Like clockwork.

Everything about this story has a repetitious almost rhythmic feel about it. When Sartoris begins to describe his father, he describes him as “harshly cut form tin”. This makes him seem more like a robot than like that of a man. Importantly, at the beginning of the story a clock is mentioned that is taken with them everywhere that they go even though it does not work. The story makes allusions to Abner being just like that clock. Several times Abner is described with the term cold; this is often used to describe someone that is emotionless, unforgiving, or lacking compassion. Abner is related to time itself in that situation, in the sense that he, like time, is unforgiving and uncompassionate. Abner’s hurt foot is like the clock’s inability to tick. Both of these are important wounds to their respective bearers. These wounds are representations of their owner’s inability to progress; the clock cannot move forward to tell time, while Abner’s foot is a symbol of his inability to run from his problems and his inability to move forward. The hurt foot is also a link to his past. As a confederate “soldier” he was shot in the heel after stealing a horse. With his hurt foot he cannot escape this past and will forever be unable to move on from the time before the end of the civil war. In the end his deficiency was the end of him, he was unable to adapt so he was decommissioned.

His deficiencies play into his hatred for the upper-class, as he cannot move forward and he sees them as enemies. He is stuck as a minute-hand on a clock, forever stuck in a past time amidst a time that no longer has a place for the likes of him.