PARTISAN REVIEW
Beauchamp, a man apart, "not arrogant, not scornful, just intractable and
composed,"
pretends
to be a murderer, wants to be innocently lynched,
to add his own. blood to the South's dishonor, as his last act of contempt
for his oppressors. He is not successful because of the intense need of
several white people to prevent his martyrdom, and not only in Lucas'
private interest, but in their own interest as white men who already have
more shame than they can bear. Lucas, or the mass Negro, has at last
conquered the South by giving the white man an unendurable burden
of guilt. "Lucas Beauchamp once the slave of any white man within
range of whose notice he happened to come, now tyrant over the whole
country's white conscience."
The brilliance of this situation is that it is not so much about the
Negro as about the South's appalled recognition of its sins, its confusion
before the unforgiving, alienated faces of the Negroes whose suffering
has given them immense pride and dignity, the moral superiority of the
victim. The Negro must be saved, Faulkner seems to be saying, so that
the white man can become his moral equal, be relieved of the bondage
to his terrible mistake.
Lucas' innocence is proved by a sixteen year old boy, Charles Mal–
lison. The boy had been haunted for years by his feeling that he was
in debt to Lucas for having, as a child, eaten part of the old man's din–
ner. Lucas refused money for the dinner and when the boy sent a
Christmas present he was immediately repaid by a gallon jar of molasses
from Lucas. By proving the Negro's innocence, the boy hopes to reassert
his position again, and again he is defeated, because Lucas puts his escape
from death on a business basis, insists upon paying the boy's uncle, a
lawyer, two dollars for services, and thereby repudiating the equalizing
gesture. The Negro is triumphant: he will not allow the white man
to reduce even a penny of the incalculable debt.
Seen through the boy's eyes this situation has great subtlety, in
spite of the ludicrous improbability of some of Faulkner's inventions,
which include vanishing corpses and graverobbing scenes more suitable
to Tom Sawyer and Injun Joe than to the tragic momentum suggested
here. And then suddenly the novel ceases to belong to the Negro and the
boy and is given over to the boy's uncle, the lawyer who also wished to
save Lucas. The uncle delivers absurd, strident lectures, written with
frantic bad taste (the conglomerate Negro is called Sambo) and a flip–
pant effort in the direction of political satire. The South must "defend
not Lucas nor even the union of the United States but the United
States from the outlanders North East and West who with the highest
motives and intentions (let us say) are essaying to divide it at a time
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