First published in the Saturday Evening Post on October 25, 1930,[1] it was one of Faulkner's first stories to appear in a national magazine.
[3] "Red Leaves" has been described as "a vision of the inexorable, brutal pattern of nature that decrees that every living thing must die".
The red leaves had nothing against him when they suffocated him and destroyed him.With the death of Chief Issetibbeha, custom demands that all the Chickasaw leader's prized possessions be buried alive in the earth along with him.
The unnamed slave makes a desperate bid for freedom, taking refuge in the swamps and reflecting on his past life.
As they slowly close in on the missing slave, they too reflect on the past, discussing the ways in which slavery and the coming of the white man have doomed them to crime, violence, and slow extinction as a people.