Character Analysis
Faulkner wrote about Lucas Beauchamp in an earlier version of "The Fire and the Hearth," and in this version, Lucas was more of a caricature—foolish, scheming, and laughable. In the version that appears in this novel, though, he's more complex. He's intelligent, dedicated, steadfast, proud and hard working. Sounds good, right? On the other hand, he is also hotheaded, calculating and money-obsessed. Those qualities, added up, make him look like, well…a real person. We see Lucas from age twenty-one to sixty-seven in the novel.
The facts: Lucas is the grandson of old Carothers McCaslin, the white slaver. He descends from Carothers through Turl, so Lucas is one legacy of the incestuous relationship between Carothers and Turl's mother Tomey. When he's twenty-one, he comes into an inheritance that Old Carothers left for Lucas's father. He and his wife Molly are married forty-five years by the novel's end; they have three children. The narrator comments over and over again that Lucas is impenetrable and hard to read (usually by the white characters around him). In "The Fire and the Hearth," we learn what's behind that impassive façade.
What's Your Name? Who's Your Daddy?
Lucas is born with the patriarch's name: Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin. He changes "Lucius" to Lucas" to set himself apart, but he thinks of himself as a legitimate McCaslin descendant:
"not only the oldest man but the oldest living person on the Edmonds plantation, the oldest McCaslin descendant even though in the world's eye he descended not from McCaslins but from McCaslin slaves." (2.1.1.4)
As cruel and oppressive as old Carothers was, Lucas is obsessed with that patrimony. In fact, he sees himself as better than the generations of plantation owners because he descends through old Carothers's son rather than his daughter. He believes this makes him a more rightful heir to the plantation than the "woman-made" Edmonds sons he works for. He refuses to conform to the submissive behavior expected of him.
On the exact day he turns twenty-one, he comes forward to demand from Isaac the $1000 inheritance he's been holding for him. There's a poignant moment when he and Isaac walk to the bank to get the money, and Isaac has to show him how to set up an account. Lucas doesn't believe the bank would keep money for a black man, so he writes a check with Isaac's help, gets the money, then gives it right back to the teller. Just to make sure. He's a proud young man but not blind to realities.
We learn that, as a tenant farmer, Lucas doesn't call his bosses "Mister" like the other African Americans on the plantation. He grew up with his cousin Zack Edmonds, and he's got nothing but contempt for Zack's son, Roth. Lucas's assertive behavior with Zack drives Roth nuts. He doesn't think Lucas knows his rightful place, even though they're cousins. Lucas manages to make a fool of Roth later in his life by distilling moonshine on his plantation.
Can't Buy Me Love
Lucas is the only one of his siblings who chooses to stay as a tenant farmer (and moonshiner) at the plantation where their parents used to be slaves. He likes working:
"[…] he approved of his fields and liked to work them, taking a solid pride in having good tools to use and using them well, scorning both inferior equipment and shoddy work just as he had bought the best kettle he could find when he set up his still." (2.1.2.3)
Between the money he inherits from old Carothers McCaslin and the money he makes over the years, Lucas has over three thousand dollars in the bank. In today's terms, that would be just under $50,000. Word on the street is that's more than what his boss Roth Edmonds has in the bank (2.1.1.2).
When he's sixty-seven, Lucas finds a gold coin on the property and gets completely obsessed with finding a thousand dollar treasure he thinks is buried on the plantation lands. He's old and tired and doesn't want to farm any more. He's ready to retire and thinks the gold's the answer. Molly wants to divorce him because she's convinced Lucas will bring the curse of God upon himself by being money-crazy. He agrees to the divorce. Lucas, however, does eventually come around and gives up on the idea at the end of the story. He realizes that his marriage is more important than the money. Whew. We'd have hated to see him end up in the fourth circle of hell.
The Swindler
Did we say Lucas is an incredibly intelligent character? He is, and he has no qualms about using his smarts to get what he wants. He manages to run a successful moonshine business for twenty years right under Roth Edmonds's nose. When he decides he wants to hunt for the buried treasure on the plantation, he manages to cheat the metal detector salesman out of the price of the machine.
But does he stop there? He doesn't stop there. He swindles the salesman by misleading him into thinking the treasure's buried in an orchard, and then proceeds to charge the man $25 a night for the right to use a machine that the man just sold to Lucas for a fraction of its actual price. Sure, the salesman might not be the sharpest person around, but Lucas has no qualms in exploiting this to his own gain. The whole situation is pretty comical.
Mystery Man
The narrator of "The Fire and the Hearth" seems really keen on pointing out how impossible it is to read Lucas. Look at this:
"His face was not grim and neither cold nor angry. It was absolutely expressionless, impenetrable. He might have been asleep standing, as a horse sleeps." (2.1.3.48)
Or,
"But still the face [Roth] glared at was impenetrable, almost sleepy looking." (2.1.3.67)
Or,
"[…]the face which was not sober and not grave but wore no expression at all" (2.2.3.8)
Or,
"Still the face beneath the hat was impassive, impenetrable" (2.3.2.19).
You get the picture. Well, actually we don't get the picture. That's the point. What's up with this impenetrability stuff? Is Lucas trying to appear threatening? Non-threatening? Dignified? Well, seeing as how African Americans in the South in Lucas's time could be brutalized and even killed for just about anything a white man or woman thought they were thinking or feeling, our guess is that the safest thing to do was to appear completely neutral.
Also, Lucas is not about to play that "ready and easy mirth which negroes sustain between themselves and white men" (4.1.13) to maintain the fiction that everything's peachy between them.
Confrontation
So what's lurking beneath Lucas's impenetrable surface? Well, we know that there's been simmering resentment about his second-class status in the family, having to kowtow to his white, woman-made, undeserving, tractor-driving cousins and settling for $1000 instead of the whole plantation. One day this resentment stops simmering and starts boiling. We get the story as a flashback as Lucas knocks on the door of Roth Edmonds's house.
Shortly after his son Henry's birth, Lucas's wife moves in with Zack Edmonds to care for Zack's newborn son along with Henry. After six months of this, Lucas can't take it anymore. He feels that Zack's taken his wife and son. His self-respect is at stake:
"I will have to kill him, he thought, or I will have to take her and go away." (2.1.2.16)
He manages to get Molly to come home, but she brings Zack's baby with her. Lucas is outraged that Zack expects Molly to take care of his baby. He returns to Zack's house with murder on his mind. With his razor in his hand, he tells Zack,
"You knowed I wasn't afraid, because you knowed I was a McCaslin too and a man-made one. And you never thought that, because I am a McCaslin too, I wouldn't. You never even thought that, because I am a n***** too, I wouldn't dare. No. You thought that because I am a n***** I wouldn't even mind. (2.1.2.30)
There's a tense standoff until Zack throws his pistol on the bed and says,
Come on, then. Do you think I'm any less a McCaslin just because I was what you call woman-made? Or maybe you aint even a woman-made McCaslin but just a n***** that's got out of hand?" (2.1.2.43)
That does it. Zack unleashes Lucas's years of pent-up anger:
Then Lucas was beside the bed […] and the pistol and the man whom he had known from infancy, with whom he had lived until they were both grown almost as brothers lived. They had fished and hunted together, they had learned to swim in the same water, they had eaten at the same table in the white boy's kitchen and the cabin of the negro's mother […] ( 2.1.2.44)
They struggle over the gun and Lucas prevails. He shoots Zack but the gun misfires. He goes home, half-expecting to be arrested and lynched. But he accepts that; he's salvaged his self-respect. Even Zack realizes what's happened—he knows that when Lucas was trying to kill him, Lucas was only seeing all the white men who had taken what was his.
With Lucas, Faulkner has created a complex but, by today's standards, problematic male African American character. Whether he's more of a stereotype—the black trickster, the angry black man—or an authentic individual, we leave up to you to decide.
Timeline