That Evening Sun

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That Evening Sun is a short story by the American writer and later Nobel Prize winner for literature, William Faulkner , originally written in October 1930. It first appeared in March 1931 in a slightly different form under the title That Evening Sun Go Down in the American Mercury . In the same year it was published in the anthology Thesis 13 , where it was printed with other Faulkner stories such as Rotes Laub , Eine Rose für Emily or Dürrer September . The first German translations were published in 1956 by Erich Franzen under the title Abendsonne and in 1965 by Elisabeth Schnack under the title When the sun sets .

Thematically, the story is about the worlds that lie between the white and Afro-American populations in the southern states of the USA, and how real fear of death can inhibit a person.

action

The first-person narrator is Quentin Compson; he tells of events that happened fifteen years earlier. He and his siblings involved were still children under ten years of age at the time of the act described.

The protagonist Nancy in the story is a washerwoman who washes the laundry of the white population every week. When the Compsons' maid, Dilsey, is sick, Nancy comes in and cooks for the Compsons. Your partner Jesus is very suspicious from Mr. Compson's point of view and is not allowed into the house. Nancy has sexual encounters with a white man, Mr. Stovall, who doesn't pay her for the services, which is why Nancy makes an appeal on the street. Stovall knocks her down and kicks her teeth out of her mouth; she is thrown in jail where she tries to hang herself. A little later, her pregnancy was obvious, and because Jesus assumed she was pregnant with a white child, he abandoned her. After a while, however, Nancy is certain that he has returned and is lurking in the ditch to come in the dark and kill her. She gets deeper and deeper into these ideas, feels constantly observed and under stress. She experiences agony and sleeps in the room with the Compson children for a few nights. Mr. Compson tries to convince her that she is seeing ghosts; however, she is very persistent and paralyzed by fear.

Mrs. Compson goes too far over time and Nancy is supposed to sleep in the hut again with her. She pleads not to have to go, but when it becomes apparent that she has to go, she invites the Compson children to come to her for "fun." She knows that Jesus is very reluctant in the presence of white people and would not come to her if white children were present. As soon as she has arrived, however, she cannot hold the children. Quentin is neutral, but especially the youngest, Jason, is quick to complain that he wants to go home. The only way he had come through was Caddy's teasing; because his sister Caddy had said he was too scared to come along. Nancy tries to keep Caddy and Jason happy with popcorn, but she is so inhibited by her fear of Jesus that she doesn't even manage to make popcorn with the children. Jason gets smoke in his eyes while trying and begins to cry; Caddy wants to go home too, because she thinks that Nancy has not kept her promise that they will have fun. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Compson appears. He takes his children back with him, but tells Nancy that she should spend the night with a friend so that she is not alone. Nancy doesn’t openly respond and says she’s going to leave the lights on for a while.

The story ends with Mr. Compson going home with the three children and they watch the trench, while Nancy says that Jesus is waiting to do violence to them and kill them. Caddy asks if Jesus can see her, but her father replies that he has been gone a long time. They look back at the hut and see that Nancy still has the lamp on, but they themselves cannot see it. In the last section, Caddy and Jason annoy each other. As before in the story, Caddy describes her brother as a coward who cried. He is "even more scared than a nigger " and she calls him a scared cat; only now does the father intervene and warn Caddy.

Structure and narrative design

A characteristic of Faulkner's short story is the focus of the story on the psychological processes in the inner life of the protagonist Nancy, whereby the actual plot of the story is correspondingly thin. The violent or criminal events are of relatively minor importance: the potential murderer Jesus is only introduced in one short scene; the scar ("razor scar") on his face makes him appear as a suspicious figure and gives the impression of possible violence; However, his thoughts or supposed plans are largely only conveyed through Nancy's perspective and statements. Even external hints or clues, such as the mysterious nocturnal events in the kitchen, are not shown directly, but only hinted at by Nancy's detailed horror as a subsequent reaction. Likewise, he only learns the reader afterwards about the presence of the obscure bloody pig bone ("hogbone, with blood meat still on it"), which Nancy understands from her point of view as a sign of the violent or murderous intentions of her husband, which is essential to her psychological breakdown contributed.

The structure and the external structure of the story underline the priority of the internal events. Following a brief comment on the presence of the narrative, the protagonist's living situation and circumstances are introduced through a loose series of episodes that are not precisely timed. These briefly outlined scenes, such as Nancy's encounter with Mr. Stovall and her stay in prison, do not represent a functional exposition in terms of action, but rather, as examples of the fearlessness of the main character from a psychological point of view, create the contrasting background of her fear and resignation at the end of the story makes it seem all the more impressive.

The central plot begins with the early signs of Nancy's inner restlessness or anxiety and then depicts the individual phases of her increasing fear in ever greater temporal concentration up to peripetia , the climax and turning point on the last evening. The meticulous description and recording of their behavior takes up by far the largest narrative period in history with a length of about twelve pages. The inner and outer structure of the narrative is strengthened by Nancy's multiple pre-interpretations of its violent end, in order to counteract the low plot tension and to direct the reader's interest to the phenomenon of fear.

With regard to the external structure of the story, the discrepancy between the phases of the plot and the chapter units is also remarkable: Faulkner's escape from death is structured in six chapters, which are less spatio-temporal or plot-like units, but rather stages of one represent inner development. Correspondingly, processes that belong together are sometimes separated by the chapter boundaries: At the end of the second chapter, Nancy holds the cup in her hands from which she drinks at the beginning of the third chapter; the end of the third chapter interrupts a conversation that is continued at the beginning of the fourth chapter or is steered in a different direction. This conspicuous design of the chapter boundaries serves to reinforce the thematic aspect, since all chapter closings deal with the fear of Nancy or Jason's as well as references to death.

For the presentation and design of the inner drama, on which the reader is mainly focused due to the sparse external action, the indirect means of expression and their mutual combination, accentuation or intensification acquire a meaningful function and meaning. The reason for this lies on the one hand in the consistently retained narrative perspective of an uninvolved and incomprehensible narrator, on the other hand in the choice of an uneducated Negress as the main character, whose linguistic expressiveness is insufficient to adequately express her inner experience. Ultimately, however, this also expresses the psychological depth dimension that Faulkner thematically applied in the story, which largely eludes direct linguistic access.

In the first chapter, Nancy's inner unrest becomes apparent in her gaze, which is not described further, and her lingering at the cold stove, while in the second chapter a bundling of expressive gestures such as indefinable lamentations or prayer-like utterances and, in particular, her strangely alien and eerie view of the intensification of the refer to external and internal situation. In the third chapter, the contrasting of means of expression, such as the juxtaposition of the motionless, paralyzed hands of Nancy and her feverishly moving eyes, indicates the changing states of artificially nourished hope on the one hand and incipient hopelessness and resignation on the other. This polarization is continued in the fourth chapter with the juxtaposition of hectic activity and temporary absent-mindedness.

The external and internal tension reaches its climax as the mysterious steps approach. Through an accumulation and massing of the most varied means of expression, the loss of self-control is marked, which is illustrated above all by Nancy's outbursts of sweat and her torrent of words, which is no longer rationally controlled. This uncontrolled flow of speech is like a last desperate cry for help.

In contrast, the beginning of the fifth chapter shows the radical change outwardly in Nancy's more balanced way of speaking, her calm facial expression and her calm hands, before she then expresses a kind of devotion to fate herself in her words. Their insight into the hopelessness of the situation, combined with the acceptance of their fate and their willingness to die, then causes their fear of death to vanish as well as their hope. In the last chapter Faulkner then shapes Nancy's devotion to her fate in the form of a so-called "frozen moment" (German: "frozen movement" or tableau), which brings the flow of action to a standstill and, through appropriate concentration, turns the inner happening into an extremely impressive or memorable one Conclusion leads, while the external processes lose importance and the story's end remains open.

Nancy's abandonment at the end, however, is both the climax and the sign of an external development that runs parallel to the psychological or internal process and is partly conditioned by it. Nancy's increasing isolation contributes to her inability to communicate and thus makes her mental health more difficult. At least in part, this isolation of Nancy is determined by the social conditions, that is, her race. Examples of the rights and defenselessness of blacks can be found not only in the aforementioned brutal treatment by Mr. Stovall and the prison guard, but also in the words of her husband Jesus (“White man can come in my house, but I can't stop him ") and Nancy's multiple pledges of innocence (" I just nigger. It ain't no fault of mine. ").

However, as is usually the case with Faulkner, this sociological or ethnic factor is only one aspect among many. Her skin color, for example, only plays a subordinate role in Nancy's relationship with her employer’s family. It is true that Mrs. Compson's behavior towards Nancy is also determined by racial prejudice; Significantly, however, she is portrayed as narrow-minded or narrow-minded in her behavior towards her own family. The sociological moment in the narrower sense expands in this short story to a humanitarian one: the black washerwoman becomes, so to speak, a touchstone for the human qualities of her environment. The behavior of Mrs. Compson and her attempt to replace personal sympathy with institutionalized assistance (“What do we have officers for?”, “We pay taxes”), are particularly typical examples of the prevailing lack of understanding. Even Mr. Compson, as the most positively characterized white person in the story, is unable to grasp the deeper situation due to his intellectual and experiential limits, although on his part gestures of helpfulness towards Nancy can be recognized. Nevertheless, even for him, human coexistence can be regulated by conventional moral rules; he largely lacks any knowledge of the demonic depths or abysses of human behavior, as expressed in Nancy's words about herself and her husband ("I hellborn").

The contrast between superficiality and depth is also underlined by the behavior of the children; In addition, the theme of the protagonist Nancy's isolation is emphasized, which runs parallel to that of fear. Just because of their age (five, seven and nine years), these children are unable to grasp the human tragedy that is unfolding before their eyes: Jason only understands that Nancy is - as he thinks - afraid of the dark; Caddy already understands that Nancy's relationship with Jesus, which she cannot see through, provides the reason for this; only Quentin, the oldest and obviously the most sensitive of the children, seems to have suspected the deadly seriousness of the situation. His ambiguous question to his father at the end, who will do the laundry, suggests such a presumption, but at the same time underlines the aspect of helplessness and detachment, which characterizes the behavior of fellow human beings to the main character in the story to different degrees .

Topics, leitmotifs and linguistic design

I aint nothing but a nigger

In the second half of the first part of the story, Nancy points out: "I'm nothing but a nigger ... It's not my fault at all." In this sentence it becomes clear what self-portrait Nancy has of herself. Their fate is predetermined and at no point is it in their hands. This is due to the fact that the black population is oppressed by the whites and therefore they cannot shape their lives freely. The Black-His is an immutable trait that can not take the black without them it makes a fault, and yet they have to bear the consequences imposed what social injustice racism causes.

In Faulkner's story, the children cannot understand to what extent black skin color helps determine the identity of Afro-Americans. While the two black house servants Nancy and Disley are seriously dealing with Nancy's violent husband Jesus, five-year-old Jason bursts in childishly: "Jesus is a nigger ... Dilsey is a nigger too ... I'm not a nigger ... Are you a nigger, Nancy? ”For the ignorant Jason, classification as a nigger is just a child's game that doesn't go very far. He is unaware of the real gravity of these racial classifications.

The children

Essentially, in the story, the children are confronted with a situation that at no point can they even begin to understand. For example, Nancy's baby bump is just a “watermelon” during pregnancy; Nor do they know the reason why her teeth were knocked out (Nancy asked for money for her sexual services, which eventually led to her pregnancy). Her fear and the agony she goes through as a result are also completely in the dark for the children. Nancy's growing despair is just a state of affairs for her, perhaps nothing more than a game. They act with childlike naivete and in no way understand the serious situation.

The three characters Caddy, Jason and Quentin are also narrators or main characters in the 1929 novel Schall und Wahn . In this work Faulkner uses the decadence of youth as a model for the downfall of the once proud south; most fully depicted on the eldest Compson child, Quentin, who ultimately commits suicide in the face of helplessness with regard to the decline of honor, virginity and love. Quentin's portrayal in this novel is partly interpreted as standing on the verge of madness. Against this background, the Compson children may also serve as a metaphor for the decline of the aristocracy of the south in this short story .

fear

Nancy's fear, literally her fear of death, is one of the most driving features of the entire narrative. Faulkner emphatically contrasts Nancy's fear with that of the children. For the children it is little more than a game in which one describes each other as fearful or even cowardly in order to tease and annoy the other; Nancy, on the other hand, thinks her fear of her horned husband Jesus is completely real. To Mr. Compson, there is no evidence that what Nancy is describing is actually true and that her fear is nothing more than the fear of the dark that many children have. With Nancy he perceives this feeling of fear as a real experience, but regards it as irrational, since from his point of view it lacks an actual basis in external reality. But Nancy does not allow herself to be dissuaded from her fear. In her helplessness, she cannot prevent the fear of death from completely overwhelming her and rendering her practically incapable of action. So in her hut she is no longer even able to make popcorn for the children. Nancy meanwhile justifies her fear by saying that she knows Jesus and that this is exactly the way he will proceed. In fact, it remains to be seen whether something else will happen during the night and whether Nancy is right. In the novel Schall und Wahn about the Compson family, published as early as 1929, the autistic youngest son Benjy tells that Nancy's bones lay in the ditch in which, as Nancy suspected, Jesus was waiting for them.

In the work Requiem for a Nun , published in 1951 , Nancy Mannigoe appears as a surviving nun. Nancy's fate and the nature of her fear are therefore not treated uniformly in Faulkner's canon .

teller

The short story is told by a first-person narrator , Quentin Compson. He reports in the form of an anecdote of incidents that happened fifteen years earlier. Towards the end of the first part of the short story, the narrator Quentin gives age information, according to which he was then nine, his sister Caddy seven and his brother Jason five years old. Quentin is therefore twenty-four years old at the time of the narration; This is, however, contrary to the information elsewhere in the narrative work of Faulkner, because Quentin commits in the novel Sound and the Fury at the age of nineteen suicide .

Quentin, meanwhile, presents dates and impressions in the way he perceived them as a child, which largely tells the story from the perspective of a nine-year-old. There are no insertions of the older Quentin and the behavior of the three children (Quentin, Jason, Caddy) is not supplemented or explained by comments from the adult narrator Quentin. This limits his description to the narrow perception from the outside perspective of a child. On this narrative background, Quentin cannot understand the severity and seriousness of the actions. This only changes slightly towards the end, when he apparently suspects far-sightedly that Jesus might kill Nancy.

Faulkner's clearly limited narrative perspective of a child from the external perspective consequently leads to a characterization of the main character through the meaningful meaning of their gestures and gestures and thus suggests a visualization of the processes as well as a scenic-dialogical reproduction of the events. However, through the technique of the linguistic leitmotifs , Faulkner also allows his own ideas or his "knowledge" as an author to flow into the story.

The portrayal of what is happening around Nancy from the perspective of a nine-year-old narrator, whose medium of cognition and representation is primarily the world of things and sensually perceptible phenomena, is a defining characteristic of Faulkner's entire literary work, in which children are particularly often centers of consciousness or narrators can be used. This story is complicated by the fact that at the beginning of the story the twenty-four-year-old Quentin appears as the narrator, who then reproduces an event fifteen years ago and takes over the language as well as the narrative and experience of a child. Through this telescopic merging of two narrative perspectives, Faulkner initially creates an intensifying contrast effect. The “bloodless” Jefferson of the narrative present in this respect forms the backdrop for the bloody event fifteen years ago that the story is aimed at. In a contrasting comparison with the motorized laundresses, for example, the protagonist Nancy, with her bundle of laundry on her head, gains such a dignity or size of her own.

With the transition from the narrative perspective to the nine-year-old child, the time difference between the narrator and the narrated is no longer primarily important, but rather the child's psychological distance from an event that exceeds his or her ability to experience and understand that he can portray only from the outside. However, this seemingly naive narrative style is highly functional for the overall design of the story. Faulkner thus gains the opportunity to cover the story with a tightly knit leitmotif and symbolic network with the help of the means of indirection and allusion as well as the repeatedly called up images or pictorial scenes in order to reflect the inner development of the main character. Faulkner, for example, had the narrator record the scenically expanded opening image of Nancy with the bundle of laundry on her head in various places in order to highlight the contrast between the initially self-confident protagonist and Nancy, who was ultimately deeply insecure and scared to death, who only looked identical to themselves is to be emphasized with great clarity.

In a similar way, the limited linguistic and stylistic design elements given by the narrative perspective, especially the sentence structure and the metaphor, which are adapted to the child's narrator, are also used by Faulkner as media for the targeted clarification of Nancy's inner situation. For example, Nancy's inner restlessness is underlined in a passage by the seemingly clumsy accumulation of prepositional additions in connection with linguistic repetitions. In other places, the unconnected juxtaposition of short sentences creates the impression of an inherent gravity of things that are beyond Nancy's control and thus evoke a feeling of the inevitability of her fate. From a psychological point of view, the images and comparisons conveyed by the child's narrator initially appear as attempts by the narrator to linguistically cope with the confusing events, while at the same time allowing Faulkner to design the irrational processes that take place in the subconscious and elude direct linguistic statements .

Particularly noticeable are images from the animal and tangible realm, such as the comparison of Nancy's eyes with those of a cat. By using this imagery in the utterances of the child's narrator, Faulkner tries to convey an insight into the depth of the soul and to give expression to the otherwise difficult to represent deformation of what is actually human in the existential borderline situation of fear of death.

Linguistic means of expression

The narrative perspective of the story leads to a largely scenic-dialogical representation of the event. Faulkner uses the dialogue language not only in its characterizing function, but also to accentuate and deepen the thematic aspects; his special achievement is shown above all in the fact that he is able to skillfully combine these two design elements.

He uses a series of key words or key words, some of which, as in the case of Jason, clarify the fixation of the respective speaker and at the same time draw attention to the various aspects of the supra-personal issue of fear and threat, so that the readers are aware of them to keep present. The term “nigger” in the language of little Jason, for example, emphasizes the sociological aspect, while the repeated use of the word “scared” reinforces the psychological view of the topic.

Nancy's repeated utterances “I feel” and “I know” express her certainty of fate in relation to Jesus and his plans, which in turn emphasizes her separation from the people around her in the aforementioned sense. The inner isolation of Nancy is further strengthened by the conduct of the dialogue, above all by the means of talking past each other or by repeated word echoes with a meaning-changing picking up of a word, which makes the different perspectives of the dialogue partners stand out.

A thoroughly revealing example of this interaction of the various linguistic means to illustrate Nancy's inner isolation can be found in the design of the time immediately preceding Mr. Compson's entry into the hut. While Jason's use of the word "tell" is meant by him as a threat in the sense of "sniff", shows the meaning-changing, urgent repetition of the expression by Nancy in the sense of a pleading request and the use of keywords such as "morning", "home" or "Sleep", which stand for your wishful thinking, very clearly shows the paths in which your feelings and thoughts move. In connection with Jason's repeated threat (“I'm going to tell”), the insurmountable gulf that separates Nancy from her surroundings is also marked. Her self-denying reference to the fun one will have is psychologically the most haunting indication of her excessive despair.

The escalating discrepancies between the different perspectives and experiences in these statements are not limited to a psychological meaning, but also have a function that goes beyond this, which also makes it understandable why Faulkner, like numerous other authors, often chooses a child-like narrative perspective. The recording or registration of contradicting experience data of a child's narrator without comment allows, depending on the type or strength of the discrepancies, quite different tones of the events in order to lend a story the complex character of an ambiguous excerpt from reality by linking them. Even comic elements can be found in the description of Nancy's external appearance, such as the black sailor hat over her bundle of laundry or the “watermelon” under her apron, or in the childish quarrels that go beyond their chorus-like function for a kind of “ comic relief ”. At the same time, they have a certain humorous effect, which is typical of the literary tradition of the American South.

The dialogue between Nancy and Jason mentioned at the beginning also contains an additional grotesque effect: the discrepancy between Nancy's reference to the fun they are going to have and the deadly seriousness of their situation once again unmistakably reveals the futility of their actions, as well as of their efforts at interpersonal understanding stressed. The tragic aspect of the whole story is finally underlined again by the final image, which suggests Nancy's devotion to her fate and at the same time gives her human grandeur with the plaintive acceptance of the imminent, by contrasting it with the insignificant childish arguments.

title

The ironically intended title is derived from a popular gospel spirit , the first line of which is: Lordy, how I hate to see that evening sun go down. This verse also formed the basis for the first verses of the well-known classic blues song St. Louis Blues . It is not known which piece exactly was the model for the title for Faulkner. However, since Faulkner knew a lot about the southern states, it can be assumed that Faulkner knew both songs.

The short story has also been published under the title That Evening Sun Go Down , which in the thematic relation to the narrative can also be understood as a metaphor for the approaching death that lurks in the darkness. Nancy, the African-American washerwoman and housekeeper, fears in the story that her jealous husband, Jesus, is waiting for the sun to go down before violating her and killing her. In such a reading, the sunset symbolizes the agonizing fear of death as the main leitmotif of the story.

Work history context

Faulkner presented a first version of the narrative under the title Never Done No Weeping When You Wanted to Laugh in October 1930, a year after The Sound and the Fury was published. The short story, which was first published in a slightly different form in the American Mercury in 1931 under the title That Evening Sun Go Down , was received extremely positively by both literary critics and a broad reading public and in some cases was even included in a series with Faulkner's most important novel, The Sound and the Fury .

Thematically and narrative as well as content, That Evening Sun is one of the most characteristic short stories for Faulkner due to its roots in his native Mississippi and the fictional narrative landscape of Yoknapatawpha County he created . The material of the story is likely based on a true story; Narrator, setting and characters are familiar from Faulkner's other works, especially The Sound and the Fury . From a sociological point of view, the story gives an idea of ​​the living conditions and especially the situation of blacks in the American South at the turn of the 20th century. The negative portrayal of technical progress in modern Jefferson, the capital of Yoknapatawpha County, contains echoes of a motif often used by Faulkner.

A number of points of contact can be found with the short previously published story Dry September , in which an archetypal basic situation with a focus on psychological events is presented in several ways. However, while in Dry September the focus is mainly on the experience and the consequences of frustration, loneliness and violence, the fear of death is brought to the fore here, whereby isolation, indifference and aggressiveness supplement the overall message of the story as significant secondary topics .

In Dry September , the exemplary moment and the intensity of the effect are primarily achieved through the skillful combination of two complementary narrative strands, whereas the essential effect in That Evening Sun is primarily through the extreme simplification of the plot in the sense of a concentration on a single figure and its inner being Development is achieved. An additional aspect of the relationship between these two short stories by Faulkner results from the choice of an outside narrator as well as the use of an indirect mode of expression through suggestive use of language or predictive references. Compared to Dry September , however, the first- person narrative That Evening Sun makes the perspective of a child's experience the most important element of integration in this short story, which makes it possible, among other things, to juxtapose different levels of consciousness and various comic, tragic and grotesque elements that are characteristic of this story in a special way and give it its complexity.

As in Dry September and also in Barn Burning , the actual event on which the story is based, in this case the murder of Nancy, is omitted; it also remains to be seen whether it will occur at all.

With the final insight into the hopelessness of her situation and the acceptance of what is to come in connection with the disappearance of her fear of death as well as her hope at the end of the story, there are also striking parallels in the development of Nancy, for example to the psychological state of the negro in the one year Previously written short story Red Leaves or in Faulkner's figure of Joe Christmas at the end of the novel Light in August, published a year later . What the three short stories mentioned also have in common is the fact that in these, as in numerous other Faulkner stories, people are characteristically seen in close relationship with space: the spatial relationships also reflect the changing internal and external situation or constitution of the characters. In addition to Faulkner's specific style, these close connections between people and space also emphatically underline the uncanny dimension and ethical and moral incommensurability typical of Faulkner's narrative work . This suggestive narrative style favored by Faulkner corresponds to the characterizations of the main characters through the meaningful meaning of their gestures and gestures as well as the technique of introducing linguistic leitmotifs, with the help of which Faulkner as the author allows his ideas or his "knowledge" to flow into. This corresponds to a particularly pronounced extent to the limited external perspective of the respective narrator and the resulting visualization and scenic-dialogical reproduction of the narrative.

In That Evening Sun , too, the short form of narration reaches the limits of its possibilities or its efficiency through the variety of perspectives with its connection of disparate tragic, comic and grotesque moments and the inclusion of meaningful ambivalences, which include psychological and also to some extent metaphysical aspects. Not least for this reason it becomes understandable why Faulkner often switches to an intermediate form between short story and novel and even uses this to structure his novels.

On the other hand, however, the design of That Evening Sun also shows why Faulkner repeatedly returns to the form of the short story in his literary work : only through extreme compression, also in terms of scope, does he succeed in expressing an existential situation with an intensity which gives it a deeply human, archetypal sense.

Many critics agree that That Evening Sun, from the narrative behavior creates a best of Faulkner's short stories, in which the game between serious adult world and naive childlike adventure world is extremely complex displayed.

In terms of genre, That Evening Sun is one of the typical representatives of Southern Gothic , that sub-genre of Gothic fiction in which grotesque or sometimes macabre , sometimes black-humored images, metaphors and entire scenes are embedded in scenes that are realistic in themselves , in order to evolve the moral and moral To depict the decline and decadence of the American South.

Editions of works (selection)

English

  • William Faulkner: That Evening Sun. In: William Faulkner: Collected Stories. Vintage (Random House), London 1995, ISBN 009-947921-4 , pp. 289-312.

German

  • William Faulkner: evening sun: 3 stories. Translated by Erich Franzen. Piper Verlag , Munich 1956.

Secondary literature (selection)

  • Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 247-267.
  • John V. Hagopian: That Evening Sun . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I - Analysis of American Literature . Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 50-55.
  • LH Frey: Irony and Point of View in 'That Evening Sun.' In: Faulkner Studies , Fall 1953, pp. 33–40.
  • Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), pp. 33-50.
  • Laurence Perrine: 'That Evening Sun': A Skein of Uncertainties. In: Studies in Short Fiction 22.3 (Summer 1985), pp. 295-307.
  • EW Pitcher: Motive and Metaphor in Faulkner's 'That Evening Sun'. In: Studies in Short Fiction 18.2 (Spring 1981), pp. 131-35.
  • Paula Sunderman: Speech Act Theory and Faulkner's 'That Evening Sun'. In: Language and Style: An International Journal 14.4 (Fall 1981), pp. 304-14.
  • William B. Toole: Faulkner's 'That Evening Sun'. In: Explicator 22 (1963), Item 52.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 247.
  2. ^ Cf. Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 247 f. For more information on this and the significance of the choice of the name Jesus for Nancy's husband, see Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), p. 40 ff.
  3. ↑ See in detail Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 247-251.
  4. ↑ See Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 251 f. See also Irving Howe: William Faulkner: A Critical Study. Random House /, Vintage 1962, p. 266 f.
  5. ↑ See in more detail Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 251 f.
  6. ^ Collected Stories of William Faulkner, Vintage International, Random House, Inc. That Evening Sun, pp. 297-298
  7. ↑ See That Evening Sun - Analysis , accessed on February 26, 2018.
  8. ↑ See Summary and Analysis: "That Evening Sun" Introduction , accessed on February 26, 2018.
  9. ↑ See Dorothy Tuck: Crowell's Handbook of Faulkner . Crowell Company, 2nd ed. 1964, pp. 177 f. and Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), p. 34. Some literary scholars and renowned Faulkner experts such as Cleanth Brooks, Olga W. Vickery or Joseph W. Reed, Jr., have concluded from this canonical context of works that Nancy in history actually had nothing to fear here. However, the fact that A Requiem for a Nun did not appear until 20 years later speaks against such an interpretation, so Faulkner would have had to wait an extremely long time to provide a clear key for the resolution of the open ending of That Evening Sun , although he was in In an interview recorded in 1959, regardless of this, stated that the two nancys in the two stories were actually the same person ("the same person actually"). See in detail Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), p. 34 f., Who nevertheless see a number of sufficient textual evidence for a violent end in their interpretation of the short story.
  10. ↑ See Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), p. 34 f.
  11. ↑ See Summary and Analysis: "That Evening Sun" Introduction , accessed on February 27, 2018.
  12. ↑ See Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 254 f. See also the detailed interpretation by Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), p. 38 ff.
  13. ↑ See more detailed Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 253-255.
  14. ↑ See more precisely Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 255-257. On the role of children and the sometimes ironic effects of child dialogue, cf. also LH Frey: Irony and Point of View in 'That Evening Sun.' In: Faulkner Studies , Fall 1953, pp. 33–40.
  15. ↑ On the meaning of the title and the reference to the well-known gospel song, see Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), p. 38 ff.
  16. ↑ See Dirk Kuyk Jr., Betty M. Kuyk and James A. Miller: Black Culture in William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun". In: Journal of American Studies , Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1986), pp. 33-50, here p. 33.
  17. ↑ See John B. Cullen: Old Times in the Faulkner Country. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1961, pp. 72 f.
  18. ↑ See Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 247.
  19. ↑ See in detail Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann on the connections presented here: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 247 f.
  20. ↑ See Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 252 f.
  21. ↑ See Gerhard and Gisela Hoffmann: Faulkner · That Evening Sun. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 257.
  22. ↑ See e.g. B. Dorothy Tuck: Crowell's Handbook of Faulkner . Crowell Company, 2nd ed. 1964, pp. 177 f .; Irving Howe: William Faulkner: A Critical Study. Random House /, Vintage 1962, p. 266 f. and Summary and Analysis: "That Evening Sun" Introduction , accessed February 26, 2018.