"That Evening Sun(g)": Blues Inscribing Black Space in White Stories

Southern Quarterly, Spring 2004 by Peek, Charles A

Nancy refers to herself as "nothing soon" or "nothing but a nigger" four times (293, 297, 298, 309), in passages we will look at again momentarily.

The Compson children repeatedly question, assert, and echo what their father or someone else said, these being the most obvious characteristic of their conversation.

Obvious repetitions surround the theme of the dark and being scared of the dark (9 times, 2 each on p. 293, 295, 309, 3 on p. 294), including Caddy teasingjason (9 times, 3 on p. 294 and 2 each on p. 293, 295, 309).

The most prevalent repetitions are the 15 references to the sound of Nancy's singing (6 alone on p. 296 to focus us on the disparity of perceptions, then 4 on p. 298, 2 on p. 306, and 1 each on p. 308, 309), which will also be discussed in a moment.

Mrs. Compson complains of being left alone and defenseless three times (293, 294, 296) and similar mention is made with the same frequency of Dilsey being sick (290, 292, 295).

In addition, the patterns of two key assertions, one by Nancy and one by Jesus are more directly imitative of the blues pattern, which opens the "St. Louis Blues." In both Nancy's complaint that Mr. Stovall hasn't paid her and Jesus's complaint about the power differential between him and white folks, Faulkner constructs the narrative to mirror the opening bars of a blues song. Omitting other narrative interjections, Nancy's complaint comes out as:

Thus inscribed, I propose that their complaints are analogs of the complaint in the "St. Louis Blues" in particular, in the blues in general, and, finally, in the artistic patterns found in African American culture. This blues pattern is one of the ways the blues render the traditional antiphonal or Call/Response character of black music. The blues inherited this "song-in-search-of-an-audience" characteristic from the spirituals. "Central to the very structure of the spiritual . . . antiphony appears in two forms: call-and-response and call-and-refrain" (Floyd 44). Dena Epstein lists "response/call" among the most "Distinctive Characteristics of Secular Black Folk Music" (184-88.) It is the echoing of this pattern which links Nancy and Caroline as one of the story frames.

Howard Odum and Guy Johnson tell us that

For the Negro there is largely himself and the other person. he is telling something to somebody or he is asking something or commanding and advising something. The conversational tone prevails in general throughout the songs. Thus it is that the second person assists the first person in the completion of the image. (281)

The substance of these charges focuses the reader on the dialog as a series of "calls" and moves us to ask whether anyone is ever successful in getting a "response" to the song "raised."9

Among other forms of African American music and ritual, one final feature of the blues that shapes Faulkner's story is the use of sexual double-entendre. Regarding the story's reliance on euphemism, scholars note that "As a communication system, the blues, as had the spiritual earlier, spoke in code-a semantic code that now included euphemisms for sex such as Bessie Smith's 'deep sea diver,' 'black snake,' 'ain't no more 'taters: the frost have killed the vine,' and so on" (Floyd 78). Less obvious is the euphemism disguising the even greater sexuality and violence of Nancy's response to Mr. Compson's callous suggestion that Jesus is "probably in St. Louis now. Probably got another wife by now and forgot all about you" (295). Nancy responds,