[Set This House on Fire is] an ambiguous novel of outrage, one that also happens to be artistically flawed…. [It] treats, in distraught and melodramatic fashion, the regeneration of Cass Kinsolving. The regeneration of Cass, bumbling, guilt-ridden drunkard that he is, dates from his murder of a degenerate rapist, Mason Flagg. We move in a foggy world which the narrator describes as "a grotesque fantasy of events lacking sequence and order …". We are witness to the degradation of Cass at the hands of Flagg who forces him to paint pornographic pictures, to perform before an audience as a seal, and to sing bawdy songs on all fours. Flagg violates Cass's dignity, and to make doubly sure he rapes Cass's beloved Francesca. Violence, however, begets violence; Cass breaks open Flagg's skull with a stone. But the murder, although it may be of questionable justice, proves to be a redemptive...