Sean Willis

December 7, 2010

English 232.0002

Paper 2

Race, Faith and Devine Retribution in “That Evening Sun”

The Lord is a jealous God and avenging, the Lord avenges and He is full of wrath - Nahum 1:2

You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a “nigger”

– James Baldwin.

William Faulkner’s short story “That Evening Sun” has been interpreted in many ways, and there

is certainly any number of ways to read the story to different effect. The story is told by a

seemingly resurrected 24 year-old Quentin Compton, as he committed suicide at the age of 19 (in

The Sound and the Fury). Some have suggested this speaks to the resurrected Christ-figure;

however, this is debatable given Faulkner’s admitted lack of concern for cross-textual continuity.

For instance, in a Q & A session in 1957, in response to a question of whether the servant named

Nancy in Requiem for a Nun is the same character from “That Evening Sun”, he stated that

“These people I figure belong to me, and I have the right to move them about in time when I

need them” (University of Viginia Library).

Regardless of Quentin’s status – alive in an alternate Faulknerian history, or resurrected

apparition – “That Evening Sun” is rife with religious and supernatural overtones. Faulkner’s use

of the name Jesus for Nancy’s husband is demonstrably deliberate and key to understanding

Nancy’s sin, guilt and probable fate. “That Evening Sun” can be viewed as a southern parable

about race, faith and divine retribution. This is illustrated through Nancy’s lack of faith in her

husband and misplaced faith white society and its distorted and oppressive Christian theology,

leading to her abandonment and condemnation by both, with her husband Jesus transforming into

the Black Christ come to judge the sinful and faithless - the vengeful instrument of the Yahweh’s

wrath. For the true Christian God, the God of Moses, the God who delivered the Israelites from

the chains of slavery in Egypt – who poured out His wrath on the oppressors of His people

causing their rivers to run with blood, their cities and fields to be overrun with frogs and flies and

gnats and locusts, and their people and livestock to break out in festering boils, who unleashed

terrible torrents of hail and fire across their lands before plunging them into three days of

darkness so black not a soul could leave their home, and who then struck dead every single

firstborn son and beast in Egypt to free His people from bondage – He is a God Hell-bent on the

liberation of His people.

In Risks of Faith, James H. Cone relates how white slave masters resisted Christianization of

their slaves due to the undercurrents of liberation and freedom inherent in Christianity - that is

until they realized that by teaching black slaves a “distorted interpretation of the gospel”, they

could use Christianity as a means of control and enforcement. As he states, “White Christianity

assisted in the internalization of white values in the minds of slaves, reconciling them to the

condition of servitude” (Cone 15). Nancy is representative of the lingering effects of this mind

set on the “free” blacks in Jefferson. Rather than actively resisting the existing racism and

oppression, they are still toiling under servitude to the white Christian households of the town –

casting down their Washingtonian buckets where they are.

Nancy’s problem of faith is not that she does not believe in God, it’s that she has placed her faith

in the White the man’s version of Christianity – the same distorted Christianity that defended the

institution of slavery by quoting the likes of St. Paul’s admonitions that slaves should be

obedient to their masters. In this distortion of the Gospel, according to Cone, “Black resistance to

slavery was interpreted as sin; revolt against the master was said to be revolt against God, and

that could only mean eternal damnation” (Cone 15). Nancy’s faith is typical of the “Rural

Negro” as described by Carter Woodson, who while having an unshakeable faith in God’s

existence, does not hold Him accountable for their situation. Woodson explains:

The Lord has delivered these Negroes from too many trials and tribulations for

them to doubt his power or His interest in mankind. God is not held responsible

for the Negroes being carried away captive to be slaved of white men; God has

nothing to do with their long persecution and the intolerable conditions under

which they have to live, but great praise should be given Him for permitting them

to exist under the circumstances. The evils from which these Negroes suffer, they

believe, resulted from the sin of their forefathers and their own shortcomings.

(Woodson 149)

Our first real encounter with Jesus is when he talking with Nancy in the Compton’s kitchen.

Enraged in general at the racial inequality that exists in Jefferson, and particular riled about

Nancy’s pregnancy, (presumably by one of the very white men responsible the discriminatory

injustices he is railing about) Jesus protests, "I can't hang around white man's kitchen . . . But

white man can hang around mine. White man can come in my house, but I can't stop him. When

white man want to come in my house, I ain't got no house. I can't stop him” (Faulkner 178).

Here we see white society – white Christian society – as the oppressor still enforcing the master-

slave paradigm. However, with his razor-scarred face, Jesus is already marked as different from

those other black Jeffersonian husbands who “fetched and delivered” the whites’ soiled garments

for their wives. He has no intention of continuing to serve the white man in the post-slavery

South.

Jesus sees the folly of Booker T. Washington’s over-reaching pledge that white society would

“have at all times, the patient, sympathetic help of my race” who would be “the most patient,

faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen” (Washington 224, 221). He

is not content to play the part of the dutiful black servant while waiting for a future equality that

is by no means guaranteed – certainly not by working within the boundaries established by white

ideologies. Jesus’ attitude is more in line with black liberation theology, the main goal of which

“is to liberate the black mind from the destructive ideas and submissive attitude that checkmate

any movement toward authentic emancipation” (Jones 67).

We don’t see Jesus again in “That Evening Sun” as Nancy essentially drives him away by

sleeping around with white men – likely prostituting herself - even though she ultimately says

Jesus has always been good to her. There does not appear to be any other reason for Jesus to

have been remained in Jefferson under the persecution of its white citizenry. While racism was

still an issue across most of America, there were certainly other cities where blacks could live

under less oppressive conditions. A short time after Nancy’s husband departs, she begins to hear

tales of his return, much like the account of the Biblical Jesus after the Crucifixion. She can feel

him watching her, listening to her, and her fear of his retribution for her sins begins to grow

strong. Caddy asks her, “What have you done to make Jesus mad? What’s Jesus going to do to

you?” (Faulkner 184).

Just what has Nancy done to anger Jesus; what are her sins? For one, she has been not only been

committing adultery, but has been doing so with white men. Furthermore, she is likely

prostituting herself as evidenced by her confrontation with Mr. Stovall, when she accusatorially

asks him, “When you going to pay me, white man? It’s been three times now since you paid me

a cent” (Faulkner 177). Furthermore, she turns not to her own family or even others in the black

community for help, but to her white employer and his family, the Compsons. Nancy has no faith

in black society.

Jonathan Trobaugh has deeply explored the relationship between Nancy’s Jesus and Black

Liberation Theology in his award-winning paper, “Jesus of Jefferson”. Trobaugh aptly states,

“While Jesus of Jefferson is both an acknowledgment and an adulteration of Black Christology,

Nancy is a solemn warning to African-American believers: Embrace your powerful spirit; do not

be consumed by your white oppressors. And do not, do not forsake your blackness, for the wages

of doing so are death” (Trobaugh 2). Nancy equates her blackness as something wrong, even

evil, as she says not only is she “hellbound”, but that she is “going back where I come from”

(Faulkner 183). She is constantly crying that God knows she “ain’t nothing but a nigger”,

seeming to equate being black with worthlessness (Faulkner 182).

Though the ending is left untold, there is ample suggestion that Jesus indeed does come back and

kill Nancy. Her fear is real enough and she has come to a place where nothing can save her from

the vengeance of Jesus, the wrath of God. She tells the Compsons she is beyond their protection,

"It won't do no good . . . When even your own kitchen wouldn't do no good. When even if I was

sleeping on the floor in the room with your own children, and the next morning there I am, and

blood --" (Faulkner 190). She knows that, like Christ in the Gospels rose from Hell to sit at the

right hand of God in judgment of the wicked, the Black Christ will soon be coming as the

vengeful right hand of God. He is outside waiting to rise up out of the ditch, which in Faulkner’s

works is symbolic of Hell (Rosenman). He will be returning not as Nancy’s wronged husband,

but as the Black Christ, liberator of His oppressed people and judge of the unfaithful sinners.

Nancy’s greatest sin was forsaking her blackness and betraying the true Black Jesus, and for that

she had to pay the ultimate price.

Works Cited

Cone, James H. Risks of Faith, The Emergence of A Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

Faulkner, William. Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth. Ed. Dorothy

Abbott. Vol. IV. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1985. IV vols.

Jones, William R. Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology. Boston: Beacon Press,

1973, 1998 by William R. Jones.

Rosenman, John B. "The Heaven and Hell Archetype in Faulkner's "That Evening Sun" and

Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine"." South Atlantic Bulletin 43.2 (1978): 12 - 16.

Trobaugh, Jonathan. "Jesus of Jefferson, Black Liberation Theology and the Tripartite Christ in

Faulkner’s That Evening Sun." 26 April 2010. University of Central Arkansas English

Department Web site. 5 December 2010

<http://www.uca.edu/english/news/John_Trobaugh.pdf>.

University of Viginia Library. "University of Viginia Library - William Faulkner Audio

Collection." Blotner's Novel and Gwynn's American Fiction Classes, Special Collections,

University of Virginia Library. 21 November 2010

<http://faulkner.scholarslab.org/transcripts/show/wfaudio06_2#wfaudio06_2.9>.

Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1907.

Woodson, Carter. The Rural Negro. Washington, D.C.: The Association for the Study of Negro

Life, Inc., 1930.