Faulkner's technique in Go Down, Moses is to present stories whose full significance in the overall history of his characters is not apparent until later in the book. The book explores the history and development of the McCaslin family, descended from Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin ("Carothers McCaslin") and occupies the plantation he founded. Faulkner incorporates into the McCaslin family many of the characteristics he viewed as essential to an understanding of the South as a whole, including the painful racial divide between whites and blacks that defined Southern history in the decades before and after the Civil War. He does this by splitting the McCaslin family tree into two branches, one white and the other black. The white branch, obviously, descends from Carothers McCaslin and his wife; the black branch descends from Carothers McCaslin and the slave-girl Tomey, with whom McCaslin had a sexual relationship.
