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William Faulkner’s novel Intruder in the Dust is an invitation to reflect on the “value gap” between white lives and black lives in the South of the United States where lynching was considered “normal”. A black man, Lucas Beauchamp, is believed to be guilty of murdering a white man. But Charles Mallison, black Aleck Sander, sixteen years old, and Miss Habersham investigate the crime in a cemetery at night to prove Lucas’s innocence. Charles, terrified by the “monstrous face” of the crowd that has come to lynch Lucas, feels shame towards his people. According to Faulkner, his conversion prefigures that of the Southern Whites to a justice that would go beyond slavery and racism. But defending essential values would require firm politics, an effective judicial system and thinking that encompasses diversity (Baldwin, Glissant, King).