http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMkzLHwe4-c

We spoke briefly in class of the relation "Ode on a Grecian Urn" has to certain themes in Go Down Moses, and I am choosing to revisit this topic. The poem paints an idealistic and eternal picture of beauty on the urn. Similarly, Isaac sees the woods as sacred, and immortal. I also think the "motionless" motif that Faulkner constantly writes of can be directed back to the poem. When Isaac is in the woods, he is many times motionless, like a character in a painting on the urn would be. The poem leaves the reader with the thought "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." However, the poem also discusses the hindrances in seeing this beauty as truth, explaining that this idealism "dost tease out of thought / As doth eternity." Nevertheless, Isaac lives by this moral, choosing only to see the woods as beautiful, and eternal, therefore, never accepting the change they endure. In reality, the wilderness Isaac cherishes is doomed for destruction and great change, for industrialization is making its mark. When Isaac is hunting Old Ben for the first time, he chooses not to shoot at him so he will not bring the idealistic hunt to a realistic end. In addition, Isaac continuously goes back to the woods he loves even as an old man, and "no longer told anyone how near eighty he actually was because he knew as well as they did that he no longer had any business making such expeditions" (320). Isaac never stops believing in the immortal sequence; "the fierce long heat of the next summer would renew him" (320). Is this idealistic view of the wilderness, as well as himself as a hunter, the real "truth", or is it only steering Isaac away from the reality? Chat amongst yourselves... (if you have any interest).

Is it true that what 'was' still 'is'?

Throughout Go Down Moses, we have examined the interconnectedness of past and present and made the conclusion that what 'was' in the past still 'is' in the later short stories which follow the so called 'future' generations of Buck, Buddy and Old Carothers. However, in Delta Autumn, the significant differences and changes between the 'old' and 'new' South seem most apparent. There is a blatant division between Uncle Isaac and McCaslin who revere the wilderness and the land and the new generation, which seems to disregard it. This becomes obvious at the end of Delta Autumn when he says "It was a doe"(347). The fact that Roth shoots the doe shows that he has forgotten Sam Father's lessons of old that there is a time "not only when to shoot but when not to" (333). These new generations have further forgotten and abandoned God as is obvious when the old man says that "the only fighting anywhere that ever had anything of God's belling on it has been when men fought to protect does and fawns" (323), and the past values and traditions have been cast aside. Additionally, throughout the previous stories and particularly in The Bear, industrialism is encroaching on the wilderness, which is representative of the past and its traditions. In Delta Autumn Uncle Ike reflects that there is "no scream of panther but instead the long hooting of locomotives" (324). The comparison of the natural world to industrial objects shows the progression of the South towards this brave new world that is not compatible with the old values of nature. This progression suggests that what 'was' no longer 'is'. The past is only resurrected in old Uncle Ike's of "the old men...moving again among the shades of tall unaxed trees and sightless brakes where the wild strong immortal game ran forever before the tireless belling immortal hounds, falling and rising phoenix like to the soundless guns" (337). Although the image of the pheonix suggests a cyclical nature of change and suggests that the old hunt may one day be resurrected, it also shows that right now that old way of the hunt is lost in reality even if it is perserved in memory. I challenge that what 'was' 'is' in Go Down, Moses, and instead think that Delta Autumn is Faulkner's way of saying that the past has been cleared away for the new south. What do you think?

God and Nature

In class we have started talking a bit about Isaac's views on nature and man's dominance over land. This is most obvious on page 245 when Isaac tells McCaslin that he "can't repudiate it. It was never mine to repudiate. It was never Father's and Uncle Buddy's to bequeath to me to repudiate... He created man to be His overseer on the earth and to hold suzerainty over the earth and the animals on it in His name, not to hold for himself and his descendants inviolable title forever..." and he goes on to talk about how the land is not his to do anything with because the land belongs to God and anyone who "had" the land before never actually owned anything. This seems to me to be an introduction to his views on how greedy humans are. On page 246 he says in an sort of cynical tone how "men fought over the fragments of that collapse until at last even the fragments were exhausted and men snarled over the gnawed bones of the old world's worthless evening until an accidental egg discovered to them a new hemisphere." Just the use of the words "collapse" and "exhausted" to describe the earth and the words "snarled" and "gnawed" to illustrate the actions of men make it so obvious how he feels about the avariciousness mankind and how people treat the earth. Do you think this is a valid argument? What do you think this says about him?

The Relationship Between Man and Nature

The entirety of Go Down, Moses thus far has dealt with the changing relationships amongst the characters and the impact those changes have on the overall story. However, in this most recent story, The Bear, the most significant changes are emphasized. These are, as stated on the back cover of the book, the changing relationships between man and man and between man and nature. Through the annual hunting trips, the reader see’s Isaac McCaslin mature into a man and with him his views on the world that surrounds him. In chapter one of The Bear, Isaac first eludes to a rift between man and nature, “It was as if the boy had already divined what his senses and intellect hand not encompassed yet: that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who feared it because it was wilderness…” (183). This divide is further illustrated by Boon and Isaac’s arrival in Memphis. Although their disheveled appearance does not spark much attention in the small town of Hoke, they seem extremely out of place in urban Memphis- “They emerged from the warm caboose in their hunting clothes, the muddy boots and stained khaki and Boon’s blue unshaven jowls. But that was all right. Hoke’s sawmill and commissary and two stores and a loading-chute on a sidetrack from the main line, and all the men in it wore boots and khaki too…..But in Memphis it was not all right. It was if the high buildings and the hard pavements, the fine carriages and the horse cars and the men in starched collars and neckties made their boots and khaki look a little rougher and a little muddier…” (218-219). I read these passages originally with the idea that they supported the idea of the Old South vs. the New South, but when I read Isaac and Cass’s conversation from page 243 through 246, I began to wonder if in fact it was something deeper than industrialization. Were you surprised by Cass’s reaction? Do you think that the battle over the land has to do with industrialization alone, or is it something more?