"THE RED LEAVES" (1930) is unanimously recognized as one of the top works of short fiction by William Faulkner. The story narrates a harrowing tale of pursuit.
When the chief of an indigenous tribe in Yoknapatawpha dies, tradition demands that he be buried with his horse, his dog, and his black slave. However, the slave escapes. Faulkner realistically describes, yet with an epic tone, the manhunt that ensues, imbuing it with a ritualistic character, and transforming the fugitive's sacrifice into an allegory for the common human fate.
At the same time, he addresses for the first time, in a biting manner, the issue of slavery in the American South and the moral decay of the natives, who, emulating the whites, own black slaves. A characteristic example of Faulkner's modernist writing from the 1930s, "The Red Leaves" is, despite the violence that permeates it, a poetic text rich in symbolism, capturing man's horror in the face of death and his insatiable thirst for life.
