Delta Autumn and Racial Equality

One of the main themes of Delta Autumn is the idea that, throughout a lifetime, inequalities can be eliminated and the future of society can be drastically changed. The protagonist's internal and external dialogue conveys the past, present, and future of civilization through political and racial changes that have been observed over a long span of years.

The impact of the protagonist being an older man who admits to himself that, because of his age, he does not have “any business making such expeditions” to the delta to hunt is significant because with age narrators are led to believe that the filter has both wisdom and reliability. In the beginning of the story, he is riding in a car, noting that they are “driving faster and faster each year”, which symbolizes the shift of society into a more modern age and out of an era where people hunt for survival and instead hunt as a sport and pastime.

Furthermore, the only location where the men can hunt is predominantly inhabited by African-Americans. This is symbolic because, as hinted to earlier in the story, hunting is no longer a widely practiced activity as urbanization and nucleation of society occurs. By making the hunting ground tie in with the segregated land, readers are led to the conclusion that segregation, similar to hunting, is also no longer a widely practiced activity and shifts toward equality are beginning to be seen.

The movement toward equality is more explicitly mentioned when the protagonist interacts with the African American girl who his friend is having an affair with. Although the protagonist obviously is startled and irritated by this, readers are presented with a radical new idea that interracial affairs, while not common, do exist and that love does not remain in the boundary of race. The African American girl clearly emphasizes this point when the protagonist tells her to go marry someone of her own race: she replies by asking him if he had “forgotten all [he] ever knew or felt or even heard about love”.

Hunting is a dying sport in this short story that is being replaced with cars, technology, and roads, just like racial inequality is a dying practice that is being replaced with equality. Even the old protagonist, who has seen much change and who is hesitant to accept the affair between his friend and the African American girl realizes that it is only a matter of time until every race “all breed and spawn together until no man has time to say which is which, or cares.”