A White american writes about slavery William Faulkner's go down, moses
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Date
2014
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university of Oum-El-Bouaghi
Abstract
In the world of literature, many writers write a myriad of novels in the genre of literary fiction. So, each story differs from each other in a sense of arrangement of events, or the idea carried in the story. Our writer, wrote also several novels in Literary Fiction, but the one we are more concerned with is entitled go down, moses. Go down, moses is a novel of seven interrelated short stories, which relates a succession of several generations whose patriarch is, Licius Quintus carothers Mc caslin. The story started from 1859, just two years before the civil war, and happened in the imaginary YOKNAPATAWPHA County, in the South of America, till the launching of world War II. In the first section, titled "Was," Mc caslin Edmonds "Cass" lives with his uncles, Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy. Tomey'sTurl, a slave in Mc CASLIN plantation, fled for many times to see his beloved slave, Tennie, at the neighboring plantation of Hubert BEAUCHAMP. Hubert has an unmarried sister, called Sophonsiba, who is looking for a husband, and at the end of this short story she will be married with Uncle Buck. Tomey'sTurl, Uncle Buck's and Buddy's half brother, will marry, also in his turn, the slave Tennie. In the second section, titled "The Fire and The Hearth," Lucas Beauchamp, who is Tomey'sTurl's and Tennie's son, a mixed race tenant farmer lives on the Old Mc CASLIN plantation owned now by Carothers Edmonds, Roth, (Zack Edmonds's son). Lucas, who digs in the property, finds a gold coin then he realizes that a treasure could be hidden and buried by Buck and Buddy, who were dead, on their land. Lucas Beauchamp, who becomes obsessed with the gold, distills, also, illegally alcohol to make Whiskey with George Wilkens, who wants to marry Lucas's daughter Nat. In the third section, titled "Pantaloon in Black," Rider, a tall and strong black man, and who has no relationship with the Mc CASLIN family, works in aSawmill i. e., a factory where we chop wood. After the death of his wife, Mannie, Riderbecomes a drunkard and begins to have hallucinations which let him see his wife's ghost. At the end, he kills a man called, Birdson, who has been running crookedDice game for Negroes. In the fourth section, titled "The Old People," Sam Fathers, the son of Ikkemotubbe, a Chickasaw chief, and of a black slave woman, teaches to Isaac Mc CASLIN how to hunt in the forest. Isaac kills his first Deer, and now he ceased to be a child and becomes a hunter and a man. In the fifth section titled, "The Bear," Isaac Mc CASLIN becomes an expert hunter and participates in a Yearly Hunting Expeditions, which are organized by Major De Spain, General Compson, McCaslin, and Sam Fathers, the Chickasaw Indian, to hunt "Old Ben," a gigantic Bear nearly immortal that makes terror throughout a forest. In the sixth section, titled "Delta Autumn," Isaac McCaslin, who was young, is now nearly eighty years old. He travels with a group of hunters on a yearly hunting, to hunt a Bear and Deer to a hunting camp in the Mississippi River Delta. In the morning, a young woman wants to see Uncle Ike, but he understands that she was Roth's beloved. After a young girl left, Carothers killed a Deer, but it seems that he killed a "Doe" i, e., "a female of Deer" which is forbidden to be killed. In the seventh and last section titled, "Go Down, Moses," which happened in the forties in Jefferson, YOKNAPATAWPHA County. Mollie Beauchamp, Lucas's wife, who does not see her grandson, Samuel Beauchamp, since a long time and who has an intuition of an evil could happen to her grandson, asks Gavin Stevens, a Lawyer and Detective, to look for him and to know about his news. At last, Stevens learns from the newspaper editor that Samuel Beauchamp murdered a police, and for this reason he will be executed the next day in the Illinois. Then, mollie's grandson is brought home in a coffin, and the funeral takes place the next day.
In general, the seven interrelated short stories of William Faulkner's novel Go Down,Moses hold the idea of inheritance, incest, miscegenation, slavery and racism.
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Novel : William Faulkner : go down moses