Go Down, Moses Summary

Before you jump in, check out our "Websites" section for a handy McCaslin family tree that might help you keep track of the names and relationships of the characters you'll meet here and prevent you from losing your mind. Let's just say that reading Faulkner can be confusing, but it's way more interesting than any summary even Shmoop could present. We can tell you what the story's about, but we can't tell you how it's told. And that's the genius part.

Was

"Was" is a humorous prelude to the rest of the stories, and an introduction to the McCaslin family a few years before the abolition of slavery. It's no wonder that this first story opens up with dogs running after a fox. Here's a secret: all of the stories in this book are about someone running after something or someone else. In fact, isn't that what all stories are really about?

So let's break it down: in "Was," Buck and Buddy McCaslin and young McCaslin Edmonds run after Tomey's Turl, one of the McCaslin slaves. Turl has run away to see his sweetheart Tennie at the neighboring Beauchamp plantation. The McCaslin twins dread going there because their neighbor Hubert Beauchamp has only one goal in mind: to marry off his sister Sophonsiba to Uncle Buck. Well, there's no avoiding it, so Buck and McCaslin go over to the Beauchamps' to get Turl.

Buck gets embroiled in a $500 bet with Hubert over whether they will manage to catch Turl that night outside of Tennie's cabin. Well, they find Turl there, but Turl knocks Buck down and escapes. As a result, poor Buck and McCaslin are forced to spend the night at the Beauchamps'. Buck and McCaslin lose their way at the Beauchamp home and go into Sophonsiba's room by mistake. She starts to scream.

Hubert says there's only one solution: Buck has to marry Sophonsiba. No way Buck's going to accept that. So Buck sends young McCaslin back home to get Buddy, the poker superstar. Buddy beats Hubert in a poker game and the McCaslins get to go home free, with Turl and Tennie in tow. Buck manages to escape having to marry Sophonsiba while Turl and Tennie get to marry.

A comic story about runaway slaves? What's funny about that? Shmoop explains: the readers don't know it yet (we'll find out in later stories), but Buck and Buddy aren't all that serious about the slave business. They're in the process of thinking about ways to free their slaves, so chasing Tomey's Turl is kind of a halfhearted effort, and Turl knows it, too.

And you know what else the readers don't know yet? Turl is actually Buck and Buddy's half-brother. Ain't that a kicker?

The Fire and the Hearth

In "The Fire and the Hearth," Lucas Beauchamp chases after a supposed family treasure, and almost loses his marriage in the process.

Lucas is family patriarch Carothers McCaslin's grandson from his slave lover. Lucas is mad at George Wilkins, who's courting his daughter Nat. Lucas has been running a successful moonshine business for years, and now George is trying to compete with him by operating his own still. Lucas tries to get George in trouble by telling the plantation owner Roth Edmonds about George's still. While knocking on Roth's door, he thinks about the time that he tried to kill Roth's father Zack, who he thought had stolen his wife Molly. Anyway, Lucas's plan to implicate George backfires, and he gets into legal trouble himself.

The only solution is for him to let George and Nat marry (so that they become kin and can't testify against him or against one another). As it turns out, George and Nat are already secretly married, and the two wanted their father to give his approval so they could get some money out of him. Well, the kids are smart and they get what they want. But then George squanders the money he gets from Lucas to buy a better still.

In the second part of the story, Lucas becomes obsessed with a supposed buried family treasure on the plantation. He gets a salesman to bring him a metal detector. He doesn't want to pay for the machine, so he outwits the salesman into selling him the $300 machine for only $50. He makes the foolish salesman believe the treasure is in an orchard on the plantation, charges the man a daily rent of $25 on the machine, and makes a profit from the whole deal. When the man isn't using the machine, Lucas and George Wilkins keep searching for the treasure in the place where they actually believe it to be.

In the third part of the story, a very elderly Molly tells plantation owner Roth Edmonds that she wants to divorce Lucas because he's lost his mind trying to find the treasure. While Roth listens to Molly, he thinks back on how she pretty much raised him after his mother died in childbirth. He remembers how he rejected her son, his good friend Henry, because he was black. Back in the present, Roth tries to talk sense into Lucas, but Lucas says he wants a divorce, too. They all go to court but Lucas changes his mind and the case is closed. Lucas gives Roth the metal detector and tells him to get rid of it.

Pantaloon in Black

Rider, an African American sawmill worker, becomes overwhelmed with grief when his new wife Mannie dies. After the funeral, he goes home and sees his wife's ghost. He tries to overcome his pain by showing up at work early in the morning and continuing his backbreaking work, but that doesn't help. He realizes he can't stay home anymore. He's fixin' to self-destruct.

He goes into the swamp and gets a jug of moonshine from a racist moonshine seller. In the swamp, he runs into his uncle and then visits his aunt. They both try to save him and tell him to pray to the Lord for help. He doesn't listen to them.

He gets drunker and drunker and ends up at a dice game run by another white man named Birdsong. Birdsong has been cheating the black sawmill workers out of their money for years. Rider loses to Birdsong but exposes the corrupt game. Birdsong reaches for his pistol, but Rider's quicker and ends up killing him.

In the last part of the story, a callous and racist sheriff's deputy is telling his wife about what happened to Rider. The sheriff can't believe that a man who lost his wife had so little feelings about it that he went back to work right away. (Obviously, he doesn't get it.) We find out that Rider was jailed after killing Birdsong, and he ripped off his cell door and started fighting the other prisoners. The jailer doesn't shoot him, because he thinks Birdsong's friends and family should have a chance for revenge. Two days after that, his body was found hanging in a Negro schoolhouse, killed by "person or persons unknown." That's another way of saying Rider's been lynched.

The Old People

In this story, young Isaac McCaslin chases and kills his first deer, and gets a lesson about the spirit of the wilderness.

Isaac learns how to hunt from Sam Fathers, the son of a Chickasaw chief and a slave woman. When Isaac turns eleven, he gets to join Sam and some other older men on their yearly hunting outing.

That year, Isaac chases and shoots his first buck. Sam Fathers anoints him with the buck's blood, as a sort of initiation into manhood and hunting in the tradition of his ancestors.

On the last day of the hunting trip, Sam Fathers and Isaac come across a very large and noble buck, which Sam solemnly salutes and calls "Chief" and "Grandfather." That night, Isaac learns from his second cousin McCaslin that Sam also showed him that same buck after he shot his first deer.

The Bear

Isaac McCaslin's a few years older than in the previous story and has become the best woodsman around. Isaac and the other hunters still go on their yearly hunting expeditions. For a few years now, a big, legendary bear they've named Old Ben has been attacking their animals and escaping without being killed.

The men realize that they can't hunt Old Ben unless they find a dog big and fearless enough to track and attack him. Finally, one day they find a really huge and savage dog, which Sam manages to tame just enough for him to be able to go hunting with the men. They call the dog Lion, and Boon Hogganbeck takes care of it. Next time Lion and the men go hunting, they almost get the bear.

One day and a lot of whiskey later, Lion tracks down the bear and Boon finally kills it with only a knife. Lion's gotten badly mangled by the bear but still lives. Isaac witnesses the whole thing. At exactly the same time Old Ben's killed, Sam collapses on the ground. He never really recovers and both Lion and Sam die in a few days. Boon buries them both, and—we can't blame the poor guy—he kind of loses his mind.

In the next section, Isaac's much older. He's turned twenty-one, and as the oldest heir in the male line of the family, he's supposed to inherit the McCaslin plantation. But he decides to renounce it and let his second cousin McCaslin Edmonds inherit it. McCaslin and Isaac sit in the plantation commissary and have a really long discussion about it (A really. Long. Discussion.), during which Isaac keeps thinking about his reasons for renouncing his inheritance. He knows that no one can really own the land, and that his ancestors who tamed it for profit using slave labor knew they had no right to it but did it because they could. McCaslin and Isaac's discussion goes on and on, covering the Bible, the Civil War, race relations, industrialization, marriage, the rise of the KKK, John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry—just about every important event you can think of except the Beatles' historic 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

While they talk, Isaac recalls reading the plantation ledgers and figuring out that his grandfather had a daughter, Tomey, with Eunice, one of his slave women, and then had another child from Tomey. Incest. That's it—Isaac's convinced the land is cursed and wants nothing to do with it. And so his inheritance goes to McCaslin.

Isaac becomes a carpenter and marries a woman who hopes he'll take the plantation back. Isaac refuses, and as a result, his wife refuses to ever have sex with him again. (Plain old divorce is just so bo-ring.)

At the end of the story, Isaac goes back to the hunting camp one last time before the logging company cuts the whole thing down. He encounters a snake, which he believes to be Sam's spirit in the woods, and addresses it just like Sam addressed the mysterious buck.

Delta Autumn

In this story, an elderly Isaac goes on what might be his last hunting trip. Because the wilderness is gradually disappearing, he and the other hunters, younger men, have to travel miles by car and motorboat to get to a place where they can find game. Isaac notices all the towns and factories along the way and reflects on all the changes during his lifetime. They're not good ones, he thinks. Roth Edmonds says he's not going to hunt. The men tease him about hunting a doe who walks on two legs. Isaac's not sure what they mean.

The men make camp, like Isaac's done for fifty years. The night before the hunt, they talk and drink and talk and drink. Did we mention they drink? They tease Roth Edmonds again about a "light-skinned doe," which gets Roth agitated.

Isaac knows he'll be up all night thinking and won't be able to hunt the next day, but that's okay with him. The next morning, Roth wakes Isaac and hands him an envelope. He tells Isaac to expect a visitor and to tell her that Roth says "No." The envelope's full of money. Sure enough, the visitor arrives, a young, well-spoken woman carrying a bundle of something. She seems to know a lot about Isaac and his family.

It gradually dawns on Isaac that this woman is Roth's girlfriend, and that the bundle she's carrying is their baby. After a lecture about sleeping with men who don't promise to marry you, the woman tells a story that makes Isaac realize something that horrifies him—she's black. Not only that, but she's a granddaughter of Samuel Beauchamp. She's Roth's kin. More lectures.

Isaac gives her the money and more or less kicks her out, telling her to go home, marry a man of her own race, and forget that any of this ever happened. Before she leaves, Isaac gives her the hunting horn that General Compson left him in his will. He wants the child to have it. Nice gesture, because up to this point he's been acting like a total jerk to her.

Afterwards, Isaac's tormented by the thought of another incestuous black-white relationship in his family. He doesn't think the world will be ready for interracial relationships for many generations. He thinks about the day when the races will be completely mixed, and that will be the ultimate revenge on the South for slavery.

A hunter comes into the tent looking for a knife to cut up a deer that Roth has just killed. Isaac just knows it's a doe.

Go Down, Moses

The story opens with Molly (spelled Mollie in this story, but we'll stick to Molly here) Beauchamp's grandson Samuel giving details of his family to a census taker. We learn that he's in prison and is about to be executed. That same day, Molly has a premonition that her long-lost grandson's in trouble and she visits Gavin Stevens, the county attorney, to get him to track Samuel down. Molly keeps telling Stevens that Roth Edmonds sold her Benjamin, sold him in Egypt. Stevens goes to the newspaper editor, who's just gotten news from Illinois that a Samuel Beauchamp of Mississippi is going to be executed the next day.

Miss Worsham, an old white woman with whom Molly grew up, visits Stevens and tells him he should arrange to bring Samuel's body back to town for a proper funeral. She doesn't want Molly to know how Samuel died. Stevens contributes a large amount of money for the funeral and gets the town merchants to cover the rest of the cost.

Stevens visits Miss Worsham's house, where they're having Samuel's wake, and doesn't know what to make of the loud and open display of grief by Molly and her brother. Samuel's body comes on a train a few days later, and after being driven around the town square with scores of people watching, he's taken to the McCaslin plantation to be buried. Stevens is glad that's over with.