Post # 6

For this week I decided to right about Evening Sun. The first thing that stuck out was the Negro women who carry the clothes from the white people’s house to the wash pot without touching it. This “old custom” seemed like an objectification of black women into automobiles or machines that so effortlessly carried the clothing. Faulkner then introduced us to Nancy who is capable of this machine-like occupation but in coming paragraphs falls apart at the seams into an emotional wreck over the prospect of being killed by Jesus. So we have a contrast between the role that black women fill in the working world and who they really are in their personal lives.

I guess this particular story helped me to realize the plight of the African-American woman who was not only subjected to the cruelties of whites but also was expected to put up with whatever violence their husbands perpetrated against them. I thought it was also interesting when the jailer talks about how “no nigger would try to commit suicide unless he was full of cocaine, because a nigger full of cocaine wasn’t a nigger any longer.” This didn’t really make sense to me because the jailer is saying that a “nigger” wouldn’t commit suicide unless he or she was on drugs so this would mean that without drugs a black person is capable of understanding the ramifications of suicide. So the jailer, at least in my opinion, seemed to be suggesting perhaps subconsciously that blacks were in fact not animal like but instead had their own minds and thinking abilities.

When Nancy keeps saying “I ain’t nothing but a nigger” I wasn’t sure if maybe Faulkner was somehow expressing his irritation with blacks who use this justification or if he was subtly showing Nancy’s skill at avoiding taking responsibility for herself. Also, I thought it was interesting how Jesus decided to take out his anger at the white man (for being able to walk into his kitchen and do whatever he wants etc.) on Nancy. I remember reading in history that black men would often subject their wives to the same degradation white men subjected them too.

Lastly, I came to like but at the same time dislike the father because he protect Nancy but in a paternalistic sort of way. When he tells her she should have behaved herself it sounded to me as if he wasn’t looking at the situation holistically but instead was just blaming her the way a parent would blame a child.