Unnamed Narrator

Submitted by padgettjb@breva... on Sun, 2017-09-24 16:41
Text: 
"A Bear Hunt"
Character Key: 
Quentin Compson III
Display Name: 
Unnamed Narrator
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Narrator
AKA: 
Quentin Compson III
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Male
Class: 
Upper Class
Rank: 
Major
Vitality: 
Alive
First Mentioned: 
Courthouse and Square in "A Bear Hunt" (Location)
Narrator: 
First Person
Biography: 

"A Bear Hunt" opens with this unnamed narrator, whose role is essentially to frame the first-person vernacular tale told by Ratliff that will be begin on the fourth page of the text. He provides some necessary background information about the story's characters and settings, including Ratliff and Lucius Provine, and the Indian mound and settlement. Although he tells us very little about himself, except to identify his family as "literate, town-bred people" (65), he appears to be an adult resident of Jefferson who, when he was fifteen, actually met some of the Chickasaws and spent a night on the Indian mound with another boy. Though unidentified in the magazine and Collected Stories versions of the story, in Faulkner’s revision of the story in Big Woods, the narrator identifies himself as General Compson's grandson, suggesting that he is Quentin Compson, whom Faulkner also uses as a first-person narrator in several other short stories in addition to his major appearances in The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!.

Note: 
CUT: This narrator provides details that the present day of the story is some years into the Great Depression and that Major de Spain continues to support Provine, now forty and nearly toothless, and his family. He also mentions the Negro church picnic some twenty years ago at which Provine burned men’s “celluloid collars” (65) and the Indian mound near Major de Spain’s hunting camp, both of which will prove important in Ratliff’s story.
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/14118