Books - Go Down, Moses

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	Books - Go Down, Moses

Go Down, Moses is an episodic novel, by William Faulkner, consisting of seven short stories. The most prominent character and unifying voice is that of Isaac McCaslin, "Uncle Ike", who will live to be an old man; "uncle to half a county and father to no one.(3)"

Although originally published in 1942 as Go Down, Moses and Other Stories, Go Down, Moses is not a collection of stories but a unified, though seemingly fragmented, novel. It spans more than a century in the history of the McCaslin family, viewing their hardships and triumphs by examining their daily lives. Its plantation and the fictional Yoknapatawpha County are in Mississippi. It deals with such issues as slavery and race, the relationship between man and nature, the vanishing wilderness, stewardship versus ownership of land, and property and inheritance.

The title refers to the spiritual "Go Down Moses", which draws a comparison between the enslavement of blacks in America and the Jews in Egypt.

It contains one of Faulkner's most famous short stories, "The Bear".

The stories

"Was"

This story takes place in the childhood of McCaslin Edmonds, who is simply referred to as "the boy" and is understood to be the object of all masculine pronouns. The year is about 1859. "Cass" lives with his uncles Theophilus and Amodeus McCaslin, called "Uncle Buck" and "Uncle Buddy" respectively by most of the characters in the book. The story opens with the news that that Tomey's Turl, a slave on the McCaslin plantation, has run away. But this is not the first time this has happened and Uncle Buck and Buddy know where he always goes, to Hubert Beauchamp's neighboring plantation to see his love, a slave girl named Tennie. Beauchamp himself has an unmarried sister, Sophonsiba, who seems romantically interested in Buck. Forced to stay the night to look for Tomey's Turl, Buck and Cass accidentally enter Sophonsiba's room, thinking it to be their room. This situation is exploited by Hubert who tries to pressure Buck into marrying Sophonsiba. Buck does not agree to Hubert's exploitive interpretation of events. Buck, Buddy and Hubert settle both their situation and that of Tomey's Turl by tying them to the outcome of a poker match. If Buck loses, he is to marry Sophonsiba and must agree to buy the slave girl Tennie so Turl will stop running away to see her. Buck loses, but coaxes Hubert into allowing another game, Hubert against Buddy, to determine the marriage and property issues. The stakes are changed many times, but in the end Buddy wins and the McCaslins take Tennie for free.

Uncle Buck and Sophonsiba Beauchamp eventually marry and become the parents of Isaac McCaslin, the central character who serves to unify most of the stories in the novel.

"Was" serves to introduce the reader into the practices and mentality of the antebellum South. Where Tomey's Turl is first introduced, he seems to be referred to more as an animal, such as a horse, than a person. When Hubert and Buck are taking bets on where Tomey's Turl will show up, the reader further sees how far removed from human the slaves are in the eyes of the owners. Additionally, it is possible Faulkner intends for the entrapping of Buck into marriage with Sophonsiba to be analogous to slavery, although Buck seems to accept it silently.

"The Fire and the Hearth"

Many generations later Lucas Beauchamp, the son of Tomey's Turl and Tennie, lives and works on the McCaslin plantation, now owned by Carothers "Roth" Edmonds, the grandson of McCaslin Edmonds (who is Isaac's elder cousin). Lucas discovers a gold coin on the land and becomes convinced of a large hidden treasure. Also, Lucas's daughter is being pursued, in spite of Lucas' wishes, for marriage by a poor black man George Wilkens. Lucas and George both distill liquor illegally and Lucas decides to prevent Wilkens' marriage to his daughter by telling Roth, since the liquor is being made on Roth's land. Roth calls the authorities, but they arrive just as Wilkens has put large jugs of whiskey on Lucas's porch. While Lucas's daughter cannot testify against him due to kinship, George Wilkens can. Consequently, Lucas is forced into allowing the marriage between Wilkens and his daughter to prevent Wilkens from having to testify against him. Lucas returns to the plantation, and cons a salesman out of a metal detector to search for the treasure he adamantly believes exists. The search becomes an obsession and Lucas's wife asks Roth for a divorce. Lucas initially agrees to the divorce, but recants at the last moment, deciding that he's too old. The treasure isn't meant for him to find.

Here, Faulkner explicates the nature of the relationship between the black and white sides of the McCaslin family tree. One recurring theme seems to the be the historical irony in the distribution of land, power, and surname: The Beauchamp name is taken by the black side of the McCaslin family, even though it is the side to descend through male blood, while the white descendants of Lucius Quitus Carothers McCaslin, the matriarch of the family, inherit his land and wealth notwithstanding their lineage coming from the patriarch's daughter. Lucas makes much of this difference as well as the fact that he is two generations closer to McCaslin than Roth, perhaps believing himself to somehow be of nobler blood and/or feeling that his descendence deserves more of McCaslin's original legacy.

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