The end of slavery didn't mean the end of racism in the South. If anything, the turmoil of Reconstruction inflamed racial tension even more, as both white and black had to adjust to an entirely new kind of relationship between the races. The years after Reconstruction saw the creation of the Ku Klux Klan and the gradual disenfranchisement and segregation of African Americans in the South. The Faulkner scholar Arthur Kinney says, describing the death of Samuel Beauchamp, "Gavin does not see what Miss Worsham and Mollie Beauchamp both know: that slavery has never really left Yoktapanawpha; it has just gone underground." (Source).
Most characters in Go Down, Moses hold traditional racist views and stereotypes based on white and black "blood." A few, like Isaac McCaslin, believe that African Americans were different from whites, but that it was a result of their experiences as slaves. The mixed-race character of Lucas Beauchamp is the saddest, because he knows he has white blood but that he'll never have the same status as the white members of his family. And Turl, who's three-quarters white, is still a slave.
Miscegenation—sexual and romantic mixing of the races—has been described as an obsession of Southern whites after the War, a worst-case scenario of what would happen if blacks got their freedom. But it happened all the time, as the novel shows us. Another fact of Southern society is that there was a lot of contact between whites and blacks.
Questions About Race
- How does "blood" imply character in these stories?
- How quickly do we find out each character's racial background? Were you ever surprised to find out a character is white or black?
- Is there a difference in how much time the third person omniscient narrator spends in the heads of the black and the white characters?
- Why does Faulkner, through Isaac, say that blacks are stronger than whites and will "endure"?
Chew on This
Faulkner believes in this novel that blacks are stronger and more virtuous than whites, and they'll be the ones to lead the country into the future.
Faulkner relies on stereotypes of mammies, clowns, and noble savages for his black characters.