“We Are More Than Our Fathers” by Anjelo Reyes

     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 live in the woods—his mistress—where there is a sense of belonging without the familial bond. But does it now seem that Ike is averse to family in general, or is he simply averse to his own family?

    It seems that Ike is not averse to the idea of family. On the contrary, his view of people often acknowledges ancestry and history:

    Sam Fathers: “an old man, son of a negro slave and an Indian king, inheritor on the one hand of the long chronicle of of a people who had learned humility through suffering and learned pride through the endurance which survived suffering…” (Faulkner 281)

    In this example, Ike reveals that he sees Sam Fathers through the lens of history and heritage. He does not ignore his past but is deeply sensitive to it. How might such a history affect the way one sees and interacts with the world—with nature? 

    A second instance of seeing people’s ancestry and history deals with black people in general. In section four of The Bear, Ike argues with his cousin McCaslin and says this about black folk: 

“‘They are better than we are. Stronger than we are. Their vices aped from white men or that white men and bondage have taught them: improvidence and intemperance and evasion—not laziness: evasion: of what white men had set them to, not for their aggrandizement or even comfort but his own—‘ and McCaslin

‘All right. Go on: Promiscuity. Violence. Instability and lack of control. Inability to distinguish between mine and thine—‘ and he

‘How distinguish, when for two hundred years mine did not even exist for them?’” (Faulkner 280)

    In this example, Ike does not ignore the history of the black folk, but places great importance on it. He acknowledges very seriously their ancestry in defending their goodness and dignity.

    In this way, we see that Ike is not averse to family or ancestry. He is deeply sensitive to it and actually tends to view others in light of history. At the same time, because he is so sensitive to history, Ike seeks to abandon his own—to escape it by revoking inheritance. In this way Ike is able to show us that even though history is important, it is not everything. We can be more than our fathers. We can choose not to perpetuate the history they have fostered.