door in Negro Hollow ” (289). The implication is not only that the
narrator himself has grown older in years and understanding but that the town has
progressed, and that the story being told is of an older time.
Nancy is portrayed as illiterate, hysterical with fear, an occasional prostitute, and
probably a cocaine addict. Her lifestyle and her murderous husband isolate her from
other members of the black community, who are nearly as afraid of her husband as
she is. Moreover, her status as prostitute and drug addict make her a moral pariah.
Her race, social class, and lack of education further separate her from the white
members of the community, specifi cally the Compson children and their parents. Mr.
Compson, in particular, seems totally at a loss to help Nancy. He does not know what
to do and at the height of her terror essentially abandons her, advising her to go to
sleep. Mrs. Compson sees Nancy ’ s problem as an inconvenience. And the children
simply do not understand. What most fundamentally isolates Nancy, above and
beyond questions of race or class or literacy, is her conviction that she faces death and
therefore divine judgment. The Jesus whom she fears is not merely the husband Jesus
who may enter her house and cut her throat, but the Divine Jesus, who will judge
her sinful behavior and cast her down to hell. Her position as a helpless and irrational
person places her in a category similar to that of the children, who sense but do not
understand her fear and who also have no comprehension of her problems with her
husband or of her fear of death and damnation. Their innocent ignorance creates an
additional layer of isolation in the story.
“ That Evening Sun ” is a literal horror story. Nancy believes that her murderer lurks
in the ditch outside her shabby house. The children can tell only that she is afraid,
and they are young enough not to be bothered by her fear. Moreover, as Jason repeat-
edly points out, Nancy is “ only a nigger ” and therefore someone who doesn ’ t matter.
It is diffi cult to think of any character in Faulkner ’ s fi ction as profoundly isolated
as Nancy. Her fear is existential, a profound apprehension of the nothingness of her
life, and the core of the horror that penetrates the story is that there is no way to
assuage her fear, no way, as the helplessness of the Compson parents and the indif-
ferent ignorance of their children illustrate, even to understand it. Even though this
story begins as a framed narrative – told in retrospect by an adult narrator about a
childhood memory, it is signifi cant that the frame does not close when the story
ends. Instead the story concludes by focusing on Nancy
’
s fear and the children
’
s
gradual loss of interest in her fear as their indifferent father leads them away from
her house back towards the light and safety of their white - columned house, where
fear and death and a vengeful Jesus do not intrude, at least as far as the children
are aware.
Immediately preceding “ That Evening Sun ” in Collected Stories is one of Faulkner ’ s
most effective comic stories, “ That Will Be Fine ” (1935). It uses a narrator similar to
Quentin in the previous story, although this time the narrator is even younger, around
seven years old, and there is no clear evidence of a frame or that the story is told from
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Hugh Ruppersburg
a future vantage point. The narrator is so young, in fact, that on occasion the story
verges on caricature. In “ That Evening Sun ” part of the terror stems from the fact
that the narrator is recalling a time when he was just old enough to sense Nancy ’ s
terror. In “ That Will Be Fine ” comedy stems from the fact that the young narrator
understands virtually nothing that goes on around him. When Uncle Rodney hires
the boy to watch out for the husband of a woman with whom he is having an affair,
the boy thinks his uncle is “ in business ” with the woman. When his mother and aunt
weep after discovering their brother has absconded with a large portion of the family
fortune, the boy merely describes the fact, taking no special note of what appears to
be a common event. He even fails to recognize at the end of the story that the object
being carried by the men back to his grandparents ’ house is his dead uncle. The boy
does not know that his uncle is a philandering adulterer and probably an alcoholic
who has by fraud, forgery, and outright theft lost much of the family fortune.
The boy ’ s innocent point of view also cloaks darker elements of the story, which
ends with the uncle ’ s death. All the boy can think about are the quarters his uncle
has offered him for helping out, and the boy mistakes the gunfi re that kills his uncle
for Christmas fi reworks going off in a nearby town. In fact, the boy ’ s moral ignorance,
not to mention his greed, suggests that he shares some traits in common with his
uncle. Told through the boy ’ s viewpoint, “ That Will Be Fine ” is a hilarious story of
a wild and carefree uncle whom the boy admires and loves. Told from the point of
view of the boy ’ s older relatives, who must deal with the consequences of Rodney ’ s
behavior (a perspective that is
at least implied), the story of adultery, theft, fraud, and
murder is tragic. Its success depends on the adult reader ’ s corrective reactions to the
child narrator ’ s descriptions. The adult reader recognizes and understands what the
boy cannot see. Faulkner often depends on his adult readers to provide the correcting
perspective to his narratives. This is especially true in the early pages of The Sound
and the Fury , when Caddy Compson climbs the pear tree to look through the window
at the funeral of her grandmother. (Although the family in “ That Will Be Fine ” is
not the Compson family, Uncle Rodney resembles the alcoholic, philandering Uncle
Maury of The Sound and the Fury .)
Faulkner uses the child ’ s point of view in a number of his stories and novels, from
As I Lay Dying and The Unvanquished to much of Go Down, Moses and The Reivers
(1962). In “ A Justice ” (1931), which appears in “ The Wilderness ” section of Collected
Stories , Faulkner employs Quentin ’ s juvenile viewpoint once again, though in this
story the viewpoint serves only to emphasize the ancient nature of the tale of Ikke-
motubbe and Sam Fathers that is being told and has no particular organic relation to
the main narrative. A similar narrative viewpoint is at work in “ Uncle Willy ” (1935),
where a young narrator and his friends admire a middle - aged pharmacist ’ s resistance
to the efforts of the townspeople to civilize him and cure him of his drug addiction.
The boys see their own rebelliousness as analogous to the older man ’ s and fail to
understand that his problems are of an entirely different order than their own. “ That
Evening Sun ” and “ That Will Be Fine ” depend on the essential function of point of
view, without which the stories would be fundamentally different. Their primary
William
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effects – whether tragic or comic – stem from the limited perspective from which the
main character views the events of the story.
A number of Faulkner ’ s stories focus on the isolation of characters. Certainly, this is
a central theme of “ That Evening Sun ” and even of “ Barn Burning, ” where Abner Snopes
is isolated by class, poverty, and his self - conditioned resistance to any form of control
or order. Faulkner often used the plight of African American characters to represent
the theme of isolation that he saw as a basic condition of modern existence. We have
already seen that theme in “ That Evening Sun, ” and it occurs again in “ Pantaloon in
Black ” in Go Down, Moses . Isolation is important as well for the slave at the center of
the story “ Red Leaves, ” published in 1930 in the Saturday Evening Post and collected in
These 13 . “ Red Leaves ” is a companion story to “ A Justice, ” which also appeared in These
13 . Both stories chronicle the Indian history of Yoknapatawpha County that lies in the
background of Absalom, Absalom! While “ A Justice ” is a framed narrative, told to
Quentin Compson by Sam Fathers as he talks about his parentage and how the Indians
came to acquire slaves, “ Red Leaves ” is narrated externally and is focused on the efforts
of two Indians to capture an escaped slave. The chief of the tribe has died, and the slave
who belonged to him is to be killed and buried along with the chief ’s horse and hound.
From the viewpoint of the two Indians, the slave (and slavery in general) is an incon-
venience. Although they respect the slave ’ s determination to escape, they also view him
as nothing more than chattel. Although the story does not present the slave ’ s point of
view, it makes clear, through his desperate attempts to escape, and through his fear at
the story ’ s end, that he is another of Faulkner ’ s hapless, isolated characters, trapped by
circumstance and history. The comic aspects of the story – focused on the Indians – are
counterbalanced by the slave ’ s fear. Faulkner has genuine sympathy for the slave and
shows his plight clearly, along with the indifference of the Indians to his status as a
human being desperate to escape death. However, contemporary readers may have dif-
fi culty recognizing Faulkner ’ s sympathy for what it is, nor may they see the humor in
the diffi culties Indians experienced in owning slaves. In both “ Red Leaves ” and “ A
Justice ” Faulkner shows through his satiric portrayal how the Indians were corrupted
by the materialism of white settlers and the ownership of slaves.
One cause of the slave ’ s isolation in “ Red Leaves ” is his powerlessness. Mr. Compson
in
“
That Evening Sun
”
is powerless to assuage Nancy
’
s terror because he lacks
empathy, does not understand her, and therefore cannot communicate with her. The
opening section of “ Dry September ” (fi rst published in Scribner ’ s in 1931 and collected
in These 13 ) is narrated from the perspective of another character isolated by power-
lessness, a barber named Hawkshaw (also the main character in “ Hair ” ), but in this
case powerlessness results from moral cowardice as well as social circumstances that
the barber cannot alter. In the story a black man named Will Mayes is rumored to
have attacked a white woman named Minnie Cooper. The woman is known as an
eccentric spinster, and rumors about her might not normally be trusted, except that
in this case the rumor that she has been attacked by a black man seizes precedence
over rationality. As soon as the story is told, everyone automatically believes it –
because the culprit is a black man. 7 When Hawkshaw expressed doubt that Will
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Hugh Ruppersburg
Mayes could have committed such a crime ( “ He ’ s a good nigger ” [169]), a “ hulking
youth in a sweat - stained silk shirt ” answers, “ Won ’ t you take a white woman ’ s word
before a nigger ’ s? ” It is not a woman ’ s hysteria that dominates the story but instead
the racist hysteria of the white men who band together to lynch Will Mayes. Few
stories by Faulkner or any other writer so painfully describe the racism of a small
provincial town. The story is composed of fi ve sections, each a contrast to the section
that follows or precedes it: Hawkshaw ’ s impotent claims that Will Mayes is innocent
contrast with the vicious certainty of other townsmen that he is guilty; Minnie Coo-
per ’ s social ostracism in the town as an old maid contrasts with the terror of Will
Mayes; the brutality of the character McLendon, who participates in the lynching,
clashes with the fear of his own wife. The story does not describe the lynching, just
as it does not describe the supposed crime against Minnie Cooper. By allusion, con-
trast, and indirection, Faulkner implies a set of circumstances that led to the murder
and that stand in a more general way for the condition of the town as a whole. Sexual
repression and abuse, racism, despair, frustration, and moral weakness are interwoven
in the story, perhaps Faulkner
’
s most scathing indictment of racism and its
consequences.
Many of the stories in “ The Middle Ground ” section of Collected Stories do not
represent Faulkner ’ s best work. Still,
they illustrate the diversity of his range. Two
stories – “ Wash ” and “ Mountain Victory ” – do stand out as major works. Both, in
different ways, are by - products of Faulkner ’ s work on Absalom, Absalom! 8 “ Wash, ”
published in 1932, recounts events leading to the death of Thomas Sutpen, the novel ’ s
main character. Beginning in medias res like “ A Rose for Emily, ” it describes Wash
Jones ’ s relationship with and murder of Sutpen, the same events told in chapter 7 of
the novel. The story explores from Wash ’ s point of view events that are described
more objectively in the novel, where Wash Jones is a minor character, an accessory
to the narrative. Wash serves in the novel as a reminder of Sutpen ’ s origins in the
mountains of West Virginia and shows by his role in the story how, following the
end of the Civil War and the decline of his fortunes, Sutpen ’ s life has come, in effect,
full circle. In the story Wash is the main focus, and the events of Sutpen ’ s fi nal day
recede into the background of the more central concern with Wash, his romantic
illusions about Sutpen, and the betrayal he feels when he hears the man compare his
granddaughter Milly to a horse. Events that occupy only a few paragraphs in the novel
are fully developed in the story. While Wash takes pride in his friendship with
Sutpen, whom he idealizes as a paragon of courage and chivalry, he realizes after the
man fathers a child on his granddaughter and then shows indifference to the child ’ s
birth that the friendship has meant nothing to Sutpen, and that all the pride and
self - importance Wash has taken from it are meaningless.
“ Wash ” explores the same themes of class confl ict and identity as “ Barn Burning, ”
but from the viewpoint of a man at the end of his life rather than a boy on the verge
of adulthood. 9 While Sarty ’ s experience frees him from the self - destructive, hopeless
existence of his father to face an uncertain future, Wash ’ s illumination about the true
nature of his relationship with Sutpen leaves him nothing but a rusting scythe and
William
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253
the “ wild glaring eyes of the horses and the swinging glints of gun barrels, without
any cry, any sound ” (550). The story ’ s ending, where Wash runs towards the waiting