Both short stories also contain an estrangement of place -- neither young man can seem to find a home in either the North or South. At the beginning Faulkner's tale, Samuel is utterly lost to the South. He does not sound like a Southerner to the census taker at the beginning of the tale, and his clothing suggests a Northern dandy. (Faulkner 351) Later, Samuel's grandmother Mollie's insists that her grandson has been sold into Egypt, like a Israelite slave from the Old Testament, as if the North were more of a place of bondage than the divided South. At "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" the end of the sorry tale may seem to give the reader some higher hope, as it ends on a theme of flight from the South. The protagonist makes a decision to flee the area he has been bound to, as a result...
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