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comprehended by Cass, who's too young to understand the force of erotic passion that drives Tomey's Turl to the Beauchamps. Hubert Beauchamp unwilling to resolve the issue by purchasing Tomey's Turl because he doesn't want "damned half-white McCaslin" (who by virtue of being Carothers McCaslin's son exhibits the injustice/ arbitrariness of the slave system) on his plantation. Outcome of the story given on p. 259: as result of Buddy's "winning" Tennie Beauchamp in card game with Hubert, Tennie was married to Tomey's Turl in 1859. "Fire and the Hearth": Takes place in the 1940's. Why its title? Significance of the "hearth": center of the home/ family. In Greek antiquity and among other premodern peoples, the center of (family-based) piety. That's what Molly upholds in the story; it's on account of her piety - a mixture of Biblical and black folk religion - that she seeks a divorce rather than have her family's/ daughter's souls tainted by Lucas's money-hunting. (In the traditions of various premodern peoples, mining was regarded as impious/ sinful because it was equivalent to "raping" your mother, Nature. Cf. p. 311, the earth as Ike's mother.) Why does Lucas seek wealth since he already has, by his acknowledgment, more money than he'll ever need? His quest for INDEPENDENCE. Compare HIS misunderstanding of freedom with that of Sam Fathers and of IKE (p. 285 VERSUS his later realization at p. 269) and of Sibby (black Sophonsiba) and her husband (267-8). And recall the white Sophosiba's saying to Buck in "Was," I guess you haven't yet the woman who would make your freedom a small price to pay (11). Lucas's pride - in his tools (42, 47); his forebears (43); concern for independence (105); disparaging view of what he sees as the decline of the McCaslins from ruthless Carothers to Zack to Roth Edmunds. How his pride led him to try to kill Roth (51-6)? Roth's pride: "the CURSE of his fathers, the old haughty ancestral pride based on an acc...