Go Down, Moses "The Bear" Summary

Section 1

Isaac McCaslin is sixteen. He's been hunting as a real man in the real wilderness for six years.
Isaac realizes "later" (probably meaning several years later) that "it had begun long before that," when he had turned ten and had become a hunter.
"It" what? We don't know what had begun long before that, but this whole thing sounds like the beginning of a great hunting adventure.
Isaac's heard the story of a big old bear with his own name, like a man.
The bear's a legend—he's destroyed many things in the area, he's been shot many times but keeps going. The bear's foot got ruined in a trap.
In his years of hunting, Isaac's never imagined that the bear might be ever killed.
Sounds like foreshadowing.
Anyway, Isaac and the other hunters are finally near the camp.
Sam Fathers meets them on the way.
What Isaac experienced when he was ten (his initiation into hunting, with Sam) was like witnessing his own birth.
Isaac reminisces about the day he first crossed paths with Old Ben (the Bear). Here's how that went:
He's in the woods with Sam, and the dogs start to bark. He listens to the dogs and follows them with his eyes, but doesn't see a deer.
He realizes this must be Old Ben, far in the distance.
Sam tells him that Old Ben comes up this way every year, to check things out with the hunters, and even lets the dogs follow him to the river, but that's it.
They go back to the camp, and find that the dogs have already returned.
One of the dogs has been roughed up by the bear, and Tennie's Jim tends to her.
After this, Sam disappears for three days.
When he returns, Isaac looks down at a rotten log under his feet and sees the claw-marks and then the warped (from the trap) footprint of the bear.
Isaac says "It will be tomorrow," (5.1.19) but Sam points out that they don't have the right dog for the job yet.
They get an early start the next morning. Everyone joins the hunting party this time.
Isaac takes his position on his stand. And then he's just waiting and listening and thinking.
Suddenly, Sam emerges from the bushes.
Isaac says he didn't see the bear; Sam replies that it was the bear that was watching him instead. (Cue spooky music.)
The hunters are back at the camp in June of the following year.
They think Isaac's off hunting squirrels, but he's actually up to something way more important.
For three days, he's been going out after breakfast and looking for the bear.
Sam figures out what Isaac's been up to. He tells Isaac that he hasn't been "looking right yet."
Sam says the bear's likely been watching Isaac, but hasn't shown his face because of Isaac's gun.
Sam says he'll have to choose between carrying a gun and seeing the bear.
Isaac leaves before the sun comes up, with only a watch, a compass and a stick for the snakes.
Nine hours later, he's far from the camp. He realizes that relinquishing his gun is not enough.
The bear's not going to show his face unless he also gives up his watch and compass.
He hangs them on a bush, leans his stick next to them, and is off.
When he gets lost, he does what Sam's taught him: to walk a circle until he backtracks his route.
He thinks he found the bush where he hung his belongings, but hasn't.
He follows Sam's next advice, to make a bigger circle in the opposite direction so the two circles bisect his old track somewhere, but still doesn't manage to see his old track.
He's still not in a panic. (We'd have been crying for mommy about eight hours before this point.)
He sits on a log next to a tree and suddenly sees the bear's crooked paw print on the wet ground.
He also realizes that the water level's rising steadily. The footprint starts to disappear under the water.
He follows the prints with his eyes and sees not only his watch and compass, but also the bear.
The bear's not as big as he thought it would be, but still very big. And it's looking at Isaac.
The bear crosses the glade and looks at Isaac again, and then it's gone.

Section 2

A wonderfully obscure section beginning à la Faulkner: "So he should have hated and feared Lion."
He who? Isaac?
Lion who? We'll find out about Lion.
Why should he have hated and feared Lion?
"... in the next November he killed a bear."
A bear? Which bear? The old bear? Faulkner is turning up the suspense dial to eleven.
What with all his ranging about by himself and without a compass, Isaac's become an excellent woodsman at this point, better than many men older than him.
He's even killed a buck Chickasaw style, by finding its bedding place and lying in wait for it.
By now, Isaac can also recognize all four footprints of the old bear, not just the crooked one.
He's seen the dogs try to jump the bear twice in three years.
He's brought a little mongrel dog called a fyce to camp that year.
Sam and Isaac take the fyce to the woods one day, and the doggie makes so much noise that the bear comes out. It's humongous.
Isaac looks up at the bear and realizes this is the way he's been dreaming about it.
Sam comes over and says Isaac saw the bear twice now with a gun, so why didn't he shoot it?
Isaac replies that Sam could have done the same thing. So why didn't he do it?
Sam doesn't respond to that. He just pets the fyce and says it's almost the right dog for the task, but just not quite big enough.
He says one day they'll find the right dog.
Another cryptic sentence: "So he should have feared and hated Lion." Hmm, maybe Lion is the right dog? Maybe we were wrong about "he" being Isaac. Maybe "he" is the bear. Hard to tell.
It's the fourth summer at camp. We get a flashback here:
We find out that in the spring, one of Major de Spain's colts disappeared.
After its disappearance, the men debate what could have killed it.
Sam says nothing.
Next morning, Sam finds the colt, with its entrails and one leg eaten. Bear chow?
General Compson: It must have been a wolf.
Sam: Still no comment.
At this point, the narrator interrupts the flashback and does a sort of flash-forward:
Isaac realizes when he's older that Sam was silent that day because he had a premonition that it was about to be "almost over" for him. Ah, that tricky Faulkner narrator again, making us all wonder what "almost over" means.
Back to the flashback:
The next morning, they come to camp, pretending not to know what killed the colt (duh, the narrator seems to say, it was so obviously Old Ben).
The next day, Sam sets up a trap in his corn crib by putting the carcass of the colt inside and then making a deadfall of the door.
He catches the animal, which is not a panther, or a wolf, or Old Ben, but a dog.
A vicious dog that they think is the dog for hunting Old Ben.
The men don't think Sam can tame the dog, and Sam says he won't tame him, but something else.
Every day, he lowers a pail of water into the crib while the giant dog thrashes around like Cujo.
After a week, the dog gives up throwing itself against the wall from hunger.
And then, the two weeks are up and the men are breaking camp and leaving.
Isaac begs to stay with Sam. He continues to watch Sam "break" the dog.
By the end of the third week, the dog's so weak, it can barely move and drink water.
It crawls to the water pail and then collapses.
The next day, it can't even get to the water. That day, Sam takes a stick and enters the crib. He touches the dog.
Sam begins to feed the dog again. He starts to give it meat. Soon, it's strong enough to hurl itself against the door again.
Boon Hogganbeck comes to the camp to check up on things.
Isaac tells him Sam's plan: Sam is going to starve the dog until he can touch him and will feed him again, and so on until it learns to listen to Sam.
Isaac also says that the dog's name is Lion.
So that's Lion. Remember, "he should have hated and feared Lion." Now we know who Lion is. But we still don't know who "he" is.
Fast forward to November. They're back at camp. Lion's following Sam around.
One of the hounds comes barking at him. Bang! Lion just smacks him five or six feet away.
Boon's impressed. He comes over and touches the beast.
And then he takes over the dog's feeding for the next two years. They start sleeping together. Umm, what? Well, yes, it's meant to be kinda strange.
The first morning when Lion leads the pack of dogs going after Old Ben, seven swampers come to watch.
The narrator doesn't indicate their race, but swampers were usually white. They're poor and wear bad clothes and speak bad English.
No one sees Old Ben that day.
The following November, more than a dozen strangers show up on the last day of camp. The whole Lion vs. Old Ben chase is now becoming a tradition.
This time the dogs jump the bear further away from the river; General Compson gets a shot at it.
Isaac isn't there to witness it, but hears the shots.
He learns that night that Lion again managed to stop and hold the bear, and that General Compson got to fire five shots at it, but it broke free, ran to the river and escaped.
That's some bear.
Boon and Lion crossed the river and followed its trail for a while, but then it got dark and they had to turn around.
The last words of this section:
"So he should have hated and feared Lion. Yet he did not. It seemed to him that there was a fatality in it" (5.2.66).
Now we get it: "he" has to be Isaac. Why should he have hated and feared Lion? Still a mystery.
Aargh, the suspense is killing us.

Section 3

It's the coldest December Isaac has ever seen. They're waiting for the weather to improve so Lion can chase Old Ben again before they break camp.
Extra days at camp means they run out of whiskey. As we all know, no whiskey means no drunken manly talk of the wilderness, and really, what's a hunting trip without that?
So the men send Boon to Memphis with a suitcase and an order for the distiller.
Isaac goes along to make sure Boon returns with most or at least some of it.
We guess in the nineteenth century, adults made minors do their booze runs.
Tennie's Jim wakes Isaac up at three in the morning. Boon's already eating breakfast.
Ash the cook drives them to the log-train line where they flag down the log train.
Isaac sleeps while Boon and the conductor talk about Lion and Old Ben.
By sunup, they reach Hoke's, where the sawmill is and the Memphis train makes a stop.
When they finally reach Memphis, it's totally not cool. Everyone is so well dressed that Boon and Isaac look like they just came running out of the woods. Which, of course, they did.
Boon's conveniently caught a cough, so he asks Isaac for a dollar to go to the saloon. For medicinal purposes only.
See what a great idea it is to send an alcoholic to do your booze run and a minor to keep tabs on him? Brilliant, really.
After some thinking, Isaac gives Boon a dollar. He stays outside while Boon goes into the saloon and drinks.
They miss the first train but catch the next one.
Boon talks to the brakeman and the conductor about Lion and Old Ben.
Back at the camp, there are five new guests from Jefferson.
By the next morning, two-dozen people are there for the now traditional Old Ben chase. Another dozen arrive.
The men start debating who will ride Katie, the one-eyed mule who doesn't scare as easily as the others and won't throw you off.
General Compson says it should be Ike (Isaac).
Next thing he knows, Isaac's on the mule with Lion next to him.
Soon, they hear the first cry (of the hounds, probably, but we don't know).
They ride to where the noises are coming from and see the bear.
Lion attacks him. Old Ben strikes him aside, kills one of the other dogs, and runs off.
The others stay behind while Isaac and Sam are riding alone with Lion and another brave dog.
They hear Walter Ewell shoot, but Sam knows he hasn't gotten the bear.
They find out the bear has crossed the river, so they swim across with the mules and the dogs.
Soon, they see the bear again, on its hind legs against a tree.
Once again, Lion dives in. An epic struggle ensues—here we go:
The bear catches Lion in both arms and they both go down.
Isaac draws back both hammers of the gun, but cannot make out the bear from the dog.
The bear gets on his hind legs again. Lion's still clinging to the bear's throat.
The bear strikes one of the hounds and then starts raking at Lion's belly.
Boon can't tolerate Lion being roughed up like this, and runs up to them with a knife.
Boon jumps on the bear's back, locks his legs around him and cuts the bear's throat. Yes, you read that right.
The bear falls back with the dog clinging on his neck and Boon on his back. The bear has fallen on Boon. As Boon keeps knifing the bear, the animal gets up again. It takes a few steps and then falls like a tree.
Boon is injured and blood is running down the side of his face.
Isaac and Tennie's Jim pry Lion's jaws apart off the bear's throat. Lion's guts are hanging out.
Boon tells Tennie's Jim to bring the boat.
Suddenly, the men realize that Sam's lying face down in the mud right next to them.
The mule hasn't thrown him.
Isaac suddenly remembers that Sam was down before Boon started running to the bear.
They turn him over and he says something in the Chickasaw language, but he can't move.
They carry Sam and Lion to the river bank and send Tennie's Jim to get a doctor from Hoke's.
Isaac brings the wagon over to a bridge near the men.
The camp is so far behind that by the time Isaac goes to the camp and then makes it back to the bridge with the wagon, it's dusk.
They put Sam and Lion on the wagon, put Old Ben's carcass on the mule, and return to camp.
When they get to Sam's hut, Sam tries to get up and says, "Let me out, master. Let me go home." It's really sad.
They carry him to his hut and light a fire for him.
Boon carries Lion, all bloody, to his own pallet.
When the doctor comes, Boon makes him treat Lion first and then himself.
Next, they go to Sam's hut. He's lying in the same position they put him in. Isaac knows for sure at this point that Sam's going to die.
At dawn, they go to look at Old Ben with his mutilated foot and the fifty-two lumps under his skin from previous shots that didn't manage to kill him.
The rain has stopped, and the sun comes out. They move Lion into the sun.
They check up on Sam, and he's barely breathing. The doctor says there's nothing wrong with him except that "he just quit," as in gave up trying to live because he's old.
When they return to the house, the swamp-dwellers come to see the bear and Lion.
Lion dies at sundown.
They break camp that night.
Boon carries Lion into the woods at night, digs a grave and buries him. General Compson delivers a eulogy to the brave dog.
They return to camp to pack everything up.
Isaac says he's not going home. McCaslin says Isaac has to be back at school on Monday because he's missed an extra week of school at this point.
Back in the eighteen-eighties, minors not only drank, they also got to miss weeks of school to go bear hunting.
Fast forward to Saturday: Tennie's Jim and Major de Spain come out to Jefferson, change into woods gear and then ride to camp, making it there by Sunday morning. Actually, they first go to the place where they buried Lion.
Boon's there, drunk and completely crazed. He tells them to stand back.
McCaslin asks Boon if he "killed him." Killed who? We still don't know.
Boon says "No!" And then tells them to "leave him alone."
Stay tuned to find out what on earth is going on here, folks.

Section 4

This section contains a lot of extremely long, complex sentences. The longest one is 1600 words. Yeah, you heard right.
We'll give you the main ideas in them, but really, that's no fun. You should just read them for yourself, and try to read them out loud while you're at it. Just try to remember to breathe once in a while.
Isaac's now twenty-one (the year is 1888), the year he's supposed to inherit the plantation.
He gets it now: it's not him and his second cousin vs. the wilderness, like he used to think.
Instead, it's them vs. their heritage, that is, the land they inherited from their grandfather.
This land is tainted and evil because of the way it was obtained from the Native Americans and then cleared and planted by African slaves.
Besides, the land was never really theirs to begin with. No one can own land, thinks Isaac. It's kind of like air or water.
It's a combination of Bible teaching, Native American ideas, and Isaac's personal philosophy.
McCaslin Edmonds and Isaac are in the plantation commissary, looking at the ledgers in which McCaslin recorded his business transactions.
There are also older ledgers kept by Isaac's father Theophilus (Uncle Buck) and Isaac's uncle Amodeus (Buddy) in the two decades before the Civil War.
The older ledgers keep records of the slaves who were manumitted (freed) by the two brothers.
(Shmoop alert: The entire rest of this section is a lengthy conversation between McCaslin Edmonds and Isaac who are sitting in the commissary, arguing about Isaac's wish to relinquish his right to the land he is supposed to inherit now that he's twenty-one. He wants McCaslin to inherit it. The conversation is interrupted by a long, no, really long narrative about their family history, about Isaac's discovery of the old records of the family's slaves, about what it means to own or inherit land. We'll try to be helpful tour guides through this maze.)
McCaslin believes that relinquishing the plantation to him is a bad idea because Isaac's a male descendant of the McCaslin line, while McCaslin is from the female side of the family.
(The fact that McCaslin was given the family surname as his first name just makes reading this more confusing.)
Isaac insists that the land never belonged to anyone in the first place—not their family, not the people who sold it to their family. The land can't be owned.
God made the land and we're just overseers, says Isaac. We hold it on behalf of all mankind.
McCaslin wants Isaac to get real. After all, men have owned land since forever, like it or not, and God hasn't seemed to object.
Isaac begs to differ. He thinks God allowed men to own land because it was cursed while the Native Americans held it and he brought our family over here to free it and free the slaves.
McCaslin concedes the point—abolition did come in 1865.
Neither McCaslin nor Isaac needs to pull down the old plantation ledger from the shelves for reference. They already know very well what Theophilus and Amodeus wrote in them.
The narrator describes what you find in these ledgers:
Buck and Buddy move out of their house after their father dies into a one-room log cabin that they themselves build.
They give their father's house to their slaves.
After the day's work in the fields, the brothers count their slaves as they go into the house and nail the front entrance. But really, it's just symbolic because the back entrance doesn't even have a hinged door.
So there's an understanding between the brothers and their slaves that the slaves get to do whatever they want after the counting and the symbolic nailing every day.
Buck and Buddy are really uncomfortable about inheriting slaves.
Isaac's read all of the entries and can tell his father's handwriting from his uncle's by now.
So now we get extensive quotes from the ledgers. We'll give you some samples and some interesting facts, but really, it's hard to do justice here to the way Faulkner weaves between the ledger entries. They're sometimes a few days and sometimes a few weeks apart.
Everything in this first part is written in 1856, nine years before Abolition.
Theophilus writes: Percavil Brownly, 26 year old bookkeeper.1856, $265.
Theophilus again: Can't keep books. Can't read. I sent him to the field.
Theophilus: Can't plow, either. Says he is a preacher. Maybe he can take the stock out to the creek.
Amodeus: He can't take the stock out to the creek, either. Get rid of him.
Theophilus: Who would buy him?
Amodeus: Nobody. You shouldn't sell him, you should free him.
Free him—now that's a radical thought.
Theophilus: Freed debit to McCaslin, $265. (Again, it's hard to tell what he means. He probably freed Percavil Brownly and now Percavil owes them his buying price.)
Amodeus: Debit Theophilus McCaslin "niger" $265, mule $100. Total: $365.
They evidently sold the freed man a mule but he hasn't left yet.
And, says the narrator, these pages continued on like this. Then, the narrator quotes some other entries:
Theophilus: Father [Old Carothers McCaslin]died. Born Callina, 1772, died Mississippi 27 June 1837.
Theophilus: Thucydus Roskus, Fibby's son. Born in Callina 1779. Refused 10 acres of land from father's will. Refused cash offer of $200 from Amodeus. Will stay and work until he earns that $200.
And then, says the narrator, there are entries of this man working and accruing wages that allowed him to buy items from the commissary. Then we see the final entry:
1841. Gave Thucydus McCaslin $200. Set up a blacksmith's 1841. Died 1854.
Another entry: Eunice, bought by father in New Orleans, 1807. $650. Married to Thucydus 1809. Drowned in creek, 1832.
Amodeus: 1833, drowned herself.
Theophilus: Who ever heard of a "niger" drowning herself?
Isaac, upon reading this, thinks why would Eunice drown herself?
We learn that Isaac was sixteen when he first read these entries.
He steals the commissary key from McCaslin's room after midnight while McCaslin is sleeping and breaks in. He starts to read.
When he reads about Eunice, he doesn't wonder at first why she had drowned herself, but rather, he wonders why his uncle would have thought she'd drowned herself. Smart kid.
He keeps reading and starts to find the answer (although he's already known some things.)
Next entry: Tomasina, called Tomy (aka "Tomey"). Daughter of Thucydus and Eunice. Born 1810, died in childbirth, June 1833. "The year stars fell." (There was a huge meteor shower in 1833.)
Next entry: Turl, son of Thucydus and Eunice's Tomy. Born June 1833, the year stars fell. Father's will.
The narrator tells us that Isaac has also seen the father's will.
The will says very clearly to give Tomey's Turl $1000 upon his coming-of-age at twenty-one.
There's no definite proof in the ledgers or in the will that Tomey herself is Eunice's daughter by old Carothers McCaslin, or that Turl is Tomey and old Carothers's son.
But still.
This is all a roundabout way of saying that old McCaslin had a daughter, Tomey, from his slave Eunice, and then had another son/grandson from his own daughter Tomey. Turl is actually old Carothers' child and grandchild.
Isaac thinks about the implications of all this: Old Carothers wouldn't own up to that when he was alive.
But he doesn't care what people think after he dies, so he tasks his children with giving Tomey's Turl part of his inheritance.
Isaac thinks about how it must have all happened, and is horrified by this family history lesson.
He thinks about Tomey's Terrel, aka. "Turl," who was still alive when Isaac was ten.
He thinks about Eunice killing herself six months before her daughter gave birth to Turl.
Isaac will never have to look at the ledgers again, but he'll remember them forever.
Another entry: Tennie Beauchamp, won by Amodeus McCaslin from Hubert Beauchamp. Married Tomey's Turl, 1859. Remember that poker game in "Was?"
Tomey and Tennie had six children, three of whom survived.
Isaac thinks about how he tried without luck to track down Tomey's Turl's descendants to give them their inheritance.
We learn that Theophilus and Amodeus decided to increase the amount of inheritance that their half-sibling's descendants would receive. Now each surviving child is to get $1000 when they reach twenty-one years of age.
Entry by Isaac, Jan 1886: Vanished on his twenty-first birthday 1885 (this is about Tennie and Turl's son James.) Traced by Isaac McCaslin to Jackson, Tennessee and there lost. $1000 returned to McCaslin Edmonds.
The narrator says that this entry will be two years in the future, though. See how the "present" of the story is jumping around here?
Entry by Theophilus: Miss Sophonsiba born, daughter of Tomey's Turl and Tennie, 1869.
The narrator says that in 1886, when Fonsiba (that is, Sophonsiba) is only seventeen, a stranger comes into the commissary, telling McCaslin that he wants to marry Fonsiba.
The stranger's wearing better clothes than McCaslin and he "talks like a white man."
The man says he wants to marry Fonsiba and take her to live him on his farm in Arkansas.
He's the son of a slave and has inherited some land his father got as a grant for serving in the US army (or as McCaslin says, the Yankee army).
McCaslin's offended that the man says he's not asking for McCaslin's permission, but rather informing him of the fact that he and Fonsiba will be getting married.
Fonsiba leaves with the man.
Five months later, Isaac goes to Arkansas to check up on her and deliver her $1000.
He finds Fonsiba and the man living in a badly built log cabin.
It's cold inside. She's crouched in a corner, and her husband is sitting by the hearth on the only chair in the house.
Without any pleasantries, Isaac immediately launches into a discussion of how the whole South is cursed, and how those from the South, black and white both, can do nothing to combat the curse. All they can do is endure it until it's lifted.
The other man says that he's wrong—the curse the whites have brought has been lifted and they're now in a new era, a new Canaan.
The man makes excuses for not farming his land. He also says that he gets his own as well as his father's pension on the first of every month, implying that he doesn't need to work.
But it becomes apparent that they run out of money in the middle of every month and have to survive on credit until they get the next pension payment.
Isaac's really worried about Fonsiba's situation and asks her if she's all right.
She responds that she's free.
Isaac leaves and goes to the bank to deposit her inheritance there.
He instructs the bank to give her an allowance of three dollars a month for the next twenty-eight years to be paid directly to her on the fifteenth of each month (right around when they run out of the pension money).
Isaac returns home.
In 1874, his father and uncle both die.
The narrator says that Isaac could have written the following entry in the ledger that year, but he didn't. If he did, it would read: Lucas Quintus Carothers McCaslin Beauchamp. Son of Tomey's Terrel and Tennie Beauchamp.
The narrator also notes that Lucas alters Lucius Quintus to make it Lucas Quintus, to differentiate his own name from Old Carothers McCaslin's.
Then we get a series of dates that mark Isaac's life:
In 1874, he's still a boy.
In 1888, he becomes a man, and repudiates his legacy.
In 1895, he's a husband, but not a father. He is "unwidowered," which means that his wife isn't dead, but "without a wife," which is an obscure statement.
Help us out, here, Faulkner.
Isaac realizes by now that "no man is ever free."
In 1895, when Lucas turns twenty-one, he demands the money that old Carothers has left him.
Remember how this section began with McCaslin and Isaac's dialogue in the commissary? The year was 1888 and Isaac had just turned twenty-one, and was trying to repudiate his inheritance. Now we go back to that conversation.
If you've already forgotten about the original conversation, you won't lose credit.
McCaslin tells Isaac that other men besides just Uncle Buck and Buddy heeded "that truth." And then there was 1865.
Isaac replies that there still wouldn't be enough of them in several generations to do the right thing.
We're guessing now that "that truth" refers to the curse of slavery, and how Buck and Buddy tried to do the right thing.
We don't have to guess for long, because here comes Isaac's monologue about the evils of slavery, about God and the South and the North and industrialization and the Civil War and freed blacks and lynchings and Reconstruction and the Klan and Sam Fathers and the Jews and and and…
Basically, Isaac is flooded by feelings and memories here. He tells McCaslin that he has to talk and talk to try to figure out why he's repudiating his inheritance.
Isaac believes that God gave up on the South and turned to the North and West, but was disappointed in these people too.
So God turned back to the South, but this time to the descendants of slaves because they learned through suffering and bloodshed.
McCaslin launches into an explanation of the Civil War and the men who fought it.
Isaac interrupts: Can you give me a minute here? I'm trying to explain to the head of my family something I myself don't understand. I need to talk so I can understand better why I am trying to repudiate my legacy. So shut up.
The narrator starts to describe the aftermath of the Civil War that McCaslin witnessed as a teenager and knows intimately. You know, so we don't have to interrupt Isaac.
According to the narrator, three separate groups of people were trying to contend with the terrible aftermath of the Civil War: the freed slaves; the rich, plantation-owning whites; and the poor whites with no property, who turned to the Ku Klux Klan to deal with their feelings of powerlessness and resentment of the freed blacks.
The narrator also makes reference to the Jews who moved to the South.
More from the narrator: McCaslin had seen all this, and Isaac was able to distinguish what he had seen and what he'd just heard about. They both recall the lynchings. (The narrator describes some of these.)
Neither McCaslin nor Isaac needs to refer to the ledgers for the period after the Civil War because they know it very well. Many of their old slaves leave and new people arrive to farm their land.
McCaslin now keeps the records of the commissary.
Even after Abolition, the ex-slaves are still bound to the land as tenant farmers and sharecroppers.
Isaac thinks that they may be around for a few more generations, but that the black descendants of slaves will eventually outlast the plantation owners.
He tells McCaslin that the blacks are stronger; their vices are only the ones they've learned from white men or that slavery has forced on them.
McCaslin objects—he says the blacks are promiscuous, unstable and violent. He says they can't distinguish between "mine" and "thine."
Give them a break, says Isaac. How can they be expected to make that distinction when for two hundred years they had no "mine"?
Isaac thinks the blacks have endurance.
So do mules, replies McCaslin.
They have pity, tolerance, forbearance, fidelity and the love of children.
McCaslin helpfully points out that you could say the same about dogs.
The mention of dogs make both men think about Sam Fathers and his virtues in facing the bear seven years ago with the little mongrel dog.
Apparently, that time Sam was close enough to shoot the bear but he didn't. McCaslin asked him why he didn't.
Before Sam could reply, McCaslin pulled a book off the shelf and read a few lines from Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn."
Sam said the poem talks about a girl.
McCaslin said it talked about truth, and that truth was one and didn't change. He also said that virtues like honor, pride, pity, justice, courage and love all touch the heart and therefore create truth.
Isaac remembers that conversation like it was yesterday.
Isaac reflects on their "ravaged patrimony" and the "ravaged fatherland" still prone and panting from the brutal war and its aftermath.
(Editorial interlude: Shmoop can't help but marvel at how Faulkner likens the war here to an "etherless operation,," i.e., the nation being cut open without anesthesia. Genius.)
Thanks for your attention. Now back to Isaac and McCaslin's conversation:
OK, says McCaslin ; so the land is cursed because of slavery.
Isaac tells him that the problem isn't with the land, it's with us, the whole family: the white, female Edmonds side, and the black, male Beauchamp side.
McCaslin says he'll say this just one more time, that Isaac has to realize he's the only white descendent from the male line of Old Carothers.
Isaac declares he's free of the whole business—the tainted legacy of his ancestors, including the plantation.
McCaslin finally comes around to kind of understanding why Isaac needed to be free from his inheritance.
Narrator: And so, Isaac, not yet "Uncle Ike," long before he would be living in one rented room, sleeping on an iron cot [...] (there's a mention of a tin coffee-pot and the sentence cuts out without the idea being completed).
In other news…
There's been a legacy for Isaac from Uncle Hubert Beauchamp: a silver cup filled with gold pieces. When Isaac turned twenty-one, he would inherit it.
Two weeks after Isaac's born, his Uncle Hubert puts the coins in the cup and then seals it all in a burlap envelope in front of everyone.
They see the envelope from time to time when they visit Uncle Hubert.
As Isaac gets older, it's just Isaac, his mother, Tennie and Tomey's Terrel/Turl that visit.
Uncle Buddy's getting frail, and Buck stays home with him.
Uncle Hubert isn't married. He doesn't work. To survive, he gradually sells off the belongings in his house.
On one visit, Isaac's mother sees a black woman wearing one of her old dresses.
Uncle Hubert first says that she's his cook. We don't think Isaac's mother buys it.
Hubert says, "They are free now. They're folks just like we are!" to which Sophonsiba responds by saying, "My mother's house! Defiled!"
Isaac next remembers Hubert sending the woman away, and Tennie looking after her with an "inscrutable" face.
Sometime later, when Uncle Hubert is on his deathbed, he calls McCaslin and Isaac over and wants them to open the parcel. Uncle Hubert seems to want to tell Isaac something, but he can't speak.
At this point, Isaac's is ten and his mother's already dead. He decides to wait until he's twenty-one to open the parcel.
When he's twenty-one, they open the parcel and a tin coffee cup and some copper coins fall out. Umm, wasn't that supposed to be gold in a silver cup? Yes, it was, but something happened.
And there are many small, folded papers that are dated and signed, beginning from six months after Uncle Hubert had first sealed the envelope.
These are IOU notes from his Uncle Hubert saying he owes his nephew so many gold coins. The last one of these says that he owes a silver cup.
After this mental detour of Isaac, we're back to the conversation with McCaslin.
Since the Uncle Hubert inheritance turns out to be nothing at all, McCaslin says that Isaac will now have to accept his other inheritance.
Isaac doesn't want to, and instead says he'll only accept it as a loan from McCaslin. McCaslin says Isaac will have to go the bank and get the money himself.
He's surprising even himself with the path he's chosen.
So he takes a loan and spends a month living with General Compson and Major de Spain.
He starts to work as a carpenter, partners up with another carpenter and then pays the loan back.
He even makes more money than necessary to pay the loan back but McCaslin won't accept it.
Isaac gets married. Yes, you heard it right. He really does.
Don't get too excited, though, because we never even learn his wife's name. She's "the wife."
She knows about Isaac's inheritance, and seems to expect to be the mistress of a large plantation.
The old carpenter and Isaac start to build a bungalow for Isaac and his wife on a lot that her father owns in town.
One night, she makes him sit down and tries to have a serious conversation with him.
She asks about the plantation, and doesn't want to hear about Isaac's renunciation of his inheritance.
When Isaac makes it clear that he'll never change his mind, she seduces him.
Up until this point, Isaac has never seen his wife naked, let alone seductive.
He tries to make a move and thinks that in this moment she looks like a "composite of all woman-flesh." It's probably for the better that he doesn't say this charming phrase out loud.
He also thinks, "It was nothing like he had ever dreamed, let alone heard in mere man-talking." Guess what? They did actually just have sex right there. If you blinked, you missed it.
She starts to cry (just like she did on their wedding night), or so he thinks.
She: That's all from me. If this doesn't get you that son you talk about, it won't be my fault.
Then she starts to laugh.

Section 5

Isaac goes to the camp one last time before the lumber company moves in and starts cutting down the forest.
Flashback to a few years before:
After the winter Sam Fathers and Lion died, Major de Spain never went back to hunt, but told the others to use his house and hunt whenever they wanted. (Remember, he owns the whole area.)
General Compson and Walter Ewell wanted to incorporate the old hunting group into a club and lease the camp and hunting privileges. Major de Spain declined this idea.
The following November, they went hunting without letting Major de Spain know (but he probably knew of it anyway). That time was General Compson's last time hunting, as well.
The spring after that, they learned that Major de Spain had sold the timber-rights of his land to a Memphis lumber company.
Back to the present time of the story:
Now, it's June of the same year Major de Spain sells the timber-rights.
Isaac goes to Major de Spain to ask if he could go hunting. No problem.
Isaac asks if Boon could also come. Major de Spain says that he'll send Boon and Ash out.
Soon, he rides his mare out to Hoke's, where they're now building a wood-planing mill.
Isaac's completely shocked when he sees the half-finished mill.
He arranges for the care of his mule and leaves town on the log-train as soon as he can.
Even though it's the exact same train and most of the same people running it, the fact that there's a mill means that nothing will be the same again.
Isaac now understands why Major de Spain can't bear to come back. He decides this will be the last time for him as well.
When Isaac gets off the train, he meets Ash and learns that Boon's already in the woods, waiting for Isaac by the Gum Tree.
If one creeps up to the tree slowly and then suddenly runs into the clearing, one can shoot up to a dozen squirrels, since they have no other tree to jump to, and can't escape.
Ash tells Isaac that if he wants any dinner, he and Boon need to be back in an hour. He also says, cryptically, "Watch your feet. They're crawling." Crawling? Maybe he's talking about bugs, maybe snakes.
Either way, nothing sweet and cuddly.
In the woods, Isaac reminisces about some of the things he experienced there. We get the entire reminiscence in a few incredibly long sentences in italics.
When Isaac killed his first deer and returned to camp, and Ash found out about it, he was really upset and couldn't cook dinner.
It became apparent the next day that Ash wanted to go out and shoot a deer himself in the woods.
So Isaac and Ash go out hunting.
After walking for a while, he and Ash suddenly came upon a yearling bear on his hind legs.
Ash tried to shoot, but didn't really know how to use the gun properly.
Suddenly, the gun shot out a big fireball from Ash's misfires.
On the way back, Isaac carried the gun himself, not trusting Ash with it.
End of reminiscence.
Now we're back in the woods with the older Isaac.
The narrator says that Isaac's been raised by the woods and now the woods will be his mistress and wife as well. (Ah, we get it: it's because his wife will reject him forever.)
Isaac finds himself walking not towards the Gum Tree, but away from it.
He thinks of how a short while ago, he was still a child, and wasn't allowed to go out in these woods by himself.
Now he's so skilled a woodsman that he doesn't even need a compass to find his way. (Although he knows from experience that he needs to carry and use one, so don't get any ideas. Be prepared, etc.)
As he's walking around, he comes upon the mound where the graves of Sam Fathers and Lion are supposed to be.
A tin box with Old Ben's dried paw inside is hanging from a tree above the graves. It's been only two years since they've died.
He locates Sam's grave and thinks that Sam must know that Isaac's here visiting.
Isaac thinks about how Sam, Lion or Old Ben haven't really disappeared after death, but have instead become part of one big universe.
Suddenly, Isaac sees a green snake right in front of him. Ah, so this was what Ash meant when he said, "Watch out. They're crawling."
The snake is more than six feet long and smells like rotting cucumbers. Finally, the snake gracefully glides away from him.
Isaac does what he once saw Sam Fathers do upon seeing the big buck. He raises his hand, and says, "Chief. Grandfather."
Sometime later, he hears a hammering sound coming from the direction of the clearing with the Gum Tree.
He goes in that direction and sees about forty or fifty squirrels running around madly on the Gum Tree.
He then spots Boon sitting under the tree and hammering his gun, smashing it to pieces.
He doesn't look at Isaac, but yells out: Don't touch them! They're mine!
Whew—you made it through this story. Hang in there.

Section 6: Delta Autumn

The hunting party is on their way to the Delta again.
The narrator's inside old Isaac's mind:
They've been doing this every November for fifty years.
Remember what it used to be like: they used to come in wagons. There were bear. You could shoot does or fawns, too, as they were abundant.
Now they go in cars, and go farther, because the territory in which you can hunt game has been shrinking and you have to drive a ways to get to it.
Isaac, or "Uncle Ike" in this story, is near eighty now, but he can still shoot almost as well as before.
Roth is driving the car, but he stops abruptly and says he doesn't want to go into the wilderness.
Roth's friends are in the car, and one of them, Legate, teases Roth.
Legate says that Roth will definitely go into the wilderness because he has a "pretty light colored doe that walks on two legs" waiting for him.
Uncle Ike asks what that means, but gets no answer. He does remember, though, that Roth disappeared for a night last time they'd come to the camp.
Roth starts to drive again, and now the hunting party starts to argue about various things.
Roth is in a horrible mood, and says this will be the last time they come hunting anyway because Hitler will win the war.
They argue about whether Hitler can invade the U.S., and if he does, what would happen.
Old Isaac says the U.S. has good men and can fight Hitler.
Roth responds that nothing good would be left in the country.
Isaac says it's worth fighting for the "does and fawns both," that is, for the women and the children.
This seems to upset Roth, who quips that there's never any scarcity of those two things.
Isaac watches the land as they drive and thinks about how it's changed all these years.
Farms have turned into towns. Slavery has given way to hired labor, and people now labor away behind closed doors.
By early afternoon, they're at the river crossing.
They lead the horses through the water and take a motorboat across.
As they set up camp, Isaac thinks about how he won't be able to sleep that night (because of excitement and old age) and will be too tired to go hunting the next morning. But he thinks it's okay because he loves nights at the camp.
They eat "town food" and "town meat" at night.
Isaac starts to reminisce to the younger guys about how there used to be so much game that they would never imagine coming to camp with store-bought meat.
Roth doesn't want to hear all this talk about the good old days. He's in a rotten mood.
Roth's taking Isaac's comments pretty personally, like he's not as good as the old guys.
Isaac says he thinks there are good men everywhere and at all times, and that most people are really better than their circumstances allow.
Roth then starts in on Isaac. He says: you've lived so long and of course know everything. If you're so awesome, where have you been all the time you were "dead"?
Dead? Huh? Roth's referring to the fact that Isaac gave up his right to the plantation and withdrew from life to some ratty cottage in town.
Except for the two weeks of hunting every November, Isaac's been "dead" to those around him.
Isaac responds that if being "alive" would have taught him anything different, he's satisfied with what he's done.
One of the other men interjects and asks Roth if he believes men are good only if the law is watching. Roth agrees with this idea.
Isaac disagrees. He seems to be mellowing in his old age.
Roth's annoying friend Legate again tries to tease Roth about does.
But Isaac keeps talking. He says there used to be so much game that one could also shoot does. But now, people have overhunted, and you can't shoot does (that is, if you're a real man) because that would wipe out the deer population.
Isaac's trying to tell them about that very first principle he learned from Sam Fathers: it's not hunting that makes you a real man, but respecting your elders and respecting the wilderness.
He finishes by implying that humans hunt because they aren't God yet. That is, they have to hunt because they are fallen.
One of the men asks when man will become God, and Isaac responds that he thinks a woman and a man, when they are "together," are God.
Roth Edmonds responds that there are some Gods in this world he wouldn't touch with a long stick, including himself.
What is with him?
Isaac can't sleep that night for thinking.
He thinks about the past, about how he first started coming to camp sixty years ago.
He thinks about Sam Fathers and the things that Sam taught him about respecting nature.
He also thinks how it wasn't actually him vs. nature, but instead him vs. "the wrong and shame" of the tamed land, by which he means the slavery and incest in their past.
Once he understood that wrong and shame as a teenager, he thought he could "cure the wrong and eradicate the shame," but as he grew up, he understood he couldn't do either. He could at best repudiate it.
Isaac thinks about his wife and how he lost her.
He thinks about how progress has ruined everything.
He finally realizes why he repudiated his inherited land: to try to stop the march of progress, or at least to see how long he could hold out against it.
He sees the wilderness and himself as of the same lifespan. When the wilderness succumbs to progress, he will also succumb.
He thinks about life after death and his belief in the immortal wilderness.
He falls asleep. Finally.
Isaac is so tired the next morning that he stays in bed while the others leave for the expedition.
As the men are leaving, Roth Edmonds comes over to Isaac's bed and hands him a thick envelope. He says someone will come looking for him, and that Isaac should give her the envelope and tell her No.
Isaac asks Roth, "Tell who?" but Roth doesn't respond.
Isaac opens the envelope and sees many banknotes inside. Then Roth says "Tell her No."
Isaac asks him what it is that he doesn't have the courage to face.
Roth just says, "Nothing!" and leaves.
Sometime later, a woman shows up. She is wearing "country woman" garments and is carrying a bundle.
Isaac can't really deal with all this, so he's is being really curt with her at first. He gives her the envelope. She recognizes him as "Uncle Isaac."
Isaac relays Roth's message.
She opens the envelope, looks into it and sees it's just money. She was expecting some sort of note or message.
Isaac is still being mean, so he says, "What did you expect when you got that child from him?" (6.82).
She says she didn't know him very well, was only with him for six weeks, and they were living together in a rented place.
Isaac says that doesn't count as marriage, and she should have known that Roth wouldn't be obliged to marry her afterwards.
Isaac asks her what she wants.
She starts to talk about the McCaslin family, about Roth and Isaac's shared ancestor, about Tomey's Turl and Tennie Beauchamp. She seems to know a lot about the family.
She says that Isaac's responsible for spoiling Roth by giving away his own share of the land to Roth's grandfather.
Isaac is offended. He asks her more about who she is and where she's from.
Suddenly, he realizes that she is actually part African American. He didn't know that before.
She says Tennie's Jim, James Beauchamp, is her grandfather. She's related to both Isaac and Roth.
Isaac now sees that the bundle she has with her is her and Roth's baby.
Isaac asks her if Roth knows she is James Beauchamp's granddaughter. She says no. She says she is leaving for the North anyway, so none of this matters.
Isaac tells her to leave. She starts to leave but has left the money behind. Isaac tells her to take the money, and she finally, reluctantly does.
Isaac then tells her to wait. He asks her if the child is a son. She says yes.
Isaac's still being really harsh and short with her, but tells her to take the hunting horn hanging in the tent. It's the hunting horn General Compson had left Isaac in his will. He wants the boy to have it.
He gives her some parting advice: go North and marry a black man, and then she'll forget this all ever happened.
She asks Isaac if he has lived so long he has forgotten what love is. And then she leaves.
Kind of stunned by all this, Isaac thinks that one day "Chinese and African and Aryan and Jew" will all "breed and spawn together" until no one can tell them apart and no one will care (6.112). He thinks this will be the revenge on the South for slavery and destroying the land.
Suddenly, Legate comes into the tent. He's looking for a knife. Roth just shot a deer.
Isaac asks him what it was, buck or doe, but Legate avoids the question by saying it was just a deer. He leaves.
Isaac knows it was definitely a doe.

Go Down, Moses "The Bear" Summary

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Section 5

Section 6: Delta Autumn

Tired of ads?