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Even though William Faulkner is a contemporary American writer, he is already considered to be one of the worlds greatest writers. In 1949, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest literary prize that can be awarded to a writer. When he accepted this prize, he maintained that the duty of the artist was to depict the human heart in conflict with itself. In the book Go Down, Moses, this attitude is best realized in The Bear, when Ike struggles to decide whether or not he can renounce his vast inheritance in order to atone for the sins of his lustful, miscegenetic forefather who amassed a fortune.

Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897, but his family soon moved to Oxford, Mississippi, and almost all of his novels take place in and around Oxford, which he renamed Jefferson in his stories and novels. Faulkner came from an old, proud, and distinguished Mississippi family, which included a governor, a colonel in the Confederate Army, and notable business pioneers. His great-grandfather, Colonel William Culbert Falkner (the u was added to Faulkners name by mistake when his first novel was published, and Faulkner retained the misspelling), came to Mississippi from South Carolina during the first part of the nineteenth century.

The Colonel appears in many of Faulkners novels under the name of Colonel John Sartoris. Colonel William Falkner had a rather distinguished career as a soldier both in the Mexican War and in the American Civil War. During the Civil War, Falkners hot temper caused him to be demoted from full Colonel to Lieutenant Colonel. After the war, Falkner was heavily involved in the trials of the Reconstruction period. He killed several men during this time and became a rather notorious figure. He also joined in with a partner and built the first railroad during Reconstruction. Then he quarreled with his partner, and the partnership broke up. When his former partner ran for the state legislature, Colonel Falkner ran against him and soundly defeated him.

Colonel Falkner also took out time to write one of the nations best sellers, The White Rose of Memphis, which appeared in 1880. He also wrote two other novels, but only his first was an outstanding success. As was Colonel Sartoris in Faulkners The Unvanquished, Colonel Falkner was finally killed by one of his rivals, and his death was never avenged. Today, one can travel to the cemetery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and see a statue of Colonel Falkner, dressed in his Confederate uniform, gazing out at his railroad, and looking over the region that he fought so desperately and valiantly for. Only William Faulkner himself, of all the interceding members of the Falkner family, was as distinguishedand ultimately more distinguishedthan his great-grandfather was.

Except for his novel Sanctuary, Faulkners early novels were never commercial successes. Consequently, he would often interrupt a novel and write short stories for magazines. This is partially true of his novel Go Down, Moses. For example, The Fire and the Hearth, one of the stories in the book, had appeared as a shorter story in Colliers, but it treated only the humorous conflict between Lucas Beauchamp and George Wilkins. The part of the story dealing with Lucas outwitting the mine detector salesman with the salted buried treasure appeared as a separate story, entitled Gold Is Not Always, in The Atlantic Monthly. When Faulkner arranged the novel later, he made certain changes in the two short stories and published them as one story.

Likewise, there are several versions of the short story The Bear. A version of this story (without the long, complicated fourth section) appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on May 9, 1942. The fourth section appeared for the first time when the book Go Down, Moses was published. Likewise, Pantaloon in Black, The Old People and the story Go Down, Moses appeared respectively in Harpers Magazine, October, 1940; Harpers Magazine, September, 1940; and Colliers, January 25, 1941.

Go Down, Moses marks the culmination in Faulkners change from an early pessimistic attitude in his writing to a much more optimistic attitude. His technique of writing did not change, however. He still continued to present a protagonist in search of values in the modern world through an evaluation of his responsibility to the past.

Here, Isaac McCaslin examines the sin or guilt of his ancestors and decides to repudiate the land which he finds tainted. Ike is finally able to view the past honestly and then use his exploration of it for the formulation of positive values and constructive plans.

In Faulkners new vision of optimism, he saw the world as capable of evolving decent and worthwhile values. Even in his stories presenting the white man attempting to keep the black man in bondage, or in his stories in which the white man fails to see the black man as an individual capable of love, hope, or salvation, Faulkners tone is not one of despair and bitternessrather, it is one of compassion toward the white mans inability to perceive his ignorance.

Go Down, Moses, as we have said, was not published as a novel, with its material fresh and new. It was composed of several stories which had already been published separately, and there has always been a certain amount of confusion ever since the book was published about whether or not the book is a novel, and whether or not the individual stories can be significantly interrelated. Moreover, there is also the question of understanding the entire McCaslin thread that runs through the seemingly dissimilar stories that make up Go Down, Moses.

In a sense, it helps to review the McCaslin history, for even though some of the stories were originally published as separate entities, a full knowledge of the McCaslin family throws a different light on each individual story. For example, Uncle Bucks hunt for Tomeys Turl (a black man) in Was is somewhat modified by the fact that Tomeys Turls father (a white man) is also Uncle Bucks father