In a nutshell, Go Down, Moses is one very famous Southern white male's meditation on the slavery and its aftermath. Each of the seven stories here treats this subject from multiple characters' perspectives, both African American, mixed-race, and white, forming a complex and shifting picture. So is this picture accurate or flawed? We'll leave that up to you to decide. The book is mainly set in the post-slavery era, with only the occasional flashback to one family's days of slave ownership. But what we learn in this novel is that even though blacks and whites were now both free, old patterns remained in the relationship between the races.
Questions About Slavery
- What do you make of the fact that the only story that takes place before Abolition ("Was") is a satire?
- Can you find any ideas in this book about race or ownership that could be used as an argument to justify slavery? Who voices these ideas?
- Why are Buck and Buddy uncomfortable being slave owners?
Chew on This
Isaac's repudiation of his inheritance because of his family's past slave ownership is a huge cop-out. By inheriting the plantation, he could have tried to change the system from inside and actually made more of a difference.
This novel is less about slavery than about the burden it placed on the descendants of slaves.