40 pages • 1 hour read
William FaulknerIntruder In The Dust
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1948A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Charles returns to his uncle’s house, passing a “weathered battered second-hand looking pickup truck” outside (74). He presumes this truck belongs to one of his uncle’s farmer clients. He desperately wants to tell his uncle about Lucas’s request, so he interrupts the meeting. Rather than a farmer, however, he finds his uncle sitting with an elderly white woman named Miss Habersham. When Charles tells his uncle about Lucas’s request, Gavin dismisses it. He assumes that Lucas is lying to get himself out of trouble. Digging up the body, he believes, would only incense the Gowrie family further.
Charles leaves the office. He ponders what to do next, but already feels certain that he will dig up the body. Planning the route to the cemetery in his mind, he worries that he will not be able to make it on time on his horse. Aleck Sander will help him, he knows, and he is quickly proved right. As the two boys prepare the horses, Miss Habersham comes to them. She wants to help Lucas. Charles remembers that she and Molly (Lucas’s late wife) were close, “almost inextricably like sisters, like twins” (87). She offers them the use of her truck, so Aleck rides with her while Charles takes the old horse Highboy along the road to the cemetery. Outside the cemetery, they pause briefly and hide in the shadows as an unknown person rides past on a mule. Then they enter the cemetery and dig up the fresh grave. When they finally reach the pine coffin, they open it to find that the corpse inside “aint Vinson Gowrie” (104). Instead, they recognize the timber buyer from Crossman County, Jake Montgomery.
Chapter 5 Summary
Charles, Aleck Sander, and Miss Habersham fill in the grave and return to Gavin. They wake him, as well as Charles’s mother, who insists that it’s getting late and her son has “got to sleep” (106). Gavin is willing to listen, however, and agrees to go with the trio to see Sheriff Hampton. Hampton listens to the story and points out a few issues, such as the stranger on the mule. Nevertheless, he calls the district attorney and arranges for a warrant while Miss Habersham finishes preparing the breakfast. They “must wait for daylight” to dig up the grave again (112), Hampton believes, as the lynch mob will not attack during the day, when “they would have to see one another’s faces” (114). Charles falls asleep and, when he wakes, he finds Will Legate in the house. They discuss Jake Montgomery, a timber buyer who ran a restaurant until, very recently, someone was killed on the premises and he was forced to lie low for some time. Miss Habersham and Charles’s mother agree to watch the jailhouse, as the mob would not dare use violence against “a woman, a lady, a white lady” (117). The others will return to the grave.
Chapter 6 Summary
Miss Habersham wants to collect knitting work from her house to keep busy while she is guarding Lucas. Once she is dropped off, Gavin suggests to Charles that he and Aleck Sander should go home to sleep, as they are expected in the school the following day. Charles is surprised when his mother permits him to drink coffee for the first time to help him stay awake. He does not like the bitter taste, so he drinks it with milk. He remembers when his mother was reluctant to allow him to travel with the high school football team, though she turned up to support him at the away game in her “proud and serene and pitiless” way (124). Charles’s mother will remain with Miss Habersham, she announces. Meanwhile, Charles suspects that his father dislikes feeling that he has no control over what is happening.
As they prepare to dig up the grave a second time, Gavin speculates about the identity of the stranger seen riding past the three people in the dark. Charles thinks back on the previous evening, wondering whether he might have feared an ambush. Feeling more awake thanks to the coffee, Charles looks out at the empty streets. A crowd, he imagines, would gather quickly if there was the possibility that Lucas could be killed. In such a big crowd, the perpetrators could abandon their “individual identity into one” (137). Charles realizes that he has involved himself in a very serious situation. The sheriff arrives with two African American prisoners, briefly recruited from the jail to help dig up the grave. Members of the public comment darkly on his plans, speaking as though the lynching is inevitable. As they drive to the cemetery, Charles asks his uncle what might happen if the men from Beat Four simply push past his mother and Miss Habersham. Lucas is no longer in the jail, Gavin reveals. He is now hidden away in Sheriff Hampton’s house.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
This section continues to develop the theme of Race and Justice as Charles embarks on his mission to save Lucas from the mob. The stream of consciousness style of the prose lends itself to the urgency of this chase, as Charles must quickly formulate a plan and then adapt and evolve the plan as new information presents itself. As Charles leaves the town, he studies every alley and street, desperately searching for any sign that the mob is mobilizing. As they travel along the road, he expects to see the men from Beat Four stream past him. Charles is certain that Lucas will be lynched, a belief that is deepened when random people make offhand comments about this apparent inevitability. They may not know the details of the case, but they know the nature of racism, white supremacy, and the mob mentality. The effect is that Charles, Aleck Sander, and Miss Habersham must travel as fast as they can, in absolute secrecy, to the cemetery so that they can commit an illegal act. The law is powerless against the mob’s vigilantism, so those in pursuit of actual justice must resort to covert, unlawful means. Only by breaking the law and digging up a grave can Charles and his cohorts convince the sheriff to enforce the law.
After Charles, Aleck, and Miss Habersham return from the cemetery, the sheriff is convinced of the need for action. He decides to protect Lucas. He does this in two ways. Firstly, he arranges for two white women to be placed outside the jail where Lucas is supposedly being held. They will replace the deputy with a shotgun, as the sheriff reasons that a mob of bloodthirsty racists will easily push past the deputy but will hesitate to barge past two respectable white women. In this manner, he turns the mob’s racist tendencies against them. At the same time, the sheriff moves Lucas into his house. Lucas is not actually in the jail, even as the mob forms outside. Notably, the ways in which the sheriff protects Lucas are as extrajudicial as the violence employed by the mob. He has to trick the people of the town into not attacking, rather than being able to offer Lucas any actual legal support. The fact that even the sheriff must enforce the law via extrajudicial means underscores how far characters must go to ensure that justice will prevail, even when they are ostensibly working on the side of the law.
The novel uses Charles’s youth to comment on The Future of the American South. After Charles returns home to tell his uncle about the identity of the body in the grave, his uncle is concerned for his well-being. The hour is late, Gavin points out, and Charles should really be resting. Gavin’s concern for Charles is a reminder that Charles is just a teenager, in spite of the courage and maturity he shows. Other people, especially representatives of the legal system like Gavin, bear a far greater responsibility to Lucas than a single teenager. However, Gavin is torn, because he recognizes that his nephew and Lucas share a bond that represents the potential for a more equal society. Such mutual empathy and understanding is, Gavin believes, the only way in which the South can reach a better future, and there is a sense in which it is “too late” for people of his age to change. After all, the young Charles is the lone voice calling for justice, whereas the older people feel that violence is inevitable. Gavin locates hope for the South’s future in the next generation, who have not yet become accustomed to the status quo and can envision a different way forward.
Related Titles
By William Faulkner
