Intruder in the Dust

By William Faulkner

Part OneFaulkner portrays narrow-minded people in both A Rose for Emily and Intruder in the Dust. One way he simulates this is with sexism.

Emily- the story of how narrow-minded attitudes can cause others to withdraw-The narrator says the story is one that only a woman could believe. That attitude is small-minded and sexist because men are capable of believing anything women can.

In Intruder in the Dust-the main character Chick-does something that a “girl might have been expected for doing but nobody else.”

Chick, Aleck and the Edmond’s boy go rabbit hunting. Chick falls

through the ice. His friends are unable to get him out, but Lucas

Beauchamp rescues him and takes him back to his house.

Lucas BeauchampFaulkner creates a character in Lucas that contradicts everything we have come to expect from an African American during the 1930’s. Lucas pushes the boundaries that the white society has placed on him and succeeds. The man, Lucas “striding ahead of him was simply incapable of conceiving himself by a child contradicted or defied.”Pages 10-16 (The meeting of Chick and Lucas)

Faulkner’s Literary Accomplishments

... “looking one instant spherical and close coupled as a croquet ball and the next as long as a snake, bursting out of the thicket ahead of the dog, the small white flare of its scut zigzagging across the skeletoned cottonrows like the sail of a toy boat on a windy pond while across the thicket”

Now for your accomplishment…..what is this describing?

Rabbit Run

Milo, Keller, and Faulkner

“the story of the boy and his pet calf which he lifted over the pasture fence each day; years passed and they were a grown man and a bull still being lifted over the pasture fence each day.” (Faulkner)It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal. -Helen Keller"[i]f you can lift a calf every day, when you become an adult you can lift a cow. But don’t ever stop." This saying can be traced back to the legendary wrestler Milo of Croton, who introduced the “calf” workout in the 6th 20century B.C.

The Challenge for Pride

Chick saved his money for six months until he could afford to by Molly Beauchamp a flowered imitation silk dress and mailed it to her in May. He came home in September to fine a gallon of homemade molasses sent by white boy from Lucas Beauchamp. And so the competition continued …with Chick faced with the coins again for Lucas to command somebody to pick up and return.

Passage of TimeAfter 3 years, Chick believes that Lucas has forgotten who he is… “It’s over. That was all because he was free, the man who for three years had obsessed his life waking and sleeping too had walked out of it.”

Then Chick hears that Lucashas shot a white man.

Gavin StevensChick’s uncle, the lawyer, holds the wisdom in the town. … “remembering how his uncle had said that all man had was time, all that stood between him and the death he feared and abhorred was time yet he spent half of it inventing ways of getting the other half past:”

Lynching Lucas“They won’t lynch him until after midnight tomorrow night, after they have buried Vinson and got rid of Sunday.”

Not Forgotten – Coming Full Circle

Chick watching Lucas enter the jail still believes he has forgotten him until….Then he saw Lucas stop and turn and he was wrong because Lucas even knew where he was in the crowd before he turned, looking straight at him before he got turned around even, speaking to him: ‘You, young man,’ Lucas said. ‘Tell your uncle I want to see him:’

Part TwoMore of Steven’s wisdom-Picture of a Town“he remembered how his uncle had said once that not courthouses nor even churches but jails were the true records of a county’s, a community’s history, since not only the cryptic forgotten initials and words and even phrases cries of defiance and indictment scratched into the walls but the very bricks and stones themselves held, not in solution but in suspension, intact and biding and potent and indestructible, the agonies and shames and griefs with which hearts long since unmarked and unremembered dust had strained and perhaps burst.”

Gavin vs. BeauchampPg. 57-64

Miss Habersham: kinless spinster of seventy.

Chick went to speak to his uncle and Miss. Habersham is also waiting to speak to Gavin Stevens.Chick, although reminded by his uncle several times, cannot seem to remember Miss. Habersham is in the room.“because he had already forgotten Miss Habersham, even her presence:”“He had forgotten Miss Habersham. He had dismissed her, he had said ‘Excuse me’ and so evanished her not only from the room but the moment too as the magician with one word or gesture disappears the palm tree or the rabbit…”

The Impossible TaskBelieving that Vinson Gowrie was shot with a different model gun, based on what Lucas told him, Chick, Aleck and Miss Habersham go to dig up the corpse before Lucas is lynched. It is currently around 8 p.m. on Sunday night. How long do they have before Lucas will belynched?

The Revelation!A rider “coming steadily down the road from the crest….Then he could see it or that is where it was passing them—a blob, a movement , a darker shadow then shadow against the pale dirt of the road, going on down the hill, the soft steady shuffle and screak of leather….” Something “toting on the saddle in front of him.“ ‘This aint Vinson Gowrie,’ he said. “ ‘This man’s name is Montgomery. He’s some kind of a shoesting timberbuyer from over in Crossman County.’”

Part ThreeMiss Habersham and Chick’s mother, Maggie, go to guard Lucas at the jail. Chick, Gavin Stevens, and the sheriff are going to locate Vinson Gowrie’s body.Chick has a hard time seeing his father clearly…. “the fond constant familiar face which he had known all his life and therefore could neither have described it so that a stranger could recognize it nor recognize it himself from anyone’s description”

Why do the innocent see the truth?

Gavin Stevens talking to Chick’s dad, Charley- “Because you wouldn’t have listened either. It took an old woman and two children for that, to believe truth for no other reason than that is was truth, told by an old man in a fix deserving pity and belief, to someone capable of the pity even when none of them really believed him.Gavin’s wisdom tip #3“Maybe I’m not to old to learn either.”

Chick’s Thinking Processes

“apparently the coffee had done something to what he called his thinking processes or anyway the processes of what people called thinking because now he knew the why for his father too—the rage which was relief after the event which had to express itself some way and chose anger not because he would have forbidden him to go but because he had no chance to,”

The mind widens….“something like a skim or a veil like that which crosses a chicken’s eye and which he had not even known was there went flick! From his own and he saw them for the first time—the same weathered still almost inattentive faces and the same faded clean cotton shirts and pants and dresses but no crowd now waiting for the curtain to rise on a stage’s illusion but rather the…..honorable court; not even impatient because the moment had even come yet to sit in judgment not on Lucas Beauchamp, they had already condemned him but on Beat Four, come not to see what they called justice done nor even retribution exacted but to see that Beat Four should not fail its white man’s high estate.”

Part Four“The North circumscribing and outland—the umbilicus of American”“An emotional idea, a condition of which he had fed from his mother’s milk to be ever and constant on the alert not at all to fear and not actually anymore to hate but just—a little wearily sometimes and sometimes even with tongue in cheek—to defy:”

The Death of RacismAccording the Gavin Stevens….pg. 151-152

Mr. Nub GowrieA good man-

He stays calm. If someone is going to potentially dig up his son, it is going to be family.

The sheriff is able to reason with him.When he finds out that Lucas is innocent, he doesn’t let pride take over and proceed with the lynching.

He focuses on the important matter of finding his son’s body.

Who Did It? Why?Crawford Gowrie has concocted an

elaborate plot to kill his brother and frame Lucas for the murder. Knowing that Lucas always carries his pistol with him on Saturday-he invites him to the scene. He bets Lucas that he can’t hit a stump fifteen feet away.

Lucas fires his pistol and wins the bet, but is not holding a “hot” pistol. Crawford shoots Vinson from a

distance so that it won’t come out that he is stealing from the lumber

company.

The Trap.Gavin and the Sheriff release Lucas as bait, knowing that the real killer will want to kill him before he reveals

anything. Crawford Gowrie is revealed. His father knew it was him due to recognizing

the German Luger Automatic as belonging to his son.

The Payoff

Lucas and the TobaccoWhile in prison, Lucas wanted tobacco.

Read 192-194

Never Bear Injustice pg 199

Lucas Beauchamp’s Justice

At the end, Gavin Stevens charged Lucas 2 dollars for the tip of

his fountain pen.

Lucas paid with a crumpled dollar and a

hundred pennies.