Voicesyesvoices

       In class, we wrestled with the question of why Isaac McCaslin chose to give up his inheritance. I then wondered, too, what it might mean if Isaac had agreed to receive it: what does it mean for one to receive one’s inheritance, and how can this question help us understand the motive behind Ike’s decision.       In accepting one’s inheritance, one necessarily makes a statement about family and about the people they belong to. To accept an inheritance, therefore, is to embrace one’s own history and ancestry—to take what ancestry has built and to further it for the sake of posterity—for the sake of perpetuating that history.       In this way, it makes sense that Ike, one who has read about his family’s depraved history, decides to forsake his inheritance. He wants neither to perpetuate the history written on the ledgers nor be a part of it. This is perhaps why he never has children in the future and even chooses to liv...

     What caught my eye in the first seciton of the bear was the saliva that tasted like brass and how it was always associated with the bear. The child tasted it when he was dreaming about the bear and when he realised he was being watched by the bear. Faulkner seemed to be suggesting that this saliva was related to a natural fear. "Because he recognised now what he had smelled in the huddled dogs and tasted in his own saliva, recognised fear as a boy." And this fear, just like the existence of love and passion, was "in his heritage but not yet his patrimony." (I was also wondering about the difference between these two words, heritage and patrimony. I read this fear as something natural because I read the word heritage to be more of a natural kind than patrimony, but I could be very wrong.) What was confusing for me was how this saliva, this recognition of fear, led the child to think that he "will have to see [the bear]...will have to look at him." And ...

  Gen ealogy Reflections in “The Bear” by Ms. Bucher   We have spent much time in class stumbling over the genealogy in Go Down, Moses . When trying hard to follow the twisted, obscure genealogy, it is clear that the McClaslin family tree is a complicated double helix of both white and black branches. But the power of the family dynamic becomes even more powerful the moment that Issac McClaslin, grandson of patriarch Lucius Quintus Carothers McClaslin, pushes away his inheritance of the plantation. The question brought up in class many times still plagues me: Why does he reject his rightful ownership of the family land? Possible reasons come to mind easily: He may not want the responsibility for the care and support of all the people, both black and white, that live and work the land. He has been raised in large part by Sam Fathers who taught him to love nature, the wild, and the liberty of a life unfettered by any interest in social or economic expectations. And he needs to b...

 I need some help understanding the entries concerning Percavil Brownly. Many of the entries were humorous, and Buck and Buddy clearly struggled to find a use for Percavil. The place where I got confused was how they handled him when they ran out of options. I cannot decipher what their final decision was, and how it exemplified "general and condoned injustice and its slow amortization"

Twice in the story The Bear, the titular character is described as being "absolved of mortality." (p.183, p.193) Yet, obviously, the bear is killed. So why described Old Ben as such, as being absolved of mortality, or not, it would seem, being subject to death? The bear runs in Ike's "knowledge before he ever saw it," and is "out of an old dead time." (193). He is not even a "mortal beast" but an anachronism--a thing from the past, a mystical thing living out of time. Old Ben is totally solitary, no other creature in this present shares his blood, he is a "widower childless." He is alone, misplaced in time, and cannot die--until he does. The forest, the bear's home, alien to him in time but not place is dying alongside him. Men gnaw at its edges, making it a "doomed wilderness" in the name of progress--so the wilderness also seems out of time in a society consumed with civilization and progress and trains and caging an...

What does the boy learn during the event of killing the buck, and what does he think about another buck being called “grandfather”? What does he learn about humanity in relation to nature, and how might this education affect one’s view of racism? In the story we learn that the boy’s cousin is Mcaslin Edmonds, which, from the first story, allows us to know that this boy is Isaac Mcaslin—Isaac Mcaslin, who, “in all his life had owned but one object more than he could wear and carry in his pockets and his hands at one time, and this was the narrow iron cot and the stained lean mattress which he used camping in the woods for deer and bear or for fishing or simply because he loved the woods; who owned no property and never desired to since the earth was no man’s but all men’s, as light and air and water were” (Faulkner 5). Does this description of uncle Ike fit well with what he has learned in this childhood event? // I wanted to ask this question because I went to the woods the other week ...

Some Questions About Shame Maxfield Fleishman  In "The Fire and the Hearth," young Henry Beauchamp and Carothers Edmonds are something like brothers. They were inseperable from birth. They sucked together as babies, played together as children, slept together even, in the same bed. When Lucas demands that Molly come back home to his fire and hearth, she brings Henry and Roth with her.  When Carothers is seven years old, he changes in relation to his foster-brother. "Then one day the old curse of his fathers, the old haught ancestral pride based not on any value but on an accident of geography, stemmed not from courage and honor but wrong and shame, descended to him." (107) Roth says he wants to go home. Lucas follows him there. They lie in separate beds now, for the first time. Henry falls asleep. "But [Roth] didn't sleep, long after Henry's quiet and untroubled breathing had begun, lying in a rigid fury of the grief he could not explain, the shame he w...

   From the Recueil Fossard, a scene depicting the clowns Arlecchino and Zanni Corneto, with the miser Pantalone. [The Recueil Fossard is a collection of engravings of the Commedia dell’Arte, commissioned by Louis XIV to Fossard] Photo Credit: https://www.maskmuseum.org/masks-in-history/ On Faulkner’s “Pantaloon in Black” in Go Down, Moses : The Pantaloon of the Show Once upon a time, I was but a small child living in Arcata, California. Amid the redwood forests and the northern coastline of Humboldt County, there are no dull moments as the community reveals in the arts, festivals, beaches, groves, live music, food, sculpture races, and markets. One such event is the annual, ecstatic, and wild Mad River Festival (organized by the local and famous physical theatre company, Dell'Arte International)! Energetic and kind peoples flock the lawn of Dell’Arte’s amphitheatre in handmade masks to enjoy and partake in dancing, arts, community, music, local beer, celebration, folkmusic, a...

Because I don’t have any time to waste at St. John’s, I sometimes rely on literary family trees while I’m reading. I helped myself to this online, extra-textual implement for War and Peace, and I have done the same since beginning Go Down, Moses . Surely this usage thwarts Faulkner’s purposes of keeping the reader in suspense and in need of untangling the familial relationships herself, but for me this would all be done on a second reading, with meticulous care, to which I can’t commit during school; so I use the family tree.  The family tree visually, blatantly displays the wrongs committed by the McCaslins, beginning with Carothers McCaslin. These transgressions include the presumed rape of Eunice and Tomey and the incest. Furthermore, the tree displays the more paradoxical aspects of the family: the tenacity of the tree to remain a whole, and the striking conclusory reunion of the two family lines. The picture presents a synoptic “narration” of the convoluted history of the McCa...

Though we talked about this passage in class, I am still very struck and puzzled by the paragraph Ms. Landres brought up on Thursday.: "Yet it was not that Lucas made capital of his white or even his McCaslin blood, but the contrary. It was as if he were not only impervious to that blood, he was indifferent to it. He didn't even need to strive with it. He didn't even have to bother to defy it. He resisted it simply by being the composite of the two races which made him, simply by possessing it. Insteaed of being at once the battleground and victim of the two strains, he was a vessel, durable, ancestryless, nonconductive, in which the toxin and its anti stalemated one another, seetheless, unrumored in the outside air." First of all, I am not understanding why was Lucas described as "indifferent" to his McCaslin blood or how he could be described as ancestryless. Perhaps I was not reading the English correctly, but I thought that Lucas' McCaslin blood was ...

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~sfr/FAULKNER/09gdmgen.html   I've posted above a very useful link to genealogical diagrams for the whole McCaslin family. If it helps, it helps -- as long as we grasp firmly that these trees are arrived at after reading the whole of Go Down Moses . But do such diagrams of the whole backdrop actually help us in experiencing the book, or do they reduce the experience of the relationships here to a web of abstractions? It's a bit like walking through an art gallery and reading the signs and labels before looking at the painting.     Even in multiple readings of this book the primary questions are Who?  and When? Who is this character? Who is he related to? When did this incident take place? Look how subtly and carefully Faulkner unfolds the family background of Lucas Beauchamp, every few pages or so dropping some details of his precise relationship to the grandfather of everyone -- and when this information is given it is always appr...

    (Photo credit: happilymixedup.com) The following is a short version of something I wrote some years ago to help myself understand how racism has affected me. I'm posting it here in the hope that some might find it useful or interesting.  My title is not ironic: through the many episodes of “Paki-bashing,” the confrontations on the streets, the name-calling and taunting, the subtle and not-so-subtle rejections, the fear and loneliness and self-hatred that racism brings to its victims,  I have grown and become a better, more thoughtful person. For one thing, because of it I have more empathy for the outcast, the refugee, and those who are persecuted for their difference. I have also become more resilient. Maturity often comes from absorbing criticism and even abuse, and then growing out of it — like some trees I have seen in the mountains, slender pines apparently growing out of granite boulders from which fortress no tornado or raging winter storm will ever manage...

We had gotten a glimpse of Black Sorrow Songs in our Du Bois readings, but I wanted to share this one as well. I'm thinking Faulkner's book is named after this song. Here is the link.    https://youtu.be/w3OjHIhLCDs I will also share its lyrics below:  lyrics: When Israel was in Egypt land, Let my people go! Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go! Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharao to let my people go! "Thus spoke the Lord", bold Moses said, Let my people go! "If not I'll smite your first-born dead!" Let my people go! Go down... Your foes shall not before you stand, Let my people go! and you'll possess fair Canaan's land Let my people go! Go down... You'll not get lost in the wilderness Let my people go! with a lighted candle in your breast. Let my people go! Go down... It strikes me that Moses is Israelite, but grew up among Egyptian Royalty. To these royal Egyptians he was family, but also outsider...

  My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — In Corners — till a Day The Owner passed — identified — And carried Me away — And now We roam in Sovereign Woods — And now We hunt the Doe — And every time I speak for Him — The Mountains straight reply — And do I smile, such cordial light Upon the Valley glow — It is as a Vesuvian face Had let its pleasure through — And when at Night — Our good Day done — I guard My Master’s Head — ‘Tis better than the Eider-Duck’s Deep Pillow — to have shared — To foe of His — I’m deadly foe — None stir the second time — On whom I lay a Yellow Eye — Or an emphatic Thumb — Though I than He — may longer live He longer must — than I — For I have but the power to kill, Without — the power to die — This poem begins and ends with the potential to inflict death. The narrator’s life is a Loaded Gun ready to be carried in the first stanza, and she has the power to kill but not to die in the final lines. She moves and hunts through t...

 What Kind of Debauchery? What Kind of Joy? I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed (214) Maxfield Fleishman I taste a liquor never brewed –  From Tankards scooped in Pearl –  Not all the Frankfort Berries Yield such an Alcohol! Inebriate of air – am I –  And Debauchee of Dew –  Reeling – thro' endless summer days –  From inns of molten Blue –  When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove's door –  When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –  I shall but drink the more! Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –  And Saints – to windows run –  To see the little Tippler Leaning against the – Sun! Being a drunkard has its joys, but what saint ever ran to witness a tippler deep in her revelry?  Dickinson's poem 214 describes an "Inebriate of air," a "Debauchee of Dew - " who refuses to put down her drink, which is "never brewed - " an...

The first question I had about this poem originated from my different reading of this poem from Mr. Gilmour's and I might be very wrong about this. My first thought when reading this poem was that the Master was God and that the poet recognized herself as the object, defender, soldier, and weapon of God. She roamed, hunted, smiled, and suffered with her Master. However, if that was the case, then the last stanza does not really make sense to me. If the Master was indeed God, then what does it mean for the poet to say " Though I than He - may longer live? " The second question I have about this poem is also in the stanza: "He longer must - than I - For I have but the power to kill, Without - the power to die -" I couldn't help but feel that this last stanza reminds me of and puts an emphasis on the fact that the poet, as the loaded gun, was merely an object of this Master, that she was always going to be enslaved by this Master, despite all the things they we...

 What does this poem seek to communicate? What are supposed to learn from it?  After re-reading it several times, I'm still left feeling adrift in it, not sure what to make of it.  I want to share two initial and basic readings that I have, ones that are kind of brash and unsubtle, just so we can start somewhere, and I will also share some related ramblings as well. Maybe what I can offer can spark some conversation that can help me (and us) see deeper into the poem. I think I would be most happy if we could start a dialogue in the comments of this post together.  My first reading of the poem considers the significance of the image of the speaker as a loaded gun and how it's carried through the rest of the poem. In the first stanza, I see her, as a gun, standing upright in some corner of a room, perhaps unused and forgotten. The "Owner," having passed by her, notices the gun and takes the opportunity to go hunting in the woods. This is picked up in the next stan...

   Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun – Or rather – He passed Us – The Dews drew quivering and Chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle – We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground – Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity – Photo: “Because I could not stop for Death –” fanart found on Etsy   Some music that may set the mood: Igor Stravinsky's Elegy for Solo Viola .