Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Fri, 2014-05-02 07:14
The customers come to Earl's hardware store on Friday are mostly country folks who are in town for the visiting show. Jason describes his job waiting on them bitterly as running "to sell some redneck a dime's worth of nails or something" (211).
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 23:10
Lorraine is the woman Jason is seeing in Memphis, Tennessee. In the letter she sends him, she calls Jason "my sweet daddy" (193). Their relationship seems based on the money he gives her and the sex she gives him. Jason thinks of her as "a good honest whore" (233). His ideas about other people, especially women, are hardly reliable, but in this case it does seem likely that Lorraine is one of the many Memphis prostitutes in Faulkner's fiction. She is given to drinking beer.
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 23:07
Hopkins is one of the men in Jefferson who trade on the cotton commodities market in New York by means of the telegraph. He is in the telegraph office when Jason drops in, and with Jason he discusses trading strategy.
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 23:06
Doc Wright trades on the commodities market at the telegraph office, where he can keep tabs on the price of cotton. He and Jason discuss trading strategy. (In other texts there are characters nicknamed 'Doc' who are not medical doctors, but whether Wright is or isn't a 'real' doctor is not made clear.)
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 23:02
The telegraph operator in Jefferson not only dispenses telegrams but provides updates on the cotton market. Jason Compson berates him several times for not providing him with information quickly enough - though of course it is Jason's fault.
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 22:58
This drummer appears at the hardware store where Jason works, and the two men discuss cotton. Jason invites him to go to the drugstore to get "a dope" (191). ( "Drummer" is an outdated term for a traveling salesman; "dope" is an outdated term for a Coca-Cola.) Because he thinks Jason believes him to be a Jew, he tells Jason that "my folks have some French blood" (191).
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 22:52
Uncle Job is an African American man who works at the hardware store where Jason Compson also works. In one of his racist rants, Jason calls him "an old doddering nigger" (251), but while Jason also complains about Job's laziness, during the course of the day April 6, 1928, he is shown assembling new cultivators and delivering merchandise. Earl, the man both Job and Jason work for, says "I can depend on him" (248).
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 22:50
Earl owns the hardware store on the Square in Jefferson where Jason Compson works. He tells Jason that Mrs. Compson is "a lady I've got a lot of sympathy for" (227), and apparently for her sake, he puts up with Jason's inadequacies as his employee. (The character "Earl Triplett" in The Mansion is almost certainly the same man.)
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2014-05-01 17:08
The drugstore in Jefferson contains a soda fountain where Jason goes several times, to talk with others about money and baseball, and to get a "dope" (191) and a "shot" (243) or a "headache shot" (251). In all three cases he is referred to a glass of Coca-Cola. (And in the first published text of the novel "coca-cola" replaced the manuscript's terms in the first and second instances.)
