A Question about Lucas by Qiaofeng Zhong

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 often mentioned by himself in his internal monologue. So, I had thought that he was not only not indifferent and ancestryless, but secretly cared a lot about his ancestry. Was I reading either this passage or Lucas wrongly, or is it also possible that Lucas had somehow changed?

I would also like to know why was Lucas able to be this vessel. There were other characters in this story who were like him, though not depicted in detail, that suffered from their identity and became the battleground of and sacrific for the "toxin and its anti". 



Comments

  1. Duong TrinhApril 18, 2021 at 10:55 PM

    I think the ambiguity of Lucas’ mixed blood renders him indifferent and impervious to his McCaslin blood. He is neither truly white nor totally black. In the world of those days when people are categorized into only whites and blacks, Lucas might be considered, or consider himself, as a nobody. He is indifferent to his McCaslin blood because even if he admits it, that would still be not sufficient, or practically useless, to determine who he is. Who is able to accept that the privileged and unprivileged bloods are at the same place owing to their contradiction?

    If Lucas puts too much attention to his McCaslin blood, I don’t think he would spend that many years cultivating on McCaslins’ plantation. His self-esteem is not going to allow him to serve those that are equal to or even less than himself in terms of age. In other words, Lucas’ indifference to his McCaslin is not only to keep him working hard to earn necessities despite social prejudices toward colored people. The fact that he is indifferent also proves that he doesn’t have any notions of nobility. He doesn’t think the McCaslins are noble and prestigious enough for him to “need to strive with it”. I guess his opinion makes sense. Provided that the McCaslins appear so to him, they would have recognized him to be one of their descendants. Especially, there is mention in the story that Roth Edmonds knows Lucas belongs to the McCaslin family.

    However, it’s still worthwhile questioning why Lucas is so obsessed with the medal detector, when he is indifferent to his McCaslin blood. It’s not about the money because Lucas has more than he needs, and even remembers “the cold and contemptuous curiosity” having watched those who came to the hereditary land to dig up buried money. Even if he is able to dig up more than one penny, who would believe that it assigned by Buck and Buddy to him, a slave? Therefore, Lucas may not want to seek a connection with the McCaslins, using the medal detector to find the heritage by chance. I feel like Lucas is a very lonely guy. To trace back his origin to determine his identity, he looks for the existence of someone like him, as indicated by “he, to share one jot, one penny of the money which old Buck and Buddy had buried almost a hundred years ago, with an interloper without forebears and sprung from nowhere and whose very name was unknown in the country twenty-five years ago…” Does he believe there was someone who didn’t know one’s ancestors and came to this land to bury one’s posessions like Lucas? Then, by seeking the buried money, he would also find that person’s traces to be more certain of his existence, that he is alone in the search of his untitled identity.


    Last but not least, as a mixed person, Lucas is not ashamed of his identity. He is curious about it, but never thinks of himself as a slave. He has self-respect and even critical judgments towards Roth and Zack Edmonds who he thinks don't deserve to own this land like he does. "The toxin and its anti stalemated each other" turns him into a person without self-doubt and self-contradiction. This makes him able to become a vessel that doesn't suffer nor gets hindered by his surroundings.

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  2. Krishnan VenkateshMay 2, 2021 at 9:29 PM

    I think Ms.Trinh is very astute about this. It may be that this is what the older Lucas has arrived at, years after the struggle with Zack. Also it may be that this is how Roth sees it, as he tries to understand the older Lucas. For him I think the crucial and dizzying realization comes when he sees that Lucas is treating the mule as his own property.

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