"Intruder in the Dust" and the Question of Genre

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,3, University of Stuttgart (Department of Literary Studies: English Literature), course: Hauptseminar: William Faulkner, language: English, abstract: The novel "Intruder in the Dust" was written by the American author William Faulkner. The story covers the topics of life in the South, racial injustice and the problems the South was facing. The setting is the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, more precisely the town of Jefferson. Charles Mallison, a 16-year-old boy, is the narrator who tells the story of the black farmer, Lucas Beauchamp, wrongly arrested for the murder of a white man, named Vinson Gowrie. Lucas is exonerated through the efforts of the white teenager.
Charles Mallison, together with the black friend and family servant, Aleck Sander, as well as Miss Eunice Habersham, a lady of seventy , secretly drives out to the grave of Vinson Gowrie and digs him up. At the open grave they find out that the murdered person in the grave is not Vinson Gowrie but a man called Jake Montgomery. After this discovery they call Charles Mallison's uncle, Gavin Stevens, for help. The lawyer, Gavin Stevens, and the sheriff, Hope Hampton, manage to arrest the true murderer Crawford Gowrie by using Lucas Beauchamp as a kind of "bait".
After arresting Gowrie in the local jail, he commits suicide in his cell. Crawford Gowrie was stealing lumber from his uncle and from his brother Vinson. He wanted to conceal this and therefore killed his brother Vinson. During the whole story, Lucas Beauchamp never tries to convince people from his innocence by explaining what happened, he simply wants them to see for themselves, as he knows that no white man would believe a black man.