Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.
Plot Type : Tragedy
Here's what we think Booker would say about "Pantaloon in Black." Have a look, and then try your hand at "The Old People" or Parts Two and Three of "The Fire and the Hearth." Don't say we didn't warn you, though: Faulkner is extremely good at hiding his tracks while he works his way through the Seven Basic Plots.
Anticipation Stage
Rider's young wife dies, taking from him the relationship that's grounded him in life. Unable to distract himself by going back to his job at the mill, he tries something different. Rider decides to buy moonshine and encounters a white bootlegger who treats him really disrespectfully. Now Rider has an objective: to take revenge from the white men who have been living off of his work and disrespecting him his entire life.
Dream Stage
In this stage, Rider commits to a course of action that he seems to understand, but we don't. He punches the bootlegger, takes his moonshine without paying, and starts to drink. He starts to feel powerful and crazy and seems to be proceeding with some kind of self-destructive plan.
Frustration Stage
Rider's getting drunker and drunker. He briefly talks to his aunt and realizes he can't find any comfort in God, who seemed to think it was OK to take his wife from him. Disconsolate, he continues to drink and get more and more irrational. He makes his way to a hut where Birdsong, the mill foreman, has been running a crooked dice game for years, cheating his workers out of most of their wages.
Nightmare Stage
Birdsong is one of those white men who have wronged him. Rider starts to play dice. He loses and loses until he finally can't take it anymore. He grabs Birdsong's hand as he rolls the dice, and a second pair of dice fall out of his hand. Birdsong's been using loaded dice. Rider totally loses control.
Destruction or Death Wish Stage
Birdsong reaches for his pistol and Rider kills him, even though he knows he won't be able to get away with it. Possibly, he kills him because he knows he won't get away with it. He returns to his home, where the cops find him dead drunk. He admits everything, and they take him to jail. He rips the door off his jail cell and starts to fight with his cellmates. Two days later, he's found hanging from a bell-rope in a nearby schoolhouse.
"How about the whole Section 2 of the story with the deputy sheriff?" you ask. Well, consider that to be Faulkner's commentary that this has, in fact, been a tragedy. A man self-destructed, and society conspired with him to do it.