Go Down, Moses is a collection of short stories (and two longer stories, "The Fire and the Hearth" and "The Bear") that, together, tell the composite history of the McCaslin family, of the descendents of Carothers McCaslin and the residents of the plantation he founded.
The complete stories of the family emerge gradually over the course of the book, with bits of information appearing in successive stories to clarify, complete, and sometimes contradict the information given in previous stories. But each story has its own plot, as well, independent of the other stories.
The stories range from among several plots and several characters and has no single protagonist or narrative. The picture painted of the McCaslin-Beauchamp family is intense and, through them, provides a miniature history of the American South from its settlement by whites to the time of World War II.
Some themes explored in the collection is the pull and burden of ancestry, the curse of slavery and the resulting relationships between blacks and whites, and finally the connection between the individual and the natural world.
Adapted from Faulkner archive
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