Carothers McCaslin’s Progeny Tracing the Theme of Redemption Chronologically Through the Multiracial McCaslinsPosted in Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Papers/Presentations, United States on 2011-12-15 22:48Z by Steven |
Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
1999
Paper 211
pages 38-50
Christine Reiss
Western Kentucky University
William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses (1942) is a novel that depicts the complicated family history of the McCaslins. There are primarily three branches of the family: the white, male-descended McCaslins, the white, female-descended Edmondses, and the multiracial, male-descended Beauchamps. The multiracial line of the family, the Beauchamps, are the progeny of the original McCaslin patriarch, old Carothers McCaslin. His act of miscegenation with one of his slaves produces a daughter, on whom he then fathers a son. This act of miscegenation and incest sets in motion a family line that struggles with the weight of its father’s sin. The individuals seek to live the most liberated lives that they can, given the various social constraints with which they come into contact, and by the end of the novel, they accomplish a fair measure of freedom, perhaps even redemption, from their father’s sin.
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