Simon

Simon is Joby's son and "Ringo's father" (17). A slave when the novel begins, he is John Sartoris' body servant during the war and wears a "Confederate private's coat" when he returns from the war (241). Despite Emancipation, he returns to the Sartoris plantation, either out of loyalty to the Sartorises or to be with his own family or both. He seems grief-stricken by John Sartoris' death, which suggests that their relationship, despite the imbalance of power between enslaved and enslaver, may have been complex. (In the earlier novel Flags in the Dust, Simon is several times depicted as nostalgic for his life as John Sartoris' slave.)