V.K. Ratliff

"Ratliff sat there with his bland brown smoothly-shaven face, and his neat tieless blue shirt and his shrewd intelligent eyes" (7). V.K. Ratliff, a sewing machine salesman and traveler covering four counties (and also one of Faulkner's favorite characters), is a bachelor, intelligent, observant, and highly articulate in his regional vernacular. One of the three main narrators of The Town, certainly the most succinct, knowledgeable, and humorous of them, Ratliff helps the others keep track of the Snopeses' behavior in Jefferson, particularly that of Flem Snopes. He eventually discerns the pattern in Flem's treatment of his kinsmen and the rest of Jefferson, but Gavin does not "get it," and Ratliff expresses his frustration in one of Faulkner's rare brief chapters: "Because he missed it. He missed it completely" (160; reiterated 186). Eula Snopes acknowledges having private conversations with Ratliff, in one of which he reveals to her his personal secret: that V.K. stands for Vladimir Kyrilytch, a family name passed down through the generations since the American Revolution (337-39).