The complications and subsequent effects of racial issues have existed across the United States since the time of the founding fathers and continue to persist. In Williams Faulkner’s trilogy of short stories, “The Old People,” “The Bear,” and “Delta Autumn” that are collected in his novel, Go Down, Moses, the unique character of Issac “Ike” McCaslin grapples with the complex issues of race as well as identity in the American South. Ike endeavors to embark on a journey of self-discovery by rejecting his family’s legacy, which causes him to live in harmony with nature, but this ploy ends in tragedy. His personal misfortunes are especially intricate and multi-layered, and Faulkner intentionally affixes them to Issac as a means of highlighting…show more content… Ike is deeply connected to the land of the Mississippi Delta not because he owns it but because he admires it, an appreciation implanted in him by Sam Fathers. If Ike were to accept the plantation that was bequeathed to him, he would also have had to undertake the complicated legacy of racial injustices that soaked the land. During the hunting trip he recognized, “because it was his land, although he had never owned a foot of it. He had never wanted to, not even after he saw its ultimate doom, watching it retreat year by year” (337). Issac trusts that he is a crusader for nature, even though he has no legal claim to it, because he understands the nuances of its sustainability. Nature is falling because the people around Ike believe they have a right to take the treasures that were once hidden from view, much like how the McCaslin family believed they could use the slaves of their plantation to satisfy their own twisted wishes. Issac and nature are intertwined because of their shared solace, which is now
