That Evening Sun Section 5 Summary

  • Mr. Jason enters Nancy's house. She asks Jason to tell him that the kids want her to come over to their home, but the little brat tells his father that Caddy made them go to Nancy's.
  • Father ignores Jason and gets into an argument with Nancy over whether Jesus is nearby. She says he's in the ditch, waiting, and that she received a sign from a hogbone by the lamp telling her so. Mr. Jason keeps calling her belief nonsense.
  • Mr. Jason tells Nancy to simply go to Aunt Rachel's. She says it won't do any good to put off the inevitable, or to put off the fate that is hers. Meanwhile Caddy asks questions, trying to decipher the conversation, but gets ignored; the young Jason complains that his sister made him go to Nancy's. Quentin is quiet as ever.
  • Father tells the children they must go to bed and recommends Nancy do the same. She says she's scared of the dark and begins wailing again.
  • Now we have what critics sometimes call the Lovelady digression—digression as in tangent. Nancy says she has her burial insurance prepared with Mr. Lovelady. In an abrupt zoom-ahead to the adult perspective of the fifteen-years-older narrator, rather than his portrayal of his child perspective, Quentin tells us that Mr. Lovelady collected money for "Negro insurance," and that once his wife committed suicide. Mr. Lovelady went away with his daughter, and then returned without her. What does this have to do with anything? Good question—that's why it's called a digression. Check out the million-dollar questions if you want to make a guess.
  • Father promises Nancy she'll be fine, but she says, basically, that only the Lord knows that.