s murdered by whites for his farmland, is the core moment of oppression of the Deads, and to the degree the murder is an extreme experience its consequences are bound to have wider scope than the experiences of less visibly oppressed blacks. Because of the scope that the murder has, however, it is implicated in the eccentric emotional responses to it by the surviving children Pilate and Macon. Where family history has been marked by extreme experience, the central figures of that experience are marked as well. They are positioned to succumb to the hardness of that experience's reality or to create a new reality and function in the realm of myth--or perhaps a bit of
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