How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.[Part].Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
this was not something participated in or even seen by himself, but by his elder cousin, McCaslin Edmonds, grandson of Isaac's father's sister and so descended by the distaff, yet notwithstanding the inheritor, and in his time the bequestor, of that which some had thought then and some still thought should have been Isaac's, since his was the name in which the title to the land had first been granted from the Indian patent and which some of the descendants of his father's slaves still bore the land. (1.1.2)
This is the beginning of the first story, "Was," and the narrator takes no time to introduce the idea that being descended from the male side of the family and carrying the male side's name is superior to being descended from the female side. So we know right away that this is a patrilineal society.
Quote #2
[…] the gleam of electricity in the house where the better men than this one had been content with lamps or even candles. There was a tractor under the mule-shed which Zack Edmonds would not have allowed on the place, too […] But they were the old days, the old time, and better men than these (2.1.2.5)
Here are some additional thoughts by Lucas Beauchamp on how the older generations of men were better men. Modern conveniences like electricity, tractors and (gasp) automobiles were evidence that Roth was "soft."
Quote #3
Then, in adolescence, he knew what he had seen in his father's face that morning, what shadow, what stain, what mark—something which had happened between Lucas and his father, which nobody but they knew and would ever know if the telling depended on them—something which had happened because they were themselves, men, not stemming from any difference of race not because one blood strain ran in them both. Then, in his late teens, almost a man, he even knew what it had been. It was a woman, he thought. My father and a n*****, over a woman. My father and a n***** man over a n***** woman, because he simply declined to even realize that he had even refused to think a white woman. (2.3.1.65)
Roth is voicing the idea here that fighting over a woman is such an essential male quality that it can trump any racial or familial differences. Note that Roth only comes up with this idea when he starts to become a man himself.
Quote #4
[…] and he would rise and dress and eat his breakfast by lamplight to walk the four miles to the mill by sunup, and exactly one hour after sundown he would enter the house again, five days a week, until Saturday. (3.1.8)
Here's a real man: Rider works long hours at back-breaking labor at the mill, and brings home the bacon every Saturday to his wife. He's a big contrast to Fonsiba's husband, who sits around and reads and doesn't take responsibility for supporting his wife. Rider's painted as kind of hyper-masculine—big and muscular, tossing around giant logs like they're toothpicks.
Quote #5
"I done taught you all there is of this settled country," Sam said. "You can hunt it good as I can now. You are ready for the Big Bottom now, for bear and deer. Hunter's meat," he said. "Next year you will be ten. You will write your age in two numbers and you will be ready to become a man. Your pa [...] promised you can go with us then." (4.1.24)
If you were wondering at what age a male would be considered to be a man in the 19th- century South, here's your answer: ten. Okay, we're kidding. Sam is saying this to Isaac to prepare him for the challenges of hunting. But by saying this, he also instills in this young boy the idea that being a man is something he will have to learn.
Quote #6
For six years now he had heard the best of all talking. It was of the wilderness, the big woods, bigger and older than any recorded document:--of white man fatuous enough to believe he had bought any fragment of it, of Indian ruthless enough to pretend that any fragment of it had been his to convey [...] It was of the men, not white nor black nor red but men, hunters, with the will and hardihood to endure and the humility and skill to survive, and the dogs and the bear and the deer juxtaposed and reliefed against it, ordered and compelled by and within the wilderness in the ancient and unremitting contest according to the ancient and immitigable rules which voided all regrets and brooked no quarter;--the best game of all, the best of all breathing and forever the best of all listening, the voices quiet and weighty and deliberate for retrospection and recollection and exactitude among the concrete trophies... (5.1.2)
Even talking about hunting is awesome. It's almost like hunting is bred into the very nature of men. Oh, right, it is.
Quote #7
There was always a bottle present, so that it would seem to him that those fine fierce instants of heart and brain and courage and wiliness and speed were concentrated and distilled into that brown liquor which not women, not boys and children, but only hunters drank, drinking not of the blood they spilled but some condensation of the wild immortal spirit, drinking it moderately, humbly even, not with the pagan's base and baseless hope of acquiring the virtues of cunning and strength and speed but in salute to them. (5.1.2)
Here is one more thing that unifies men: whiskey. Is this a great excuse to drink or what? Another idea here is that "heart and brain and courage and wiliness and speed" are qualities that are associated with men and not women or boys or girls.
Quote #8
If Sam Fathers has been his mentor and the backyard rabbits and squirrels his kindergarten, then the wilderness the old bear ran was his college and the old male bear itself, so long unwifed and childless as to have become its own ungendered progenitor, was his alma mater. (5.2.2)
In order for Isaac to become a man, he needs proper education in the wilderness--something he can't get in a school. In fact, the text specifically mentions that Isaac's allowed to skip school to stay on the hunt a few more days. This hunting thing is sounding better and better. BTW, have you noticed that, with the exception of Sam, hunting seems to be a white man's activity? The "Negroes" are just along to cook, keep the fire going and carry stuff. Isaac hints that blacks and Indians have been bred to have that strength and courage which most men only get by hunting—that "noble savage" stereotype.
Quote #9
"Looking for Roth's knife," Legate said. "I come back to get a horse. We got a deer on the ground."
[…] who killed it?" McCaslin said. Was it Roth?"
[…] "It was a doe," he said. (6.116-7, 121)
Isaac knows without being told that Roth's kill was a doe. At the time of this story, it was illegal to kill does, in order to protect the herd. Roth does it anyway, which Isaac sees as a cowardly, spiteful act. Isaac knows it's a doe because he knows from the visit of the woman and her baby that Roth's a cowardly, spiteful person. Definitely not a real man.