The Times They Are A-Changin'

In Delta Autumn, by William Faulkner, the protagonist, Issac McCaslin wrestles with two separate and specific issues.  McCaslin is preoccupied over the disappearance of his beloved wetlands but is also concerned about his friend’s interracial affair.  These two issues are not unrelated, but instead are intertwined and depict how McCaslin feels on how the world is continuing to change as he gets older. 

McCaslin does not approve of the interracial affair that Boyd had and seems to be at a disbelief that there was even a real relationship there.  “Maybe in a thousand or two thousand years it will have blended in America and we will have forgotten it, he thought. But God pity these.” (289).  McCaslin cannot accept that interracial relationships are something that could occur in the near future but would only happen in the very far off future.  “He cried, not loud, in a voice of amazement, pity and outrage, “You’re a nigger!” (289). Faulkner’s use of the words “amazement, pity, and outrage” sum up everything that McCaslin is feeling in this situation. McCaslin’s world view seems to be changing around him and things he thought he understood seem to be unraveling.

Isaac McCaslin is also concerned about the deforestation of the wetlands and forest he grew up hunting in.  “But that time was gone, now they went in cars.” (281).  McCaslin is watching younger generations move forward to new things and not appreciate the things that he did when he was their age.  “This land, which man has deswamped and denuded and derivered in two generations.” (290).  McCaslin having watched the wilderness taken and cultivated, seems to wish to want to go back to a simpler time before the land had been changed so drastically.

The forest and the interracial affair both represent new changes that are arising as the world continues to age.  McCaslin does not care for either change and would prefer the world to stay the way he is comfortable and familiar with.  Despite McCaslin’s opinions, the world continues and will continue to move forward in new directions.  Faulkner shows his audience that we cannot hold back change forever, and if we try the world will only change around us.