Stewardship, private property, and metabolic rift: how systemic structure in Yoknapatawpha County ensures Isaac McCaslin's failure in 'Go Down, Moses'

Abstract

This essay re-interprets William Faulkner's 'Go Down, Moses' through a Marxist lens of metabolic rift where Isaac (Ike) McCaslin's repudiation of his inheritance is not seen as a personal failure, but an inevitable failure of the system of capitalism. John Bellamy Foster reads Marx through an ecocritical lens and expands upon Marx's ideas of social metabolism, creating the theory of metabolic rift, which posits that capitalism creates an irreparable rift between town and country. Ike is surrounded by alienated individuals in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County; however, under the mentorship of Sam Fathers, he develops an ethically independent individualism which he transfers onto his relationship with nature. When Ike's experiences in the wilderness are read as labor, in a Marxist sense, the result is that his labor is profoundly unalienated. It is through Ike's decision not to dominate the wilderness and to, at times, act as a steward that sets him apart from his capitalist peers. This ethical mindset of Ike's, however, is not sufficient to be transformative, and Ike is forced to confront history. Ike can repudiate his inheritance of the McCaslin plantation, but that alone doesn't change the material conditions of society. By examining Ike through this lens of metabolic rift, we can see that his profoundly unalienated relationship with nature and his ethically independent individualism are only possible within the system that he ultimately rejects, revealing Faulkner's tragic insight.