Modernism in Faulkner and Wright:

Modernism in Faulkner and Wright: False Promises of Place, Changes of Time, And Money

Although both William Faulkner's "Go Down, Moses" and the Richard Wright's shot story "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" revolve around the morals and manners the Old South, the tales are not retrospective or romantic in nature. Rather, both authors use the decaying social mores of the Southern region of the United States to define 20th century modernism's preoccupation with modern protagonists of sense of fragmented identities. Both feature the Black or 'Negro' experience as it was then called, to highlight the modern person's sense of social estrangement from his or her parents and his or her present society. Naming, parentage, travel by train to and from the North, and materialism and violence all coalesce in both tales suggest that the world is a meaningless and alienating place for the Black American protagonists. For both Samuel and Dave, the world is a violent place that only offers only purposeless flight as an ultimately specious alternative to the prejudices of the South. In actuality, both tales suggest, all the land of America must be scourged and reinvigorated with new ideas. Wright uses the Black American consciousness as a framework to show the world's violence and the main character's personal estrangement from both his own people and the White community, while Faulkner uses a White perspective to tell the tale of Samuel, although Faulkner's setting and characters revolve around the drama of a Black man.

Modernism's definition as a genre marked by "the deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression" is often expressed in the form of fragmentation, as is evidenced in the narrative both tales of Faulkner and Wright. ("Modernism," Answers.com, 2005) Both the protagonists of "God Down Moses" and the Man Who Was Almost a Man" are raised by either their grandparents, or by parents mired in an older generation, and thus feel estranged from their traditional Black families as well as the larger institutions of White society. The difficulties with their parents suggest the failure of the parental generation of Blacks to sustain the next generation, and heighten the frustration of the Black young men to create new identities when they are mired in the past world of the old, more subservient code of ethics of their elders. "Go Down Moses" begins in Illinois, where a young Black man named Samuel Beauchamp waits for death. Samuel murdered a police officer and, the reader is told, he will be executed the next day. However, the idea of fragmented identity is brought forth when it becomes clear that Samuel is the grandson of the Southern Mollie, who he says raised him, although he cannot remember his parents. (Faulkner 350) "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" chronicles the story of Dave, a young, African-American farm laborer struggling to assert his identity in the restrictive racist atmosphere of the rural South, while his grandparents encourage him to essentially kowtow to the heads of the plantations, because that is all they know how to do. (Napierkowski, 2003) Dave's sense of estrangement is so great he sees his parents as 'niggers' and himself as something different. "Whut's the use talkin wid em niggers in the field? Anyhow, his mother was putting supper on the table. Them niggers; can't understan nothing. One of these days he was going to get a gun and practice shooting, then they couldn't talk to him as though he were a little boy." (Wright, 1960) Naming is thus very significant in both tales, whether one is a boy or a man, or if Samuel is really Benjamin, as Mollie calls him, or Butch as the people of the small Southern town call Samuel.

Both short stories also contain an estrangement of place -- neither young man can seem to find a home in either the North or South. At the beginning Faulkner's tale, Samuel is utterly lost to the South. He does not sound like a Southerner to the census taker at the beginning of the tale, and his clothing suggests a Northern dandy. (Faulkner 351) Later, Samuel's grandmother Mollie's insists that her grandson has been sold into Egypt, like a Israelite slave from the Old Testament, as if the North were more of a place of bondage than the divided South. At "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" the end of the sorry tale may seem to give the reader some higher hope, as it ends on a theme of flight from the South. The protagonist makes a decision to flee the area he has been bound to, as a result of his folly, and jump the rails to head to the North. But it is ambiguous at the end if Dave's decision is, like his obsession with buying a gun, an attempt to make a man of himself that will simply end in failure. The language he uses towards the train echoes the language he uses regarding the gun that nearly costs him his freedom, as well as his life. "Ahead the long rails were glinting in the moonlight, stretching away, away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man..." The story ends (Wright, 1960) Ironically, at the end of Faulkner's tale, Samuel is brought back South to his grandmother on a train, in a coffin. Moreover, African-American masculinity was threatened during the time when "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" takes place, offering a useful context for Dave's struggle for manhood and respect.