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).
The "old barn . . . fives miles from home" in which Pap and the narrator take shelter from the rain and get the surprise about their new horse that Pat Stamper had promised (132).
"Old Man Anse Holland," as the narrator refers to him (118), lives within walking distance of the narrator's farm. He is clearly wealthier than most of the farmers in the area: he owns a number of mules, and "many" horses (120), and never seems to miss any of the possessions that Pap trades away. It seems likely that he is a landlord for whom the narrator's family, and perhaps others in the area, work as tenant farmers, but that is not made explicit.
Beasley Kemp is a farmer in Frenchman's Bend who lives somewhere near the narrator, though are only clue to the location of his farm is that the narrator takes it as the sign of a good trade that the horse Pap got from Kemp "could git up and walk from Beasley Kemp's lot to ourn by itself" (119).
The unnamed family to which the narrator belongs lives in Frenchman's Bend, on a farm at some distance beyond Varner's store. It seems likely that the family are share-croppers and the farm itself belongs to "Old Man Anse Holland," given the way the narrator's Pap freely uses Holland's property - "bob-wire and busted tools" and so on (118) - to make horse trades, and tries to "borrow a mule" from Holland when he loses his own (134), but this is not made explicit.
This is one of the locations that Faulkner moves around Yoknapatawpha whenever a new story requires it. The first time he tells the story about the ill-fated results of trying to beat Pat Stamper in a horse-trade - in "Fool about a Horse" - the "old barn" in which Pap and his son take shelter from the rain is on the road between Frenchman's Bend and Jefferson, "about five miles from home" (132). Their "home" is a tenant farm in the Bend.
Although "Fool about a Horse" and the re-told story about trading horses with Pat Stamper in The Hamlet have different protagonists and different first-person narrators, in both the farmer who lives within walking distance of the protagonist is "Old Man Anse Holland" (118, 33). Old Anse is clearly wealthier than most of the farmers in the area. In the short story it is implied that the protagonist, Pap, is a tenant on a farm Holland owns; in the novel that is made explicit.
Beasley Kemp is a farmer who lives somewhere in the neighborhood of Anse Holland's property. That location changes between "Fool about a Horse," where the man who swaps with Kemp is named "Pap" and the story is narrated by his son, and The Hamlet, where it's Ab Snopes who makes the trade and V.K. Ratliff who tells the story. This is one of the many pieces of un-real estate that Faulkner moves around Yoknapatawpha to suit the needs of different stories.
Varner's store appears in many of the Yoknapatawpha fictions as the social center of Frenchman's Bend. In appears in this story only briefly, as the place where Pap learns from Jody Varner that his new horse earlier belonged to Pat Stamper. But even in this brief appearance, we learn about "them other men" at the store (122) - the men of the Bend, who regularly gather on the store's front porch to share stories and gossip.
The "United States Attorney" who is present during Judge Gowan's hearing on the case against Lucas and George is an outsider who "moved to Jefferson only after the administration changed eight years ago" (222). This probably makes him an appointee of President Franklin Roosevelt, though that is not said explicitly. He is described as both "angry-looking" (221) and "angry" (222). Secure in his local knowledge and authority, Judge Gowan ignores his one exasperated but uncompleted remark.
