On Faulkner’s “Pantaloon in Black” by Ms. Bucher

  

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, and, of course, Dell'Arte International (DAI). Let’s just say that DAI certainly lives up to its artistic vision statement with this festival: "Dell'Arte International seeks to create resonant works of theatre that are visceral, athletic and that engage the mystery underlying all experience. We revel in ferocious play” (https://dellarte.com/about-dellarte-international/). DAI consists of a professional, international touring ensemble and the physical theatre international training school. Formed by devotees of a type of physical theatre called Commedia dell’arte, an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italy, that was popular in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century. These productions always emphasized the absurd, and one of its comedic characters would always play the audacious fool. In fact, a “Pantaloon” is a stock Dell’arte character that, while not exactly a caricature of Rider himself, would be known for clownish, buffoonish, and foolish mistakes of judgement and greed. Perhaps this is the way Faulkner is pointing… the comic tragedy of Rider’s absurd, desperate life. 


    Rider, though a tragic figure indeed, is seen through the eyes of the white men as a perfect exhibition of the nature of a Pantaloon. He is depicted by all the white characters in the story as acting crazy. He behaves with larger than life physical fierceness and recklessness, his super large strength and aggression focusing everyone on his scary masculine defiance. He worries the white men who view him as acting outlandishly, ignorantly, and unintelligibly (going to work, throwing logs, drinking a full jug of moonshine, going after a corrupt white man, laughing in the jail cell). He is explicitly seen by the Deputy Sheriff, as being too foolish and selfish as to stay home for a day or so to grieve for his wife (a fundamental social expectation, regardless of the true feelings of the husband about his departure). As the Deputy states, “His wife dies on him. All right. But does he grieve? He's the biggest and busiest man at the funeral. Grabs a shovel before they even got the box into the grave they tell me, and starts throwing dirt onto her faster than a slip scraper could have done it.” Further, the Deputy exclaims, 

“everybody else expected him to take the day off since even a nigger couldn't want no better excuse for a holiday than he had just buried his wife, when a white man would have took the day off out of pure respect no matter how he felt about his wife, when even a little child would have had sense enough to take a day off when he would still get paid for it too. But not him. ”

Instead of recognizing Rider’s debilitating grief and intense love, the Deputy believes Rider (and black people in general) is not capable of such sensitivity/depth of emotion. And his foolishness, as the white man sees it, will be punished effectively by Birdsong’s kin. As discussed in class, the Deputy does not see Rider (nor any black person) as a human being, 

“I swear to godfrey, it's a wonder we have as little trouble with them as we do. Because why? Because they ain't human. They look like a man and they walk on their hind legs like a man, and they can talk and you can understand them and you think they are understanding you, at least now and then. But when it comes to the normal human feelings and sentiments of human beings, they might just as well be a damn herd of wild buffaloes.” 

    But perhaps we are also to consider that, following the loss of his wife, Rider sees himself as the crazy character in his own play. He deliberately seeks to kill himself, to be with Mannie in death, then finally secures the desire by cutting the throat of a white man. We can see his pain when he imagines his dead wife at his home,

“He stopped at once, not breathing again, motionless, willing his eyes to see that she had stopped too. But she had not stopped. She was fading, going. "Wait," he said, talking as sweet as he had ever heard his voice speak to a woman: "Den lemme go wid you, honey." But she was going. She was going fast now, he could actually feel between them the insuperable barrier of that very strength which could handle alone a log which would have taken any two other men to handle, of the blood and bones and flesh too strong, invincible for life, having learned at least once with his own eyes how tough, even in sudden and violent death, not a young man's bones and flesh perhaps but the will of that bone and flesh to remain alive, actually was.”

Without her, he is lost in gaping emptiness.  Perhaps he starts laughing hysterically in the jail cell at the absurdity of his own life and those all around him. He is the wild loser, the physically magnificent and ferocious actor. The Pantaloon.

        Perhaps Faulkner was reminding us that the white culture of the South had created such an impossible life for blacks to live with dignity and peace and acceptance for their shared human experience, that they had turned the black man into a fool (even in such tragedy), in their own ignorance or for their own amusement.  Certainly the Deputy is depicting Rider as a pantaloon caricature, not a human being.  Maybe this is what Rider was saying too.