Near the beginning of one paragraph, the narrator says that Sam is the grandson of Chickasaw Indian Chief Ikkemotubbe, but near the end of the same paragraph the narrator implies that Ikkemotubbe is Sam’s father. There is also a problem with Faulkner’s construction of Sam in the 1940 text as his paternity is ambiguous. In the Harper's text Ike actually appears, but as minor character, a member of the hunting party, and a grown man who is referred to as "Uncle" Ike. According to Joseph Blotner, the typescript of "The Old People" identifies the boy's father explicitly as "Mr Compson." On the other hand, in the Go Down, Moses version of “The Old People,” the boy is Ike McCaslin. Faulkner might very well have originally planned for him to be Quentin Compson. In the original 1940 text, the boy at the center of the story is never named. His extensively revised version of the story is best known to Faulkner readers as part of Go Down, Moses, which was published in 1942. The first published version of “The Old People,” for which Faulkner received $400, appeared in the September 1940 issue of Harper’s Magazine.
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