The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The residents of the hill country from which Monk hails are a "clannish people," and fiercely independent. These descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers live in a country "impenetrable and almost uncultivated" where they "intermarried and made whiskey and shot at all strangers from behind log barns and snake fences." The narrator points out that they seem to know "as little about him [Monk] as we did" (43).

Not even the unnamed sheriff of Yoknapatawpha County will go to the hill country in the eastern part of the county from which Monk hails. He does not appear directly in the story either.

After Monk is arrested, he misidentifies his alleged victim. As the narrator puts it, "he named as his victim (this on suggestion, prompting) several men who where alive, and even one who was present in the J. P.'s office at the time" (42). These misidentified victims provide further proof of Monk's incompetence to participate in his own defense.

When Monk is arraigned, he tries to "make a speech" before this "J.P." - Justice of the Peace (42).

Monk tries to "make a speech" before several unnamed and undescribed prisoners when he first arrives at the county jail (42). Typically in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, the men who are jailed together are black, but in this case we can't determine the race of these "other prisoners" (42).

Along with the "other prisoners" in the county jail, this "jailor" is there when Monk attempts to "make a speech" after his arrest (42).

This is one of the two deputies mentioned in "Monk." This one is the officer who arrests Monk in the gas station. He may or may not be the same one who later transports him to the state penitentiary by train.

Several unnamed people find Monk standing over the body at the gas station and detain him until the authorities arrive.

C.L. Gambrell is the warden at the penitentiary. He seems to be a fair, kind man in many respects. He makes Monk a trusty, and Monk follows him with "doglike devotion" (49). However, he also displays a cruel streak when he goads Bill Terrel concerning his pardon. He shows his judgment to be even more questionable when he has an unnamed Negro cook "severely beaten" in an effort to extract information about his missing pistol. Monk later finds the pistol where the warden later "recalled having hid it himself" (53).

Monk's court-appointed defense attorney is very inexperienced. Recently admitted to the bar, he "probably knew but little more about the practical functioning of criminal law than Monk did." Most notably, he neglects to enter a plea of mental incompetence, because either he "forgot" or "pleaded Monk guilty at the direction of the Court" (42).