That Evening Sun

"That Evening Sun" is a short story by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1931 on the collection These 13, which included Faulkner's most anthologized story, "A Rose for Emily". The story was originally published, in a slightly different form, as "That Evening Sun Go Down" in The American Mercury in March of the same year. "That Evening Sun" is a dark portrait of white Southerners' indifference to the crippling fears of one of their black employees, Nancy. The story is narrated by Quentin Compson, one of Faulkner's most memorable characters, and concerns the reactions of him and his two siblings, Caddy and Jason, to an adult world that they do not fully understand. The black washerwoman, Nancy Mannigoe, fears that her common-law husband Jesus is seeking to murder her because she is pregnant with a white man's child. The title is thought to be taken from the song Saint Louis Blues, originally composed by W.C. Handy, but popularized by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in 1927. Faulkner first came across Handy's music when the latter played dances in Oxford, Mississippi. Though the song is never explicitly referenced in the text, Faulkner employs a number of blues tropes to structure the plot and develop racial stereotypes. Scholar Ken Bennett notes that "the image of the 'evening sun' is a common one in black religious music. For example, the spiritual 'It's Gettin' Late Over in the Evenin', the Sun Most Down,' based on Revelation 20, uses the image of the evening sun to suggest the coming of death and judgment."

Quentin narrates the story in the turn of the century, presumably at age twenty-four (although in The Sound and the Fury he commits suicide at age nineteen), telling of events that took place fifteen years before. Nancy is an African-American washerwoman working for Quentin's family since their regular cook, Dilsey, is taken sick. Jesus, Nancy's common-law husband, suspects that she is pregnant with a white man's child and leaves her. At first Nancy is only worried about going home at night and running into Jesus, but later she is paralyzed with the fear that he will kill her, having delusions of him being hidden in a ditch outside her house.

Quentin and his siblings witness all of this, given that they are present for every major conversation between their father and Nancy. Mr. Compson tries to help her up to a certain extent, first by taking her home at night despite the fact that Mrs. Compson feels jealous and insecure that her husband is more worried about protecting some "Negro woman" than herself. He puts her up one night at Quentin and Caddy's room when she is too afraid to stay alone in the kitchen. The kids, however, have no idea of what's going on, and cannot understand Nancy's fear.

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