Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Thu, 2016-05-12 10:54
John Sartoris is the patriarch of the Sartoris family, one of the founders of Yoknapatawha, a large land- and slave-owner, and one of the major figures in Faulkner's fiction. He had two daughters (unnamed in Faulkner's works) and a son, Bayard. Although his wife is mentioned, until he marries Drusilla Hawk in this novel Sartoris is a widower. During the Civil War he fought for the South as both a regular and an irregular Confederate Colonel. He is seen through the eyes of the narrator, his son Bayard.
When the Sheriff's car is "within three or four miles of town," they begin seeing "wagons and cars" heading in the opposite direction, "going home from market day" (163). The "inescapable dust" being thrown up by the wagons indicates that the county's main roads, even this close to the "countyseat," are unpaved (163, 162). It is along this stretch that Cotton tries to commit suicide.
The spot on the "high road" between the river and the "countyseat" at which one of the tires on the Sheriff's car has a "puncture" is beside a field and an unspecified place (presumably the farm house connected to the field) where the deputies get "buttermilk" and "some cold food" (162-63).
Ernest Cotton's small farm is four miles from the spot where he kills Houston. He lives there alone in "a chinked log cabin floored with clay" that he built himself, "log by log" (153, 155). The house sits on a hill above the "dark band of timber" (155) and the "jungle" (154) that separate his farm from the river. The property also contains a "well-house" (153), and a "meager corn patch" (160). It does not appear that Cotton grows any cotton.
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Thu, 2016-05-12 10:16
Philadelphy is a slave. When she marries Loosh she becomes part of the family of slaves that serve the Sartoris family as 'house slaves.' Presumably she is a maid, though the novel does not show her at work. Her essential role is to try to keep Loosh from expressing and then acting on his longing for freedom. When he decides to go off in the wake of the Union army, she tells Rosa Millard three times that "I tried to stop him," but explains her decision to leave with him by adding "But he my husband" (74-75).
The spot Cotton chooses for killing Houston is described as "a quiet road, little used," a "short cut between [Houston's] house and Varner's store; a quiet, fading, grass-grown trace along the edge of the river bottom" (152-53). Cotton lies in ambush "behind a log" in a "thicket" of bushes (152).
Submitted by dorette.sobolew... on Thu, 2016-05-12 09:07
Joby and his wife Louvinia are the head of the family of slaves who have served the Sartorises for several generations and who (with the exception of Loosh) continue to work for them even after the Union army has passed through Yoknapatawpha, which gave most of the slaves in the area a chance to escape. He is Loosh's father-in-law and Ringo's grandfather.
