On The Road: Black People’s Fight For Identity In Go Down, Moses

Go Down, Moses, is well-known for its explicit exploration into racial problemsin South America. Many critics have already discussed and analyzed the racism inthis novel since its publication. This thesis is contributed to further explore into theracial issues by focusing on the relationship between two the black and the whitefrom a different perspective.Based on the previous studies on the racial problems in the novel, this thesisanalyzes the conflicts between the black and the white against the background ofSouth American society, culture and economy. Furthermore, the thesis examines theconsequences of the conflicts on the black people in terms of their humanness,freedom and identity, and analyzes how the black people react to the deprivation anddecomposition of their own humanness and identity.The thesis holds that in Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner demonstrates theconflicts between the two races and explores the impact these conflicts exert on theblack people. He probes how the black people fight in order to regain theirindependence and freedom through their fight against the injustices, and to remoldtheir identity through their endurance of sufferings. Accordingly, this thesis intendsto study the novel mainly from the following aspects: the conflicts in the relationshipbetween the black and the white are studied in the first part, the consequences ofthese conflicts exert on the black people are examined in the following part, andfinally how the black react to these conflicts and what they achieve through theirreaction are studied.