A Study Guide for William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535834841

Book preview

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That Evening Sun

William Faulkner

1931

Introduction

William Faulkner’s story That Evening Sun is the story of three children’s reactions to an adult world that they do not fully understand. It is a dark portrait of white Southerners’ indifference to the crippling fears of one of their black employees. It is also an exploration of terror, vengeance, and solitude. In the story, the African-American washer-woman Nancy fears that her common-law husband, Jesus, is seeking to murder her because she is pregnant with a white man’s child. Published in 1931 in Faulkner’s short-story collection These 13—the book that also includes Faulkner’s most anthologized story, A Rose For Emily—That Evening Sun has become one of Faulkner’s best-known and most popular stories.

Author Biography

William Cuthbert Faulkner (family name originally Falkner) was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He was the oldest of four sons. His family was middle-class and descended from a man who became the model for one of Faulkner’s own characters: his great-grandfather, Colonel William Clark Falkner, who commanded a Mississippi unit in the Civil War. Upon returning from the war, Colonel Falkner founded a railroad that his son later took over. His family’s colorful history and its intersections with the history of the South provided Faulkner with models for such families as the