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The three stories, "The Old People," "The Bear," and "Delta Autumn," from Go Down, Moses, which probably represent Faulkner at his best, trace
the life history of Ike McCaslin, and through him reconstruct the saga
of the South. The stories explore the landscape, both geographical and
human, the moral decay and the disintegration of the South, and the search
for wholeness. In the person of Ike McCaslin, Faulkner has created a heroic
figure who struggles hard to cope with his complex milieueconomic, social,
historical, and ethical and achieves a personal redemption through a painful process
of expiation. A proper evaluation of Ike McCaslin's life is essential to
an understanding of Faulkner's measure of heroism and his belief in the
prophetic possibilities of life.
The first of the three stories is "The Old People," and chronologically
speaking, it is earlier than the other two. It is about Ike's initiation in the Big
Bottom. The action of the story takes place in 1879 when young Ike kills his first
buck. It is developed round two major scenes: the first, when Sam Fathers, the
spiritual father-teacher of Ike, smears the blood of the slain deer on the child's face in
a ceremonial ritual; and the second, when Sam Fathers raises his arm, greets
a buck "Oleh, Chief, Grandfather," and moves from Ike's back to his side.
This symbolic act quietly speaks of Ike's initiation into manhood and his
acceptance of his teacher's code "humbly and joyfully, with abnegation and with pride
too" (Faulkner 1990, 165). The rest of the story traces the history of Sam
Fathers, but this history and its lessons are an integral part of Ike's early education.
It is through Sam Fathers, who is the son of a Chickasaw chief and a
quadroon slave woman, that the young Ike learns that taintlessness and
incorruptibility do not depend upon blood strain but on outlook. It is Sam Fathers who
teaches the boy the lessons of the wildernesspride, humility, endurance, and
courageand the code of nature by which to live. It is Sam Fathers who teaches Ike
to strip away the accumulated layers of inherited artificiality and see "the
things that have been tamed out of his blood" (166). |
