Children of the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner

Children of the Dark House

Children of the Dark House Extracts We ran up the steps and out of the bright cold, into the dark cold. (SF 7) The stairs went down into the dark and T. P. took my hand, and we went out the door, out of the dark. (SF 34) The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself. .. . (SF285) They were set in small grassless plots littered with broken thing?, bricks, planks, crockery, things of a once utilitarian value. What growth there was consisted of rank weeds and the trees were mulberries and locusts and sycamores —trees that partook also of the foul desiccation which surrounded the houses; trees whose very burgeoning seemed to be the sad and stubbornremnant of September, as if even spring hadpassed them by... . (SF 291) They reachedthe gate and entered. Immediately Ben began to whimper again, andfor a while all of them looked up the drive at the square, paintless house with its rotting portico. (SF 298) He looks up at the gauntface framed by the window in the twilight. It is a composite picture of all time since he wasa child. . . . For a while still she looks down at him from the compositepicture, neither with censurenor approbation . Then theface disappears. (AILD 32) The house came into sight, above the cedar grove beyond whose black interstices an apple orchard flaunted in the sunny afternoon. It was set in a ruined lawn, surrounded by abandoned grounds andfallen outbuildings. But nowhere was any sign of husbandry—plow or tool; in no direction was a planted field in sight—only agaunt weather-stained ruin in a sombregrove... . (S 206) . . . looking down at the child, at its bluish eyelids showing afaint crescent of bluish white against its lead-colored cheeks, the moist shadow of hair capping Children of the Dark House 23 its skull, its hands uplifted, curl-palmed, sweating too, thinking Good God. Good God. (S 262) The woman drew the box out from behind the stove and stood above it, her hands still hidden in her shapeless garment. "I have to keep him in this so the rats cant get to him," she said. (S 262-63) The child wailed, a thin, whimpering, distressful cry. (S 271) The woman sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at the child. It lay beneath thefaded, clean blanket, its hands upflung beside its head, as though it had died in thepresence of an unbearable agony which had not had time to touch it. Its eyes were half open, the balls rolled back into the skull so that only the white showed, in color like weak milk. Its face was still damp with perspiration, but its breathing was easier.It no longer breathed in those weak, whistling gasps. . . . (S290) He walked quietly up the drive, beginning to smell the honeysucklefrom the fence. The house was dark, still, as though it were marooned in space by the ebb of all time. (S 332) Just as they began to descend the hill he looked back at the gaunt ruin of the house rising above the once-formal cedar grove. The trees were massed and matted now with long abandonment; above thejagged mass the stark shape of the house rose squarely like an imperishable and battered landmark above an extinct world. There wasno light in it.... (SO 26) He spoke a single word, pointing up the lane with a mittened fist which clutched the whip, toward a single light which shown in the dusk. "Home," he said. . . .'7 said, there isyour home." Still the child didn't answer. He had never seen a home, so there was nothingfor him tosay about it. (LA 505) The house squatted in the moonlight, dark, profound, a little treacherous. It was as though in the moonlight the house had acquiredpersonality: threatful, deceptive. (LA 524) Before him the house bulked square and huge from its mass of trees. There was a light in one window upstairs. The shades were not drawn and he could see that the light was a kerosene lamp, and now and then he saw through the window the shadow of a moving person cross thefurther wall. But he never saw theperson at all.(LA 567) 24 Children of the Dark House As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light...