That Evening Sun – Themes

Race Relations

The troubled race relations that have characterized the South throughout its history are the
backdrop for “That Evening Sun,” even if they are not the main concern of the story. Nancy,
the main character in the story, is a typical African-American woman of the South in the Jim
Crow era. “Jim Crow” was a name given to the system of laws, customs, and ideas by which
the white South kept its black Southerners oppressed. In this era, which lasted from the end of
Reconstruction in the 1870s until the relative success of the civil rights movement in the late
1960s, black Southerners were denied most basic civil rights—including, but not limited to,
the right to vote, to have a fair trial, and to have freedom of expression.

In addition, the Jim Crow system enabled white Southerners to take economic advantage of
African Americans. Black Southerners did not have access to higher education, for the most
part, but a few entered into the professions or succeeded in business. African Americans
whose financial success became too obvious, however, were often the target of attacks by
resentful whites.

But it was not only the successful black Southerners who were taken advantage of or attacked
by whites. Nancy, in the story, is a washerwoman who takes in white peoples’ laundry. Mr.
Stovall, who represents both the economic system (he is a cashier at the bank) and the
religious institutions (he is a Baptist deacon) of the South, refuses to pay Nancy for her
services. When she confronts him, he knocks her down and kicks her repeatedly in the face,
causing her to lose her teeth. Mr. Stovall is not punished; rather, it is Nancy who is
imprisoned. Quentin does not tell the reader on what charge she is jailed. Faulkner, who was
always concerned with race, comments through his maturing narrator on the willing blindness
of Southerners to the injustices of their society.

Coming of Age

One of the most familiar themes in Western literature is the “coming of age” or “loss of
innocence” theme. In such stories, a young man (or, less frequently, a young woman) moves
from childhood to adulthood through vivid and affecting experiences. Such twentieth-century
classics as James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, John Knowles’ A Separate
Peace, and J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye are based on this theme. Faulkner also uses this
theme, but he generally sets his characters’ comings-of-age against a backdrop of declining
families and a changing South.

In “That Evening Sun,” Quentin Compson, the narrator, moves from childlike innocence
toward a sadder but wiser adult experience in the course of the story. Faulkner’s narration is
quite clever. The story is actually narrated by an older Quentin, a man fifteen years beyond
the nine-year-old child who seems to tell the story. But even though the first voice of the
narrator is that of an adult, a man with perspective on the events he describes, that voice soon
reflects the world of a child, with the short attention span and limited vocabulary
characteristic of children. Quentin rarely speaks in the story that dominates the action of “That
Evening Sun,” the story of Nancy and her fear of Jesus. Instead, the voices one hears the most
are those of Jason, Caddy, and Nancy herself Caddy, Quentin’s younger sister, is excited to
play along with the adventures that Nancy promises. Jason, the five-year-old, is utterly and
solely concerned with himself. Quentin’s feelings about the matters at hand are unexpressed.

It is this lack of expression that represents Quentin’s growing maturity. Unlike Caddy and
Jason, Quentin can sense that Nancy is feeling a very profound fear—and he has some idea of
the source of that fear. Whereas Caddy and Jason see Nancy’s troubles only as a sort of game
that focuses on them—and Mrs. Compson feels essentially the same way—Quentin can sense
a deeper feeling in Nancy, and he recognizes the potential danger that Jesus presents.
Quentin’s essential silence in this story represents his dawning understanding of evil in the
outside world. Unlike Jason, Caddy, and his mother, he refuses to turn Nancy’s plight into
something that refers to himself. He is not yet old enough to disagree with his father on the
right way to handle the problem, nor is he even old enough to explain to himself what is really
happening, but the reporterlike tone of the story—one very similar to the tone used by
Faulkner’s contemporary Ernest Hemingway—belies the deep emotional effect that Nancy’s
terror is having on him.

Darkness and Violence

“I hate to see that evening sun go down,” W. C. Handy’s song “St. Louis Blues” says, because
the singer’s lover is no longer around. In the song, the singer’s regret at sunset is because the
darkness reminds her of her absent lover; however, for Nancy ”that evening sun” represents
the danger that her absent lover presents to her. Jesus—whose name is likely an ironic joke on
Faulkner’s part— represents danger and violence to Nancy, and he will wait until night has
fallen to fall upon her. Jesus represents a stock figure in racist Southern folklore. He is the
dangerous, violent black man who, after dark, attacks women with a knife or razor. In the Jim
Crow era, in order to stir up prejudice against African Americans, newspapers and magazines
played up, and often simply made up, crimes committed by black men against white women.