Go Down Moses by William Faulkner is an artistic collection of short stories that link together biblically to create a cohesive novel. Within each story Faulkner beautifully illustrates the tensions resulting from man's struggle to overcome Adam's curse and how that biblical narrative plays out in the South. A complex sin-plagued family tree comprising two “races” with a highly mixed bloodline slowly unfolds from chapter to chapter. In almost every story, black characters are juxtaposed with their white counterparts; neither race can be understood without the presence of its opposite. Faulkner uses this setting to repeatedly contrast the humanity and capacity for love of the black slave community, with the white community's refusal to treat them as anything more than just heartless pieces of property. Rider, Eunice, and Molly Beachem are all exceptional images of the true humanity and compassion of the black community. While the Sheriff, Old McCauslin, Roth Edmonds and Ike demonstrate the white man's inability to see these qualities in blacks, and the sin that comes from this blindness. Rider, the protagonist of "Pantaloon in Black" and a classic Renaissance image of manhood thinking from the waist down, demonstrates his ability to love through the violent grief of his wife's death. Rider, previously a man about town, abandons his drinking ways when he meets Mannie, his future wife of just six months. As a true pantser should, Rider naturally expresses his pain through the force and intensity of vigorous activity and violent rage. He is first seen shoveling the earth so quickly that "the mound seemed to rise of its own accord, not built from above but pushing visibly upwards out of the earth itself"...the center of the card....the Tension continues when Gavin visits the Worshams at their home while they are grieving. When Mollie and her husband Hamp begin singing the old spiritual "Go Down Moses", Gavin tries to explain to them that Samuel's fate is not Roth's fault, but the Worshams don't stop singing. Gavin quickly becomes uncomfortable and runs for the door, thinking, "I'll be out soon... There will be air, space, breathing" (362). As he leaves, he asks Mollie for forgiveness, and she remarks "It's all right... it's our pain" (363). This statement succinctly conveys Mollie's acknowledgment of Gavin's attempt to care for her and Hamp in their grief, while simultaneously noting that he does not fully understand how they cry or how they view the situation. Despite his best efforts, as a white man, he will never fully understand slave culture or be able to see things from their perspective.