Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Old People
The title of this chapter at first seemed to suggest that it was referring to the older McCaslins: old Carothers, Uncle Buck, and Uncle Buddy, but as the chapter progressed it became apparent that Faulkner was referring to the Native Americans. Sam Fathers, "the son of that Chickasaw chief" (161), seems to have a special connection with the Chickasaw and their past. He shares this with Isaac McCaslin through mentoring him in hunting. When "Sam marked [Isaac's] face with the hot blood which he had spilled" after shooting his first deer, Isaac shares in the ritual passed through generations and "he ceased to be a child and became a hunter and a man" (169). On page 178 we see that Cass also shared in this ritual. The smearing of the blood across his face is very symbolic of his new connection with the land and the past. The buck Isaac sees also portrays the older generation, which is seen when Sam refers to the buck as "Chief" and "Grandfather" (175). The buck is calm and unscathed even after the shot fired by Walter, who never misses, but even he misses the big buck only to kill a smaller one not worth killing. Isaac has accomplished a rite of passage and is now a man, a hunter, and is connected to the past and land.
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Like Catherine says, the buck represents the spirit of the ancestry and past of the land and the earth filled with "blood hot and strong for living"(177). On p163 Faulkner says how through Sam Fathers, Isaac feels as if the old times were the present and "the men who walked through them actually walking in breath and air and casting an actual shadow on the earth" and this same idea of the shadow is referenced in McCaslin's speech on page 177 when he says "Suppose they dont have a substance, cant cast a shadow-". If we take the buck to represent the past, then the very deliberate reference to Isaac's 'flank" in the last paragraph of the story shows how the buck and all that it represents has now been passed on to Isaac through "Sam Fathers' voice the mouthpiece of the host"(163)
ReplyDeleteI agree with what both Maddy and Catherine said about the buck acting as a symbol for the past and present. To branch off of that, the whole story of the "Old People" connects to them theme of what was still is. We saw this introduced to us is the first story, "Was" and it has been woven throughout the book ever since. On page 162, Faulkner references this theme: "And as he talked about those old times and those dead and vanished men of another race from either that the boy knew, gradually to the boy those old times would cease to be old times and would become a part of the boy's present, not only as if they had happened yesterday but as if they were still happening". The old times "ceased to be old times" just as the boy "ceased to be a child and became a hunter and a man" after Sam Fathers marks him with the blood. Faulkner parallels the boys life and maturing with the heritage and connection of all the families in the book.
ReplyDeleteI think Catherine's references to the timelessness and connectedness between the past and present generations show that it is an essential theme throughout these stories and particularly in The Old People. I also agree with Sadie and Maddy's comments that the past is becoming the present through the intangible web of the hunt. The motif of the hunt shows up in Was and the Fire and the Hearth and links these stories together. The most important part of The Old People, I think, is the overwhelming wilderness that Sam Fathers introduces Cass and Isaac to. This natural world is representative of the 'Old' and agrarian South which is in juxtaposition with the city folk, guns and industrial technology taking over the 'New' South. The symbolic hunt also connects with the continual dehumanization throughout Faulkner's short stories for instance when Cass says of Sam Fathers that "Like an old lion or a bear in a cage. . . He was born in the cage and had been in it all his life; he knows nothing else" (159). It find it interesting that Cass sees this Chickasaw Grandfather figure as being stuck in a cage like an animal.
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