Loosh

Loosh - or Lucius, as he's called in "My Grandmother Millard" and, presumably, as he was actually named - appears or is mentioned in four of the Unvanquished stories as well as "My Grandmother." Biologically, he is the son of Joby and Louvinia, the husband of Philadelphy, and the uncle of Ringo. Thematically, he is the only slave on the Sartoris plantation (and one of the few in the Yoknapatawpha fictions) who openly rebels against his enslavement. He eagerly awaits the coming of the Union army as his opportunity for freedom, helps them pillage the Sartoris property, and, before following them away, eloquently defends his actions: "I don't belong to John Sartoris now," he says in "Retreat" and again in The Unvanquished; "I belongs to me and God" (35, 75). We never learn what he and his wife experienced after they emancipate themselves. At the end of The Unvanquished, however, which takes place a decade after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Loosh is back working in the stable at Sartoris, apparently content in that place. When Faulkner returns in "My Grandmother Millard" to Sartoris and the story of the white and black families that live there during the Civil War, Lucius' quest for freedom is portrayed as a kind of comedy. In that story too he proclaims his plans "to be long gone" as soon as the Yankee army arrives in Yoknapatawpha (669), and soon the Yankees are at hand, but when Rosa sends Lucius on an errand, instead of finding and following them, he gets lost for four days before returning to the plantation (690).