John Keats, the author of the poem that McCaslin Edmonds reads to Ike McCaslin in "The Bear" section of the novel, was one of the principal figures of the second generation of British Romantics. Unlike the most prominent of his contemporaries, Keats was born of humble origins. He died of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-five, at which time he had only been a published poet for five years.
John Keats, the author of the poem quoted in both "Delta Autumn" and Go Down, Moses, was one of the principal figures of the second generation of British Romantics. Unlike the most prominent of his contemporaries, Keats was born of humble origins. He died of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-five, at which time he had only been a published poet for five years.
Both "Delta Autumn" and the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses briefly describe the process by which generations of planters created the plantation agriculture of the Delta. Before the Civil War it was these "gangs of slaves" who provided the labor force which turned the wilderness into cotton fields (270, 323).
Both "Delta Autumn" and Go Down, Moses briefly trace the process by which several generations of planters, the white men who own the land, turned the wilderness into fields, using the labor of "gangs of slaves" before the Civil War and "hired labor" ever since (270, 323).
In "Delta Autumn" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Ike McCaslin has vividly creates an image the diverse group of human beings that he thinks of as the "spawn" of the modern Delta, where the boundaries between races seem to have broken down (279, 346). It includes "white men" who own plantations and "commute every night to Memphis," "black men" who own plantations and even towns and "keep their town houses in Chicago," and is an amalgamation of "Chinese and African and Aryan and Jew" who "breed" together (279, 346).
In "Delta Autumn" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the "youngest Negro" among the hunting party performs a specific job for the white hunters: he sleeps in the tent with them, "lying on planks" beside the wood stove and tending it throughout the night (273, 333). It is also "the young[est] Negro" who brings the young woman into the tent to talk with Ike McCaslin (277, 339).
It's not clear how many people from Yoknapatawpha go to the Delta, but at least several of them are black, and are there not to hunt but to serve the white hunters. The text names one, Isham, and singles out another as "the youngest Negro" - they have their own character entries. There is at least one more, because the narrative says that "two of the Negroes" cut firewood for cooking and warmth (327).
The character of the unnamed woman with whom Don Boyd has had an affair and a child in "Delta Autumn" comes into focus slowly. At the start of the story she is referred to elliptically as the "doe" whom Boyd hunted the year before (268). When she appears before Ike in person at the end of the story, she brings with her "something intangible" (277). She is wearing a man's hat and rain coat, and has "a face young" with "dark eyes" (268). She tells Ike she is a teacher.
In both "Delta Autumn" and the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the texts briefly mention the Indians who once inhabited Mississippi. As the "successors" of the aboriginal inhabitants, they turned the aboriginals' raised refuges from the water into burial mounds, which suggests their inevitable historical fate: all that is left of these Indians in the present are their words as the names of "the little towns" along the river (271, 325).
Both "Delta Autumn" and Go Down, Moses note that after slavery was abolished, planters and plantation owners employed "hired labor" to grow cotton in the Delta; these men are also described as the "Negroes who work" the land for "the white men who own it" (270, 323-24).
