Jason (father)

Readers of The Sound and the Fury, published 17 months before "That Evening Sun," know that Jason Compson is the heir of one of Jefferson's founding families, which suffers financial hardship and general decline over the course of his lifetime. In this story he is still a young man, and he seems less fatalistic than in the earlier novel, or in Absalom, Absalom!, published five years after the story. He shows more concern for Nancy's situation than his wife does, and one senses that he would do more to help Nancy if it weren't for her. Still, he is dismissive of Nancy's concerns about Jesus and treats her like a child. At one point in the story he sends Caddy to deliver his message to Nancy to "go home and lock the door, and you'll be all right" (299). Jason's youngest son is also named Jason, which here echoes the way Faulkner plays with the two "Jesus"s in the text; Quentin says you can tell which "Jason" his mother means "by the way she says the name" (294). (In the still later "Appendix" to The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner named two other Compsons "Jason," making the father and son in the story III and IV in the family genealogy.)