William Faulkner - The Evening Sun

William Faulkner received a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 which was well deserved. His story “The Evening Sun” was a story of suspense that was written in a way that kept my attention.
This story told of a Negro woman named Nancy who has been cooking for a white family of the narrator Quentin, who typically did the wash for white people but she was coming to cook for them because their regular cook Dilsey was sick. During this time, the Negro women would gather the white people’s wash and carry it on their heads like a turban. Many of the Negro women’s husbands would help fetch the wash for them, but not Nancy’s husband Jesus. Jesus was not happy with Nancy and had left her, but Nancy felt her was lingering around so he could kill her.
Mr. Stovall who was a cashier to the bank and a deacon in the Baptist church had Nancy arrested. She publicly asked him “When you going to pay me, white man? It’s been three times now.” While in jail, Nancy tries to kill herself, but after hanging herself, she is found and cut down. Later it is shown that she is pregnant. While in the kitchen of Quentin’s family, Nancy’s husband Jesus is there and Nancy tells him that her that “It never come off your vine though” revealing that she is pregnant with someone else’s baby. Nancy had been messing around with Mr. Stovall and the baby was that of a white man and this is why Jesus left Nancy. In Nancy’s fear, she thinks that Jesus is actually lurking around somewhere wanting to kill her. This fear began to consume her and debilitate her. Quentin’s father walks her home after Nancy reveals her fear to him, but Quentin’s mother is jealous and shows no worth in Nancy’s life.
At the end of the story, Nancy’s fear of going home alone causes her to talk Quentin and his sister Caddy and his brother Jason to come home with her. They notice that her fear is eating her alive and they all want to go home. Their father shows up and takes the children home leaving Nancy alone with the front door open. As they look back after passing through the ditch, Nancy’s door is still open but they do not see her and that is how it ends.
I do not like how it ended, but it was a great story. I was disappointed to not know what happened to Nancy, but either way I would say that either her husband did get her or she took off in a psychotic state because she was no longer stable.
This story dealt with a lot of different conflicts. Nancy own personal conflict with having an affair with a white man and then carrying his baby during that time. There was also conflict with her husband and her fear of his return. Another conflict involved Quentin’s father and mother that were caused by his father walking Nancy home and his mother’s jealousy. One thing I found interesting that the setting’s time frame was during an era that the white people, especially adults, were held superior to blacks and children, but the characters named were the blacks and the children. The white adults were not named.