Virgil Snopes

As a Snopes Virgil provides an occasion for laughter rather than alarm. He is one of the "two youths in new straw hats" that Horace sees board the train from Holly Springs to Memphis (177). Chapter 21 is the story of their misadventures as students in the city's barber college - and as babes in the wood. Virgil has claimed to know something about Memphis from previous trips, but that pretense quickly disappears amid the bustling crowds and opulent hotels of the city. He follows Fonzo into Miss Reba's brothel, never realizing that it is not a boarding house. And though he accompanies Fonzo on trips to another brothel, he complains about having to pay three dollars for something "you caint tote off with you" (196). When Clarence Snopes, his older relative, discovers him in Reba's, he calls him "the biggest fool this side of Jackson" (198).