Previous
Allusions
April Eighth, 1928
Explanation and Analysis—Dialect and Prejudice:
Throughout the novel, Faulkner writes the dialogue of his Black characters with altered spelling and grammar. A good example occurs at the beginning of Dilsey’s segment:
Dilsey reached the top of the stairs and took the water bottle. "I'll fix hit in a minute," she said. "Luster overslep dis mawnin, up half de night at dat show. I gwine build de fire myself. Go on now, so you wont wake de others twell I ready.”
This dialect is Southern, distinctive, and unpolished. Though it’s fully legible, especially once readers have grown accustomed to it, it contrasts with the speech of most of the other characters.
An important moment near the end of the book can help readers understand Faulkner’s use of this dialect. At the beginning of his sermon, the preacher at the Easter service Dilsey attends switches from "white" intonation and pronunciation to Faulkner's familiar dialect:
When the visitor rose to speak he sounded like a white man. His voice was level and cold.... They did not mark just when his intonation, his pronunciation, became negroid, they just sat swaying a little in their seats as the voice took them into itself.
This example reveals both the racism of this dialect and the way it can pivot into possibility. To call intonation and pronunciation "negroid" is to essentialize it. But to mark his shift into a powerful sermon (one that’s vital to Dilsey's realization that the Compson dynasty is ending and the future may be hopeful) with a transition into this dialect is also a way of opening up possibility. Though this sermon clarifies the racism of Faulkner’s choice to use this dialect, it also proposes that the hierarchy between dialect and non-dialect speech might soon be unimportant.
Related Themes:
