Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2016-07-15 14:53
This 40-mile road connects Jefferson and Oxford, Mississippi. Bayard travels this "long road" several times a year when he has a break from his studies at the University (217). Ringo travels this road twice in one night to bring Bayard back home.
The state of Kentucky is often synonymous with horse-breeding and -racing. Pap is hoping to use that when he tries to claim that his new horse "come from Kentucky" (122).
Although Pap calls it "Doc Peabody's store" when he sends the narrator there to buy a "pint of whiskey" (129), this is certainly the office of Doctor Lucius Peabody, a location that Faulkner's readers can visit in other texts, including all of the first three Yoknapatawpha novels. This is the only text, though, where someone buys liquor from the Doc; although Yoknapatawpha, like all of Mississippi at the time, is dry, presumably he can dispense it for medicinal purposes.
The milk separator that the narrator's mother wants is sold in a hardware store. A number of Yoknapatawpha texts include hardware stores in town; in Faulkner's first two novels the store is owned by Watts and Earl, respectively. Here is belong to "Uncle Ike McCaslin" (121) appears in various roles several Yoknapatawpha texts as well (121), including the central one in Go Down, Moses (1942), but either as a hunter or a carpenter rather than a small businessman.
The itinerant horse trader Pat Stamper has set up a temporary "camp" in "Hoke's pasture" (124). The camp is elaborate enough to include a "stock pen" (129) as well as at least one "tent" (131).
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2016-07-15 14:04
Nothing is known about the cook whom Ringo "flings aside" when he enters the Wilkins house to tell Bayard that John Sartoris is dead, but it can safely be inferred that she is both female and black (212).
The "three-mile bridge" presumably gets its name from being that far from Jefferson (124). Pap turns the wagon aside into the bushes at that point to prepare his horse to meet Pat Stamper.
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2016-07-15 14:01
Mrs. Wilkins and her husband Professor Wilkins give Bayard a home while he is pursuing a law degree in Oxford, Mississippi. She is a "small" woman whose little gestures ("she just put her hands on my shoulders") reveal her big compassion for Bayard (215).
The narrator and his Pap are on the road to Jefferson, "about a half mile from Varner's store," when the horse Pap just acquired in the swap with Kemp "pops into a sweat" and breaks into a run (122).
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Fri, 2016-07-15 13:54
Professor Wilkins is teaching and boarding Bayard while Bayard pursuits a law degree. He seems to have grown fond of Bayard and calls him "my son" when he has to deliver tragic news (212). Professor and student have had conversations about the principles of the Bible and the Ten Commandments, particularly "Thou shalt not kill." He is afraid that Bayard is contemplating breaking it as he "believed he was touching [Bayard's] flesh which might not be alive tomorrow" (216). Bayard refers to him as "Judge Wilkins" (212).
