Carothers McCaslin

The first McCaslin in Yoknapatawpha built a large slave plantation on rich bottom land along the county's northern boundary river. Like the Sartorises, his white descendants continue to own the property, though slave labor has been replaced by the tenant system. Through sexual relations with his female slaves, he has black descendants as well, including "his son" Lucas Beauchamp (7), in whose demeanor Chick sees the pride and arrogance of the man who begot him. The legacies of "Old Carothers" define a major theme in Go Down, Moses (1942). In that earlier novel he is Roth Edmonds' great-great-grandfather; in this novel he is referred to as "Edmonds' great-grandfather" instead (7), but although the theme is less explicit here, in Intruder in the Dust Faulkner is making another attempt to come to terms with what modern Mississippi inherits from founding fathers like him.