Intruder in the Dust Essay Example

out what caliber of bullet killed him. The gun that Lucas owned was a Colt .

41 and Charles knew he needed to help him. In chapter eight, after the bodies of Vinson Gowrie and Jake Montgomery had been found, the sheriff concluded that Lucas’s gun was not the one that shot Vinson. Mr. Gowrie then asks, “’What is it killed Vinson, Shurf? ’ ‘A German Luger automatic, Mr.Gowrie,’ the sheriff said.

‘Like the one Buddy McCallum brought home from France in 1919 and traded that summer for a pair of fox hounds. ’” Though Charles may not understand why he holds this respect for Lucas, he knew what was right and what was wrong. The acts of the young boy towards an older man of a different race were an unlikely bond that was the beginning of change in the South. Along with the main friendship that came about in William Faulkner’s novel, there were also a few smaller ones that may not have seen as apparent.Miss Eunice Habersham is introduced to the reader in chapter four when she decides she wants to help Charles dig up the grave of Vinson Gowrie for the sake of Lucas Beauchamp.

The idea of a white woman standing up for a black man during this time period was quite frowned upon. Nevertheless, Miss Habersham knew she had to help free Lucas. Her reasoning for helping Charles all went back to Lucas’s deceased wife Molly Beauchamp. Miss Habersham and Molly were born within a few weeks of each other and were raised by the same woman even though they differed in skin color.The two women had “grown up

together almost inextricably like sisters, like twins, sleeping in the same room, the white girl in the bed, the Negro girl on a cot at the foot of it almost until Molly and Lucas married, and Miss Habersham had stood up in the Negro church as godmother to Molly’s first child.

” Along with helping Charles dig up the grave Miss Habersham later put herself into danger a second time by standing guard outside the prison to protect Lucas who wasn’t even inside the building anymore.The third improbable friendship in Intruder in the Dust was that of Charles Mallison and Aleck Sander. Much like Miss Habersham and Molly Beauchamp, the two boys were born a few months apart and were raised on the same property. Charles included Alec Sander in everything he did from hunting rabbits in chapter one to confiscating dead bodies in chapter four.

Without Aleck Sander’s sense of sight the night he, Charles, and Miss Habersham went to dig up the grave, the three of them might have been caught.The friendships shown by William Faulkner in Intruder in the Dust, defied the standards that were meant to be used between blacks and whites during this time period. It was the beginning of the civil rights movement and the South was undergoing a change. Charles Mallison, Lucas Beauchamp, Miss Habersham, Molly Beauchamp, and Aleck Sander were all a solution to the typical problems those of differing races faced between one another.