McCaslinsInH

Two McCaslins are mentioned in The Hamlet, both in passing, which is enough to introduce more inconsistencies into Ike's biography. In the context of his place in other Yoknapatawpha fictions, where Ike is found in this novel - the big plantation - and where he isn't - the Jefferson store - are confusing. When Tull says that Ab Snopes "wintered his family in an old cottonhouse on Ike McCaslin's place" (10), the phrasing suggests that Ike did inherit the McCaslin plantation; in Go Down, Moses, published two years later, Ike's principled rejection of that inheritance before he came into it is perhaps the gesture that most defines him. And in "Fool About a Horse," published four years before The Hamlet, the owner of the hardware store that sells the milk separator is Ike McCaslin; in this novel's retelling of that episode, the store is owned by a man named "Cain" (42). Buck McCaslin - who will turn out in Go Down, Moses to be Ike's father - is mentioned twice in the novel, but as "Uncle Buck" (18, 32); there's no mention of his relationship with Ike.