"It's all now you see. Yesterday wont be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two oclock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance …Maybe this time all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago." (Chapter 9)

Basic Set Up:

Gavin Stevens, a character in Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, reflects on the famous Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863, one of the defining battles of the Civil War.

In this passage, we get a sense of just how important the Civil War is to Southern identity: "For every Southern boy fourteen years old…there is the instant when it's still not yet two oclock on that July afternoon in 1863." Faulkner is referring to the Battle of Gettysburg here, and specifically to the way in which that battle continues to live on in the minds of Southern boys long after the War itself was lost.

As the narrator states, "Yesterday wont be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago." The point seems to be that it's harder to forget a war when you've lost it, and that's one reason why history can be such a huge deal in the South, long after the events have ended.

The language of this passage is forceful and poetic. The sentences are super long, as if the Civil War is rushing down on us from the past. Well, according to the narrator, that's exactly what it's doing.

The language is powerful here because Faulkner is trying to convey something of the power and magnitude of the Civil War in the Southern imagination. We readers can't escape the onrush of those long sentences, just like the South can't escape the onrush of the War.