CompsonsInGDM

Another old Yoknapatawpha family, the McCaslins, preoccupy Faulkner's imagination in this novel - indeed, given the way Ike McCaslin takes over the role Quentin played in "Lion" when that short story becomes part of "The Bear" in this book, we could even say that in some respects in this novel the McCaslins displace the Compsons. But two Compsons do have a place, in the big woods. General Compson is among the chief members of the bi-annual hunting trips to Major de Spain's camp, and he becomes a kind of second second father to Ike (second to Sam Fathers): he recognizes Ike's great gifts as a woodsman and hunter, stands up for him with the other adults, and (to continue the motif of replacement) gives up his place of honor on Katie, the camp's best mount on a bear hunt, to Ike during the climactic chase of Old Ben. Quentin's father, referred to here only as "General Compson's son," also makes an appearance in the woods, but only as a spectator, one among the other "guests from Jefferson" who visit (223). Interestingly, just as Quentin acquires General Compson's watch in The Sound and the Fury, so here Ike inherits the General's hunting horn, "covered with the unbroken skin from a buck's shank and bound in silver" (345). Perhaps more interestingly, Ike in turn gives this to the newest (and last) member of his own family, the mixed-race illegitimate child of two descendants from each side of the McCaslin family, one black and one white - just after he orders the child's 'black' mother to leave the South.