| Political Science 230
Dr. Schaefer
Political Thought in Literature Some key points to consider in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses: The book's title: Comes from an old Negro spiritual, "Go Down, Moses, 'way down in Egypt land; Tell Pharaoh … let my people go!" (Part of it is sung in the title story, last chapter of the book). Why did Faulkner choose this story? (The spiritual of course is comparing the enslavement of blacks in America to that which the Jews endured in Egypt. Each chapter in the book explores some aspect of the legacy of slavery for the South - and for America as a whole, perhaps?). "Was": Set off from the rest of the book: not numbered as a chapter. Takes place in 1859. "Was" because (1) it depicts events that took place before the birth of any character who appears in the remaining chapters; (2) it's the only chapter depicting events prior to the Civil War and emancipation; i.e., it takes place while slavery still exists; (3) it's mediated BOTH by the memory of Cass, a boy through whose only partly comprehending eyes we witness the events it depicts, AND by that of Ike, to whom Cass told it. Nature of the McCaslin household: Buck/Buddy are bachelor twins, live like boys who never grew up (fox/ hounds chase around the house, only one necktie between them). As we learn in "The Bear": as soon as their father died, they freed the slaves at least in title (couldn't literally have freed slaves in the Deep South by that time), moved them into the big house, themselves moving into a cabin they built for themselves on the plantation; "sealing" the slaves into the big house with a single nail each evening, actually allowing them to roam free (250-51). Evidently Buck - who married Sophonsiba and became Ike's father after the Civil War - was unwilling to marry/ pass on any legacy so long as the institution of slavery remained. The "hunt" for Tomey's Turl a comical imitation of a slave hunt. The whole event only dimly comprehended by Cass, who's too young to understand the force of erotic passion that drives Tomey's Turl to the Beauchamps. Hubert Beauchamp unwilling to resolve the issue by purchasing Tomey's Turl because he doesn't want "damned half-white McCaslin" (who by virtue of being Carothers McCaslin's son exhibits the injustice/ arbitrariness of the slave system) on his plantation. Outcome of the story given on p. 259: as result of Buddy's "winning" Tennie Beauchamp in card game with Hubert, Tennie was married to Tomey's Turl in 1859. "Fire and the Hearth": Takes place in the 1940's. Why its title? Significance of the "hearth": center of the home/ family. In Greek antiquity and among other premodern peoples, the center of (family-based) piety. That's what Molly upholds in the story; it's on account of her piety - a mixture of Biblical and black folk religion - that she seeks a divorce rather than have her family's/ daughter's souls tainted by Lucas's money-hunting. (In the traditions of various premodern peoples, mining was regarded as impious/ sinful because it was equivalent to "raping" your mother, Nature. Cf. p. 311, the earth as Ike's mother.) Why does Lucas seek wealth since he already has, by his acknowledgment, more money than he'll ever need? His quest for INDEPENDENCE. Compare HIS misunderstanding of freedom with that of Sam Fathers and of IKE (p. 285 VERSUS his later realization at p. 269) and of Sibby (black Sophonsiba) and her husband (267-8). And recall the white Sophosiba's saying to Buck in "Was," I guess you haven't yet the woman who would make your freedom a small price to pay (11). Lucas's pride - in his tools (42, 47); his forebears (43); concern for independence (105); disparaging view of what he sees as the decline of the McCaslins from ruthless Carothers to Zack to Roth Edmunds. How his pride led him to try to kill Roth (51-6)? Roth's pride: "the CURSE of his fathers, the old haughty ancestral pride based on an accident of geography," stemming "from wrong & shame," cauasing him to break as a child with his black "foster brother" (Lucas and Molly's son Henry) (107-10). (CONTRAST Isaac McCaslin's pride in "The Bear," always linked with "humility.") "Pantaloon in Black" ("Pantaloon" the foolish old man in Italian commedia dell'arte; butt of clown's jokes in modern pantomime.) The story least connected to the others; the only personal connection is that Rider is Lucas's nephew. Setting contemporaneous with "Fire & Hearth." (And note the comparable significance of the hearth in both stories.) Rider, whose story seems akin to that of a tragic hero in a classical epic (the wrath of Achilles), seems a mere clown to the deputy, who doesn't understand what motivates him/ judges only the outside appearance of his behavior and ridicules it because it doesn't conform to his expectation of how a man in Rider's situation should act. The lack of meaningful communication between blacks and whites is mirrored by the lack of communication between deputy and his wife (who isn't interested in the story and just wants to leave for the movies). (Cf. p. 43, mutual contempt felt by Lucas/ sheriff for one another, without the latter realizing his feeling is reciprocated.) Note Rider's rejection of the Christian religious consolation offered by his aunt. Does this prefigure the "natural" religion offered as an alternative to Christianity by Sam Fathers in "The Old People"? "The Old People": Takes place c. 1878 (since Ike is 12, p. 158). Provides the background for "The Bear"; depicts the relationship among what Tocqueville, in the last chapter of Volume I of Democracy in America, calls "The Three Races in America" (cf. pp. 276-7). Ike is initiated into the "religion" of the hunt/ the wilderness, the latter subsequently called his "college" (201). End of the story - Sam addresses the great buck as "Chief"/ "Grandfather," implying metempsychosis (cf. "The Bear," p. 184: the "wild, immortal spirit" drunk by the hunters.) The concluding dialogue between McCaslin (Cass) and Ike provides the rationale for believing such a doctrine. (Evidently Cass had previously been offered the same "education" by Sam as Ike was, but it didn't "take" on Cass as it did on Ike - though it evidently had an effect.) Sam's Indian surname means "had two fathers"; his "biological" father was the Indian chief Ikkemotubbe, his mother the quadroon slave woman purchased by Ikkemotubbe and subsequently sold (along with the slave to whom he married her and her child Sam) to Carothers McCaslin (160). Ikkemotubbe ruthlessly made himself chief, "The Man," by poisoning his nephew, son of the old chief, and then a puppy in the chief's presence: showed himself NO LESS ruthless than Carothers, who bought the land fr him. ("Doom" < "Du homme," what Ikkemotubbe's French companion called him - like "you the man!" today. Cf. p. 190.) Cf. 236 on Sam: "wild man not even one generation from the woods, childless, kinles, peopleless." Also p. 206 (in italaics). "The Bear": Takes place over more than a decade c. 1876-1887. (Ike is 10 at p. 187; 16 at p. 183; 21 at p. 243). What Ike learned in the wilderness: linkage of humility and pride (p. 184 etc.); renunciation of private property. From the 16-year-old Ike's perspective, "only Sam and Old Ben and the mongrel Lion were taintless and incorruptible" (183). He thinks it's foolish to believe he could "own" any part of the wilderness (103). Yet it's "doomed" (185; recall Ikkemotubbe being called "Doom"). Old Ben (and the wilderness itself?) an "anachronism" (185). Men feared it "because it was wilderness" (185): is this a metaphorical as well as a physical fear? (Cf. 192, Ike's sense of "his own fragility and impotence against the timeless woods.") Ike thinks the bear, "widowered, childless" [as IKE will be by "Delta Autumn"], was "absolved of mortality" (186, 195). As a boy who hasn't yet participated in the hunt, he doesn't think the hunters intend to kill the bear, since they never have done so (186; compare his realization at 192. Cf. McCaslin's recitation of Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to Ike later in the story.) Ike, at least, "would never fire at it," 194, though cf. 204. At 216, said not to hate or fear Lion because recognizes "fatality" to Ben's being killed, "the last act on a set stage"; won't grieve but rather would be "humble and proud that he had been found worthy to be a part of it," 217.) Ike at age 10 thought he was "witnessing his own birth," having "experienced" the wilderness even before going there (187). (Cf. Old Ben as his "own ungendered progenitor," p. 202; Lucas seeking to make self "selfprogenitive," 269; and Carothers McCaslin, Sam Fathers.) Ben is "the man" (190; what Ikkemotubbe called himself). Has already "dedicated" his life to the wilderness "with patience and humility" (191; cf. 223). The only thing that distinguishes him from the bear: his "thin clear quenchless lucidity" (198). The bitch's bravery compared by Sam to human bravery (190-1), motivated by the need to "keep calling herself a dog" as a man needs to live up to his claims. Is courage identical with lack of judgment (229)? Ike's metaphorical fear of being "lost forever" (200). A "fyce" (203) = a small dog used by blacks for tracking. (Cf. "Was.") De Spain: by attacking his colt and "out of season," Ben "has broken the rules" (205): there are "rules" for the battle between men and bear - how are they known? How "men rationalise from and act upon their misconceptions" (206). Does this ring true with particular characters/ events in "The Bear"? 208: Lion is "the dog" (compare Ikkemotubbe as "the man," earlier?) Lion (211) - like Ben (190) - "don’t care about nothing or nobody"; "loved no man and no thing"; dominated by "the will and desire to pursue and kill" and endure in that pursuit "beyond all imaginable limits of flesh" (227). "Sam was the chief, the prince; Boon, the pleibeian, his huntsman" (213). After failing to kill Ben, Boon thinks he "aint fit to sleep with" Lion (216). Boon's particular virtue/ vice (218). Later, won't let self be treated by doctor until after Lion was seen to (235). As "head bear," Ben "had earned a name such as a human man could have worn"/ not been ashamed of (221; cf. Carothers McCaslin's endeavor to "perpetuate his name," 245. Old Ben's winning a name seems to signify the legitimacy of a human being's seeking to win/ perpetuate a name). Already as a boy, Ike seems never to have thought of anything he wanted that could be purchased with money (222). He'll never lose the "lift of the heart" from "hunting and pursuit," "the best of all breathing, the humility and pride" (223). During the Civil War, Ike's father Buck - despite his opposition to slavery - served as a soldier in Colonel Sartoris's cavalry regiment; boldly walked into the lobby of Memphis hotel where Yankee officers sat (224). (Major de Spain had led an armed party some of whom were not even armed during the "last darkening days of '64 and '65," end of the Civil War, p. 226.) The value of education: ironic to hear it praised from Boon, "where would I be if I hadn't never went to school?" (239); vs. Gen. Compson's deprecating formal schooling: "Sartorises and Edmondses invented farms and banks to keep yourselves from having to find out" what Ike "was born knowing and fearing too but without being afraid" (240). Sec. 4, p. 243ff.: Ike's renunciation of his heritage (the McCaslin estate), bought by Carothers McCaslin from the Indians, then "tamed" so he had believed through the labor of his slaves who cleared the forest (243); "knowing better" raised his children/ heirs "to believe the land was his to hold/ bequeath," whereas Ikkemotubbe, who sold him the land, knew that it was never "his to relinquish or sell." Blacks still "in thrall” after legal emancipation; would not be fully free for "another hundred years" after 1865. Aside from thralldom as sharecroppers, were figuratively "enslaved" in part to white men who sold them products designed to make them resemble the race which had enslaved them (244). Dialogue between Ike and McCaslin (Cass) records McCaslin's unsuccessful effort to dissuade Ike from repudiating the estate (245ff.). McCaslin asks, how can you relinquish the land that your grandfather bought/ cleared/ "translated into sometehing to bequeath … worthy of bequeathment … and to perpetuate his name and accom;lishments"? (Ike's title to the land stronger as descendant from Carothers through the male line, and one generation closer to Carothers than McCaslin (Cass) is.) Ike's response: "It was never mine to repudiate," never was Carothers McCaslin's to bequeath or Ikkemotubbe's to sell. The Bible teaches created man "to be His overseer" on earth, not "to hold for himself and his descendants" (245-6). McCaslin (Cass): But Grandfather did own it, "and not the first" since "man was dispossessed of Eden." God either "condoned" the history of human ownership/ transfer of the land or else looked on helplessly, "perverse, impotent, or blind" (247). Ike: God DIDN'T condone, nor was he impotent. He "used a simple egg" (Columbus) to show men "a new world where a nation of people could be founded in humility and pity and sufferance and pride." Grandfather owned the land only because "He permitted it." Maybe God "asaw that only by voiding the land for a time of Ikkemotubbe's blood and substituting another blood could He accomlish his purpose";l "maybe it was more than justice that only the white man's blood was available to raise the white man's curse." "Maybe He saw in Grandfather the seed progenitive of the three generations it would take to ste at least some of His lowly people [blacks] free" (247-8). Pp. 252-262: excerpts from the plantation ledgers kept by Buck/ Buddy. Only slave they ever bought, Percival Brownlee, was incompetent for any sort of labor, yet refused to leave (252-4). Other slaves similarly refused to leave (254). 255: Record of purchase of slave Eunice, who drowned self Christmas 1832, 6 months before her daughter Tomasina (Tomey) died giving birth to Tomey's Turl. Turl listed as son of Thucydus but was really Carothers McCaslin's son; hence the "thousand-dollar legacy" Carothers left him, "cheaper than saying My son to a nigger" (257-8). At first the 16-year-old Ike thinks that Turl was the product of Carothers's incest; but it seems only that Eunice had previously been Carothers's "mistress" previously, Tomey being her daughter by her black husband Thucydus (259). Through "Tennie's perseverance and the … diluted ghost of [her grandfather] old Carothers' ruthlessness at last conquered even starvation" to have a child who survived (260). (Her son, James, b. 1864, fled to Tennessee on the night of his 21st birthday; Isaac unable to track him sufficiently to give him his third of Carothers's $1,000 legacy bequeathed to Tomey's Turl, 261.) 262-8: The story of the marriage of Turl/ Tennie's daughter Sophonsiba to a free black "from the North" who had inherited an Arkansas farm for his service in the Union army. When Ike tracks them down so as to give Sophonsiba her share of the legacy, finds the cabin they're living in a "rubble of dissolution" on an untended farm; the husband reading a book through "lensless spectacles," claiming he's living in "a new era of freedom and equality" (comparable to a story told by Booker T. Washington to illustrate the folly of blacks' pursuing academic learning when they should first be achieving economic self-sufficiency and hence respect). To Ike's query "Freedom from what? From work?" the man responds, "I have a pension" (267). Sibby: "I'm free" (268). As Ike later learned, "no man is ever free and probably could not bear it if he were" (269). Ike's continued endeavor to vindicate God's ways to Cass: God "just waited because he had made" men, having "seen how in individual cases they were capable of anything" but "He must admit them or else admit His equal somewhere" and therefore "must accept responsibility for what He Himself had done." God saw that men were "all Grandfather" (Carothers McCaslin) and "the very best He could expect … would be bucks and Buddies." Like his namesake Isaac was born in his father's old age; but he repudiated "immolation" (by declining the estate?) because "maybe this time the exasperated Hand might not supply the kid" (as God supplied Abraham with a substitute sacrifice for Isaac) (270-71). Ike: one day God said "This is enough," having seen the misuse men made of the South "for which He had done so much" and finding no hope "beyond it where hope should have been," the "hopeful continent" of North America "dedicated as a refuge and sanctuary of liberty and freedom"; instead saw "rich descendants of slavers, females of both sexes" to whom the black was just a "specimen," "passing resolutions about horror and outrage in warm and air-proof halls," "abstractions"/ "mottoes"; manufacturing "for a profit pristine replacements of" the blacks' "shackles and shoddy garments" (cf. 244) (271-2). But on account of John Brown God "turned once more to this land which He still intended to save because he had done so much for it," judging that men "apparently can learn nothing save through suffering" (272-3). Ike's response to McCaslin's denial that God could have "showed his face" to the South, given the chance events that caused it to lose the Civil War: "How else have made them fight?" (274). "Three separate peoples had tried to adjust not only to one another but to the new land which they had created and inherited." Freed blacks misusged freedom "as human beings always misuse freedom," showing the need of "a wisdom beyond even that learned through suffering for a man to distinguish between liberty and license." Confederates had fought "not because they were opposed to freedom as freedom but for the old reasons for which man has always fought … to preserve a status quo or establish a better future one for his children." Northern carpetbaggers who invaded South during Reconstruction were dominated by "fierce will for rapine and pillage" (277). Their descendants "engaged in a fierce economic competition of small sloven farms with the black men they were supposed to have freed and the white descendants of fathers who had owned no slaves anyway" (277); the Ku Klux Klan; the Jews, a "pariah" race, seeking a place for their great-grandchildren (278). 279: The new (post-Emancipation) ledgers: the incompetent Percival Brownlee "found his true niche at last" as a preacher/ later "proprietor of a select New Orleans brothel" (279-80). Ike: blacks "will endure/ outlast us." "Their vices are aped from white men"; inherited "freedom" from their ancestors whereas "we [whites] have never been free"; recalls Old Ben, "ruthless with the fierce pride of liberty and freedom"; the lesson of "humility and pride" Ike had learned from Sam Fathers (282). Cass reads Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to Ike: "She cannot fade …": immortality despite the mortality of all flfesh. "Truth is one, doesn't chage, covers all things which touch the heart - honor, pride, pity, justice, courage, love" (283). Ike: "I am free" (285; but cf. 269). 286: "Sam Fathers set me free." Result: became "uncle to half a country and father to none," living in a "cramped fireless rented room" as a carpenter (287), emulating Jesus' occupation (295). 287ff.: Buck's marriage to Sophonsiba; Sophonsiba chased out her brother Hubert's black mistress from his house (289); Hubert's "legacy" for his nephew Ike turned out to be copper coins and IOU's (293). 297ff.: Ike's marriage; "for a while" he and his wife "were one"; but when he refuses to reclaim his estate, she gives him only one shot (unsuccessful) at the son he always spoke of (300-301). 300: Ike: “We were all born LOST” (= belief in man's inherent sinfulness, which he seems to have lost in "Delta Autumn"). 301: Flashback to two years after the killing of Old Ben (306): As Ike's marriage will be barren, the wilderness he had hunted in is sold by De Spain to be cut down for timber. 311: As a boy in the wilderness, Ike began "to learn how much he did not know" (like Socrates?). 312: On final trip to the wilderness campsite, Ike finds "no trace" of the graves of Lion and Sam; but "there was no death" (312-13). Yet the snake (serpent) he then encounters is "evocative of all knowledge and … of death” (cf. the Garden of Eden). Addresses the snake as "chief/ grandfather" as Sam had the buck? 313: Boon comically claiming the squirrels as his "property." "DELTA AUTUMN": Set in the 1940’s, same era as "Fire and the Hearth": Ike near 80; hunters now travel in cars (320). (In this story, "McCaslin" = Ike.) Name "Will Legate" calls our attention to the "legacy" of the past - i.e., of Ike's foregoing his inheritance? Here Roth Edmonds (the white protagonist in "Fire and Hearth") is shown to have abandoned his black lover and their child - black descendant of the Beauchamps (granddaughter of Tennie's Jim, who'd fled 2 North; cf. 280 - "Tennie's Jim gone, no one knew where"). Includes references to contemporary politics - Legate says "hunting" endangered by Hitler or an American version like "Smith or Jones or Roosevelt or Willkie," seemingly equating some American politicans with Hitlers (322). Ike's reply: U.S. not short of defenders, can "cope with an Austrian paper hanger.” But Legate objects that U.S. already "full of people to tell a man how he can't raise own cotton" (322-3; cf. Roth's complaint about the New Deal earlier). 320: Ike had TAUGHT woodsmanship to SONS of old companions (his only
legacy; in this, imitates HIS teacher Sam Fathers)
329: In discussion of the goodness of human nature, Roth Edmunds maintains men "behave" only because of fear of punishment ("folks watching" with "badge"); Legate says he's "glad I don't have your opinion of folks"; Ike says "There are good folks everywhere at all times; most are; some just unlucky, because most men better than circumstances give them chance to be" [cf. re SLAVERY], and some even overcome adverse circumstances. It's not just the "badge" that makes men act well; "heart" can perceive goodness even if mind can't supply adequate reason to support belief. Human goodness isn't belied by the instinct to hunt, since even if God didn't instill that in us, He knew man would "teach it to self," since men aren't "quite God himself yet" (329-332). (Ike seems to have lost his previous belief in original sin, i.e., that "we're all lost.") Ike believes (332) that men become LIKE God during SEXUAL UNION. God gave men a “chance” though “foreknew [bad] end.” 334: Ike learned from slaying the buck that his life MUSTN’T SHAME the
animal he killed.
335: Camp is now Ike’s “home.” Now widowed. Hunters still most “his kin.” 337: Believes the earth “belonged to no man.” “Humbly/ joy/ pride.” 339: McCaslin (Roth’s son): “tell her No,” give banknotes. 343: Woman claims Ike “spoiled” McCaslin by giving his grandfather (Cass) the land. 344: Roth doesn’t know she’s granddaughter of Tennie’s Jim (who fled North) (hence is related to Roth). Ike: "marry your own race," "that's only salvation for you for a while yet, maybe long while" (346); "maybe in 1,000 or 2,000 yrs in Amer., but not now" (344; cf. McCaslin's "not yet" 2 Sibby's husband, 278). The woman's response: he seems 2 have forgotten about love (346). 347: People will accomplish land’s “revenge” on themselves. "GO DOWN, MOSES": Here Faulkner emphasizes the difference between himself and his protagonist Ike by dramatizing the importance of remembering rather than forgetting the past. Future improvement in race relations depends on preserving the story of past injustice, so that the repetition of past errors can be avoided (contrast Capt. Delano's advice to Benito Cereno). Gavin Stevens, havg earned PBK/ PhD, devoted to “transl of ld Testament back into classic Greek”: return to traditional piety combined with learning? Molly: Roth Edmunds = Pharaoh, “sold my Benjamin” (her grandson, chased from plantation by Roth for stealing from the commissary) (353). Butch = son of Molly's oldest daughter (358); orphaned of mother, deserted by father at birth, raised by Molly. But she hadn't succeeded in teaching him to be "gentle, honorable, generous, truthful" (117). Stevens: “bad son of bad father” (357). He's amazed, after her grandson's execution, that she wants his whole life story REMEMBERED rath than concealed (365). (As natural heir of old Carothers through the male line, Butch might have thought he had better right 2 goods in the commissary than the "female-made" Edmunds. Southern whites have used law to keep blacks subordinate. Butch’s “furious laughter” as he curses the night he was apprehended by Jefferson policeman reminds one of the laughter of Ike’s wife after her failed attempt at “seducing” him, which Ike first thought to be crying, and of Rider, who laughed wi tears running down his face.)
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