Dilsey says these words during the Easter
church service in the final section of the novel, just after she
learns that Miss Quentin has left. Dilsey’s comment reveals her
insight into the Compson family tragedy and her ability to see it
in the context of a greater cycle. Dilsey has been present since
the beginning, when the Compson children were only babies, and she
is still here at the end, the culmination of the family’s disintegration.
In this sense, Dilsey represents a constant in the novel. She has
maintained the pure Southern values of faith, love, and family that
the Compsons have long abandoned. Dilsey endures the test of time,
surviving because she has conviction and faith in her own vision
of eternity that is completely free of worldliness or petty human
concerns. Dilsey has no preoccupation with time because she has
faith in a spiritual eternity, which enables her to see the tragedies
of the Compson family with perspective and distance. Her acceptance
of the passage of time makes her a calming and comforting presence.
Dilsey accepts that she, like the Compson family, has a beginning
and an end. She uses the time she is given to do as much good as
she can, rather than wasting it on obsessions with the past.