This short story requires reader’s cooperation and imagination as it only can be acknowledged partially because it is narrated by a child who is naïve and is not yet capable of understanding the world properly and therefore is unreliable.

narration

behaviour

stream of consciousness

adoring uncle

not questioning things

perception

his thinking

describing circumstances but not understanding it

How he perceives it not what happened

and...and...and

complicated sentences

unlogical perception of world

offering Lizzie money for telling her what present she gets

offering to turn himself in if she pays him

corrupted by him

he pays him to unsee things

pays him for covering him while with women

presenting mother's and father's opinion

reader can choose side as he doesn't pick one but is obvious who is right

mama said grandpa wont get present, period

depends on our interpretation

unintentionally turns him in

some things arent important for him to notice

hints

you dont say to people what you father is doing

I gave you money so shut up

blackmailing

otherwise he finds someone else

manipulation

georgie helps him bacause of the profit and not understanding how uncle gets the money or what he is doing

not mentioning the main event because he doesnt get that its important

money obsession

being bribed by uncle Rodney

always thinking about how to make a profit

aunt Louisa coming the day they should leave doesnt seem strange, he thinks she came to help them with present for grandpa, they didnt want to talk about such important matter in front of "the nigger" and georgie thinks its the present for grandpa

for example when aunt Louisa comes, he thinks she came to help with present for grandpa

for example page 5 - starting paragraphs with not going on the train and ending with sheriff and not telling grandpa, through papas clothes, crying of women and events of last night and then some direct speech and again a long paragraph - aunt begging sheriff to drinking through bonds and not saying it in front of gerogie

tonic = alcohol

women crying in the hack, suddenly georgie seeng mottstown and changing topic and asking about fireworks and thinking about holly wreaths

not thinkings about uncle rodney missing but about not getting money

helping him escape and not telling parents (for money obviously) -> not understanding why it is so important to keep him locked

lying to a man with badge again for uncle -> not understanding who he is

being influenced by rossie he eventually starts thinking about a present for him and also for reward he gets for it -> money

seeing events but not understanding them

woman caught by the man and being silenced, yet georgie doesnt think of it as kidnapping but it is what it is, he spills the beans because he was ttold to do so

telling grandpa he wanted to buy him a gift but couldnt and earning money from him for effort

seeing man carrying a window blind with something, he thinking it was the jewelry yet missing it is a dead body

and before he mistaken fireworks with shooting

in the end he is excited by a simple possum not knowing what he was sort of witness of

p 1

listening to adults, hearing exactly what they talk about but not seeing the meaning p 11

saying the important things without realizing see perception

secondary sources

A companion to american short story

reading faulkner: collected stories

seven-year-old narrator

it is not narrated retrospectively with evaluation of the events

"undestands virtually nothing that goes on around him"

he thinks he is doing business with his uncle but in fact he is hired to watch out for the husband of a woman with whom he has an affair

when his mother and aunt are weeping that their brother left with family fortune, he describes it as fact, common event, nothing special

he doesnt recognize that the object at the end is his dead uncle

he doesnt know his uncle is engaged with many women and that he stole family fortune

the innocent narration also covers the dark sides of the story

he only thinks about the many

mistakens the gunfire with fireworks

for the boy it is a story about his uncle whom he admires and loves X for his relatives it is about fraud, theft and murder

it is on the adult reader to connect the things behind childs narration, understanding things that the child cant

correcting perspective

it workd on the function of point of view without which the story wiuld be fundamentally different

the primary effect rises from the limited perspective of narrator

georgie is greedy and megalomaniacal

initiation story -putting protagonist through something he has never experienced before -- child in contact with sex, violence, death, but the initiation is supressed by the action

georgie is a great observer but is blind to the facts

he helps a husband to catch rodney into trap without realizing it, and is unaware that he died

naive througout the whole story

paralels between uncle and nephew, and paralels between faulkners other works

Georgies unique interpretation makes the story comic, but the events arent amusing at all

the story and the narrator cause very complex reactions

humour coming from georgie being accomplice to uncle rodney - seducing married women and relieving them of their money and jewelry

georgie missing moral guideposts

doing business with mrs tucker being an euphemism for his sexual affairs that georgie unwittingly helps with

mama and papas argument about helping rodney who stole money and gerogie father helped to cover it

Rodney spending more money than he earns

remember the nigger - racial ideology because niggas already know

but they couldnt fool uncle rodney - overestimating uncle, adoring him, if only he told everyone

rodneys body in the window blind