Unnamed Negroes on Father's Farm

Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Sun, 2015-02-01 14:43
Text: 
"The Old People"
Character Key: 
Unnamed Negroes 9
Display Name: 
Unnamed Negroes on Father's Farm
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Negroes on Father's Farm
Race: 
Black
Gender: 
Multi Gender Group
Class: 
Free Black
Rank: 
Peripheral
Vitality: 
Alive
Occupation: 
Farming
Specific Job: 
Laborers|Domestics
First Mentioned: 
Unnamed Family's Plantation in "The Old People" (Location)
Home: 
Quarters at the Unnamed Family's Farm in "The Old People" (Location)
Other Texts: 
Go Down, Moses
Biography: 

These Negroes live and work on the narrator's family farm, probably as tenant farmers. The cabins they live in may once have been part of the slave quarters. The racial and economic realities of Yoknapatawpha require them to put on the semblance of "servility," to have "recourse to that impenetrable wall of ready and easy mirth . . . to sustain [a buffer] between themselves and white men" on whom they depend for their subsistence (203).

Financial Status: 
financially dependent
Individual or Group: 
Group
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/7061