Point of View

Intruder in the Dust is written in the third person. The entire story is seen through the eyes of the young man, Charles Mallison. This is a limited third person in that the narrator is confined to this single character.

This novel is also written in a stream-of-consciousness style. "Stream of consciousness" is writing that jumps from the character's thoughts to his dreams to his perceptions in a seemingly disorganized way. This kind of writing can be difficult to comprehend because there is often minimal punctuation. Intruder in the Dust contains page after page of Charles's thoughts, sometimes jumping in time, while others jump from one conclusion to another.

Setting

This novel is set in Mississippi in 1948 at the beginning of the civil rights movement. The racial climate of the time period is very important to the plot of the novel. Had this novel taken place...