Gateway to the Fantastical Faulkner

Gateway to the Fantastical Faulkner:

"Pantaloon in Black" in the Development of Go Down, Moses

Go Down, Moses is one of Faulkner's works that, while categorizing and describing behavior in the Old South, proves to be an uncanny mйlange of short stories characterizing some outlandish personalities and outlining superstitions of Southerners. While the first few stories (i.e. "Was" and "The Fire and the Hearth") do little to promote the supernatural undertones of the whole novel, "Pantaloon in Black" is the threshold that Faulkner fabricates in order to usher the reader into a world of supernatural and Native American-esque beliefs. A website called "Documenting the American South" says, "The most obvious feature distinguishing the South from the rest of the United States was its racial composition and the resulting historical developments provoked by profound sectional difference... Africans brought with them their myths and their music, their beliefs and their words." This is an explanation of why the South has come to have so many superstitions: beliefs followed the Africans to the Americas and then integrated into the culture, creating wariness and fright among the Southerners. This also occurred with Native American traditions; wiping the blood of the first deer a man has killed on him, a process known as "blooding", is still practiced all throughout the South. As seen in the short stories "The Old People", "Bear", and "Delta Autumn", Native American superstitions and respect for the wilderness play a huge role. Because of the mundane mood of the first two stories, Faulkner has to create a portal for the reader so that he or she may be slowly introduced to the changing tone of the novel; this is accomplished in "Pantaloon in Black".

It is interesting how the first two stories have next to or virtually no fantastical events occur in them. Some could argue that the flight of Tomey's Turl in "Was" had fantastical characteristics like his speed and strength, but this does not compare to the bold statements of superstitious activity during the weeks-long hunting trips that happen following the third chapter, "Pantaloon in Black". This certain story is, while most likely the least related chapter in the novel, a play on the theme of Go Down, Moses: the struggle for Southerners to find manhood and the importance of family in the Old South. Rider, the primary character, is a black man whose strength is only rivaled by few men. He is the leading worker at his lumber mill and has a relatively quiet and peaceful life. That is, until his wife dies and he is cast down into a pit wherein he doesn't know what to do. His only reaction is to break down: quitting his job, drinking himself to the point of unconsciousness, and killing a wily gambler that cheats Rider's fellow lumber mill workers. Rider has already found manhood, he is the biggest and strongest, a contemporary John Henry. But the loss of his wife, the only person dear to him, he loses everything. Here is where Faulkner reinforces the importance of family to the Southern man; Rider even goes so far as to "see" his wife after her death. Faulkner does nothing to deny that her image is not a ghost, in actuality that is what he wants to reader to understand. Rider is subject to a supernatural experience (which seems out of place to the reader due to the fact that no truly preternatural event has occurred thus far in the novel), which opens up a gateway so that the author can now include superstitious beliefs into the main plotline. Without this blurry introduction to the ghost of Mannie, the reader wouldn't fully understand the importance of Sam Fathers' actions toward the totemic animals in "The Bear" and "The Old People". In both stories Sam Fathers, Ike's hunting mentor, encounters a great bear and a great buck, to both he salutes and allows them to escape, recognizing that they both represent the power and pride of Nature herself: "...and Sam standing beside the boy now, his right arm raised at full length, palm-outward, speaking in that tongue which the boy had learned from listening to him...'Oleh, Chief,' Sam said. 'Grandfather.'" (Faulkner 177).

Also, "Pantaloon in Black" reinforces

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