After three sections narrated from inside a Compson's head, the final chapter steps back. Faulkner shifts to a third-person perspective and centers much of the action on Dilsey, the family's Black servant, on Easter Sunday 1928. Students who have finally gotten used to the fractured style suddenly face something that reads more conventionally, and their essays reflect that jolt.

Essays on this section tend to fall into two groups. Some treat it as a tidy resolution, a hopeful ending that redeems the family's collapse. Others dismiss it as an afterthought, a short coda to the real story of the Compson brothers.

Both readings can be defended, and neither is complete without evidence. The best papers are the ones that take the section seriously as an argument about endurance, faith, and what the Compsons lack.

Grading them well means knowing what a thoughtful engagement looks like and giving students room to disagree with your own view of the ending.

What strong essays on this section tend to do

They treat Dilsey as a character with her own interior life and moral weight, not as a symbol or a backdrop. They pay attention to the church service and the sermon, and they connect those scenes to the novel's larger concern with time and loss. They also explain what changes when the narration moves outside a single mind.

• Analyzes the shift in narration and what it reveals that the earlier sections could not
• Discusses the Easter service and sermon with specific references to the scene
• Considers Dilsey's endurance in contrast to the family's decay
• Addresses how the kitchen clock and the theme of time appear again here
• Supports a clear position on whether the ending offers hope, and how much

Avoid grading the conclusion instead of the argument

It is easy to reward papers that share your interpretation. A better standard is whether the student defended their reading with the text. A student who argues that the ending is bleak, pointing to Benjy's final scene and the repeating patterns of the family, deserves credit if the evidence holds.

Writing your rubric around reasoning and evidence, not a preferred outcome, keeps your grading fair and encourages more independent thinking.

Handle sensitive material thoughtfully

This section involves race, class, and religion in ways that call for care. Students may write clumsily about Dilsey and the Black characters in the novel, and feedback should address that directly and respectfully. Pointing out where a claim relies on a stereotype, and asking for textual support instead, usually works better than a general warning.

It also helps to make clear in advance that analysis is expected to engage with the historical setting rather than avoid it.

Making time for the papers that need it

Essays on this section can be surprisingly uneven, and the standout ones deserve real attention. Using a rubric-based tool like GraideMind to handle first-pass scoring on evidence and structure gives you more time to respond in depth to the students who wrestle with the hardest questions.

That combination tends to produce feedback students remember, since it engages with what they actually argued about a difficult ending.