Slavery is one of the central themes of Go Down, Moses. There are separate entries in the database for specific individuals and groups of slaves in the novel. This icon represents the slaves who appear in a number of general references to the human beings who were enslaved until the end of the Civil War. Ike McCaslin, for example, sees slavery as an "injustice" (252) but also suggests that not every aspect of it was unjust; at one point he says that slaves were fed and cared for "when they were sick" by the (white) "wives and daughters" of their masters (271).
The radical abolitionist John Brown fought against slavery in the West before carrying out the raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 that was intended to inspire a slave rebellion in the South. In this novel, Ike McCaslin holds him up as a hero: "one simple enough to believe that horror and outrage were first and last simply horror and outrage and crude enough to act upon that" (270-71).
While we read "Fool About a Horse" as a printed text, the text itself offers a lot of evidence that the narrator is telling rather than writing it, that Faulkner intends us to imagine it as an oral tale being performed for a live audience. Twice the narrator refers to "you," for example (123, 132), and at another point addresses his audience as "gentlemen" (128); the story's repeated use of the locutions "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" also suggests the dynamic of live performance (118, etc.). This icon represents that group of implied listeners.
