Character Keys
Code | title | biography | |
---|---|---|---|
3784 | Unnamed College Professors 2 |
The narrator of "Smoke" notes, as part of his thumbnail description of Gavin Stevens, that he "could discuss Einstein with college professors" (17). (In Light in August readers meet one of the college professors Gavin knows; see "Unnamed College Professor.") |
|
3783 | Unnamed Judge 5 |
The narrator of "Smoke" refers briefly to "the presiding judge during court term" when describing how one can gain entry into Judge Dukinfield's office (14). It's not clear if this is a rotating or a permanent position. |
|
3782 | John Gilbert |
In Sanctuary, Minnie notes that, although "he aint no John Gilbert," Popeye is a "right pretty little man" (227). Gilbert was one of the stars of the silent era in American movies. His nickname was "The Great Lover." |
|
3781 | Unnamed Neighbor of Benbow |
In Sanctuary Horace Benbow tells Ruby Lamar that she can "always get me by telephone, at ------," and gives her "the name of a neighbor" that the narrative withholds from us (201). This is that neighbor. (In Flags in the Dust the Benbows' neighbors are named Wyatt; there's no obvious reason for Faulkner's coyness about the neighbor in this novel.) |
|
3779 | Unspecified Compson Ancestors |
In the "Appendix, Compson:1699-1945" that Faulkner wrote in 1946, seventeen years after The Sound and the Fury was first published, he traces the Compson patrimony all the way back to Scotland in the 18th century. The 1929 novel, however, contains only a few much vaguer references to the family history; Jason thinks, for example, about the "governors and generals" in the family past (230), and Quentin thinks that "one of our forefathers was a governor and three were generals" (101). It's likely that the Compson that Mr. Compson mentions as his father's "father" (76) was the governor. |
|
3780 | Earliest Yoknapatawpha Families |
The Town contains two different kinds of lists of the old (white) Yoknapatawpha families. The first such list is constructed by Gavin Stevens as he reflects on the county's history, and unlike the second list in this novel or the kind of role Faulkner provides elsewhere, Gavin's thoughts include the early lower class settlers as well as "the proud fading white plantation names" like "Sutpen and Sartoris and Compson and Edmonds and McCaslin and Beauchamp and Grenier and Habersham" (332). |
|
3778 | Unnamed Patrol-riders |
In The Unvanquished, when Buck and Buddy McCaslin allow their slaves to live in the plantation big house and leave the place at night by the back door, the white inhabitants of the area share stories or rumors of "McCaslin slaves dodging the moonlit roads and the Patrol-riders to visit other plantations" (249). "Patrol-riders" - more frequently referred to as "paterollers' or 'paterrollers' (see The Unvanquished, for an example from Faulkner) - were armed white men whose job was to apprehend slaves found off their plantation after dark and to pursue fugitive slaves. |
|
3777 | Unnamed Acquaintances of Lonnie Grinnup |
These are the people who live "in houses [and] cabins ten and fifteen miles away" from Lonnie Grinnup's shack (71). According to "Hand Upon the Waters," Lonnie Grinnup and Joe periodically visit them, sometimes "for weeks" - the story simply refers to them as "his hosts" (71). They mostly seem to be farmers, since Lonnie and Joe sometimes sleep in "the hay of lofts," but some of them at least are prosperous enough to have "company rooms" with "beds" to sleep in (71). |
|
3776 | Unnamed Tidewater Planter |
In Absalom!, after moving to Virginia Sutpen's father works for this planter, whom the "thirteen or fourteen"-year-old Thomas (185) thinks of as "the man who owned all the land and the niggers and apparently the white men who superintended the work" on the plantation (184). Thomas spies on him as he spends his afternoons lying in a hammock being waiting on by a slave. Later Thomas will re-enact this scene in the arbor in Yoknapatawpha with Wash Jones as his servant. |
|
3775 | George Washington |
In The Sound and the Fury Quentin associates "Washington not telling lies" with "Jesus walking on Galilee" (80). Jesus walks on water in the New Testament. The mythic claim that even as a boy George Washington, the first President of the U.S., 'could not tell a lie' was created by an early biographer and educator named Parson Weems, who thought that the story of young Washington and the cherry tree he chopped down would be edifying for the young men of the early American republic. Weems himself could tell a lie. |
|
3774 | Saint Francis |
"Saint Francis" - known as Francis of Assisi, the Catholic friar who founded the Franciscan Order in the early 13th century - wrote the words that Quentin Compson remembers on the first page of his section in The Sound and the Fury in the song "The Canticle of the Sun": "All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death, From whose embrace no mortal can escape." |
|
3773 | Unnamed College Widow |
Herbert Head mentions "a little widow over in town" when he is trying to ingratiate himself with Caddy's brother Quentin (110). The "town" is presumably Boston, "over" the river from Harvard. Although it has been suggested that Head is talking about a prostitute, the idea of 'the college widow' as an unmarried woman who dates a succession of students over the years was proverbial in both 1910 (when the conversation takes place) and 1929 (when The Sound and the Fury was published). |
|
3771 | Unnamed Outlanders |
In Intruder in the Dust both Chick Mallison and Gavin Stevens at different points imagine a group they identify as "outlanders" (149, 199). In the second instance Gavin describes them to Chick as the people of "the North and East and West" who are currently seeking to "force on us [the South] laws based on the idea that man's injustice to man can be abolished overnight" (199). |
|
3770 | Unnamed Uncle of Sam Caldwell |
In The Reivers Sam Caldwell's uncle is a "division superintendent" on the railroad line Same works for (130). A typical division superintendent is in charge of a fairly large section of a railroad company's track. |
|
3769 | Unnamed Two Ladies |
These two "ladies," "neighbors, still in their boudoir caps," are part of the group in The Reivers that gathers in front of the shed to see Boon drive Grandfather's car (35). Presumably they are also among the people who go for rides in it later. |
|
3768 | Unnamed Drummers 6 |
These are the men Lucius in The Reivers calls "drummers," a term Faulkner expected his readers to know meant traveling salesmen (8). Taking them back and forth between the railroad station and the hotel is a steady source of business for Maury Priest's livery stable. |
|
3767 | Unnamed Trainman 2 |
In The Reivers Lucius notes that "two other men" are standing with Sam and "the conductor" of the train that is taking them to Parsham (161). One of them, he says, "must have been the engineer" (161). This is the other one. As part of "a functioning train crew," he could be a fireman or a brakeman (161). |
|
3766 | Unnamed Idlers in Livery Stable |
This is the group of men that Lucius refers to in The Reivers, ironically, as "our Jefferson leisure class": the "friends or acquaintances of Father's or maybe just friends of horses" who congregate in the livery stable to pass the time (38). They expect neither "any business" nor "any mail" to come their way (38). In other Yoknapatawpha novels such men typically sit in the barbershop or the park around the courthouse. |
|
3765 | Unnamed Tipster |
This is the "man on the streetcar" in The Reivers who gives Mr. Binford the (bad) tip about "which horse and buggy" to bet on at the race track (108). |
|
3764 | Unnamed Tinsmith |
Grandfather Priest hires this tinsmith in The Reivers to make both a toolbox and a "smell-tight" gasoline can for his new automobile (65). |
|
3763 | Unnamed Negro Tenant Farmers 6 |
The noise of the car arriving at the Edmonds place in The Reivers brings "Cousin Louisa and everybody else on the place" to see it (61). This entry assumes that "everybody else" is black, and belongs to one of the families of tenant farmers who work an allotted piece of the Edmonds property. We assume that because Lucius adds that the group does not include "the ones Cousin Zack could actually see from his horse" (61). Here "the ones" clearly refers to the people whom the white land owner Zack expects to see working in the fields instead of taking time off to stare at a car. |
|
3762 | Unnamed Streetcar Motorman |
In The Reivers the motorman the travelers see as they enter Memphis is turning the "front trolley" around at the end of the line with the help of the conductor (93). |
|
3761 | Unnamed Streetcar Conductor |
In The Reivers the "street car" conductor the travelers see as they enter Memphis is turning the "front trolley" around at the end of the line with the help of the motorman (93). |
|
3760 | Unnamed Spinster Aunts |
In an aside in The Reivers to his grandson about "that Cause" - i.e. the Civil War - Lucius refers to "your spinster aunts," and differentiates his idea about the War from theirs (228). Elsewhere in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, such women are identified with a refusal to surrender the 'Lost Cause,' to admit either defeat or the flaws of the Old South, but what these aunts stand for here is not clear. |
|
3759 | Unnamed Residents of Rouncewell's Boarding House |
The other residents of the boarding house where Boon lives in The Reivers are described as "juries" who were in town "during court terms," "country litigants" also in town for court, and "horse- and mule-traders" (25). |
|
3758 | Unnamed Relatives of Young Man Sartoris Killed |
In The Reivers, the "collateral descending nephews and cousins" of the young man Colonel Sartoris killed consider Sartoris a "murderer" (73). |
|
3757 | Unnamed Railroad Engineer 3 |
In The Reivers Lucius notes that "two other men" are waiting with Sam and the conductor beside the train that is going to carry the horse to Parsham; this is the one that, according to him, "must have been the engineer" (161). |
|
3756 | Unnamed Race Marshal |
The "steward and marshal" at the races in The Reivers is a local "dog trainer" and hunter who is out on bail awaiting trial for "a homicide which had occurred last winter at a neighboring whiskey still" (229). |
|
3755 | Unnamed Race Aficionados |
On the morning of the first horse race in The Reivers, Lucius sees "seven or eight people, all men," in the hotel dining room (209). Lucius refers to them as "people like us except that they lived" in and around Parsham; "some were in overalls; all but one were tieless" (209-10). Later he calls them "aficionados," in reference to their passion for horse racing (220). The one wearing a tie is one of the two men who talk with Boon about the upcoming race. |
|
3754 | Unnamed Memphis Prostitute 2 |
One of the two "ladies, girls" whom Lucius sees at supper in Miss Reba's in The Reivers (106). Lucius distinguishes them by their clothes - one wears "a red dress," and the other is "in pink" - and their age: one is a "girl" and the other is "no longer a girl" (106-07). This is the younger one, who complains about having to be so quiet on Sundays. |
|
3753 | Unnamed Memphis Prostitute 1 |
One of the two "ladies, girls" whom Lucius sees at supper in Miss Reba's in The Reivers (106). Lucius distinguishes them by their clothes - one wears "a red dress," and the other is "in pink" - and their age: one is a "girl" and the other is "no longer a girl" (106-07). This is "the older one," whom Lucius feels a kind of pity for: "There was something wrong about her . . . She was alone. . . . she shouldn't have had to be here, alone, to have to go through this" (107). Exactly what the 11-year-old Lucius means by "this" is not specified, but Mr. |
|
3752 | Unnamed People in Rural Tennessee |
Though their farms are "bigger, more prosperous, with tighter fences and painted houses and even barns" than those on the Mississippi side of Hell Creek, the Tennessee country people whom the travelers pass on the broad road that leads to Memphis in The Reivers are also "still in their Sunday clothes," sitting on their front porches ("galleries"), watching the world go by (91). And when they get closer to the city, "even the little children" who live along the road are no longer excited by the sight of a car (92). |
|
3751 | Unnamed People in Next County |
When they cross the Tallahatchie River in The Reivers, the adventurers are in what Lucius calls "foreign country, another county," the county that adjoins Yoknapatawpha to the north (78). Between Ballenbaugh's and Hell Creek bottom the countryside seems rural: along the road are "sprouting fields" (78). Lucius describes the residents they pass as "the people already in their Sunday clothes idle on the front galleries, the children and dogs . . . running toward the fence" to watch an automobile go by (78). |
|
3750 | Unnamed People in Crowd at Races |
In The Reivers Lucius describes the men who crowd around the race track and bet on the races as "the same overalls, tieless, the sweated hats, the chewing tobacco" that he associated with the men in the hotel dining room that morning (227). But a major difference is that this crowd is racially unsegregated: "people, black and white" (228). One member of this crowd leads Lightning to the starting line after Ned is disqualified. "People" could imply women, of course, but until Minnie arrives at the end of the third race, there is no evidence of them at the track. |
|
3749 | Unnamed People at Ballenbaugh's |
After Ballenbaugh takes over Wyott's store in The Reivers, it becomes a stop-over place for the "hard-mouthed hard-souled" men who carry merchandise to and from Memphis (72). But until the 1870s the people at Ballenbaugh's were "just tough men," i.e. no women (72). When the railroad took over the freight traffic in the 1880s, however, Ballenbaugh's becomes a destination point. |
|
3748 | Unnamed Negro Tenant Farmer 1 |
This "tenant on a farm six miles from town" in The Reivers is either the father or the husband of the woman Ludus is romancing (10). |
|
3747 | Unnamed Negro Stableman |
When Lucius and Lycurgus enter Linscomb's stable in The Reivers they see "a Negro stableman cleaning a stall at the rear" (220). |
|
3746 | Unnamed Negro Cook 13 |
The cook at the Parsham hotel is described in The Reivers as "a tremendous Negro woman" (199). |
|
3745 | Unnamed Negro Churchmember 4 |
According to Ned in The Reivers, the "hollow" where they "stable" Lightning before and between races is on land "that belongs to one of Possum's [Parsham's] church members" (217). |
|
3744 | Unnamed Negro Attendant |
Identified in The Reivers only as "a Negro," this man works for Mr. Rouncewell and pumps gasoline into the (few) cars that pull up to the tank beside the railroad tracks (46). He is not allowed to handle any money. |
|
3743 | Unnamed Modern Women |
In The Reivers Lucius compares the "females" of his childhood to the ones alive "now" (191). According to what he has heard, modern women not only "run in and out of gentlemen's rooms in hotels" - they do so wearing "the shorts or scanties" that seem to be the uniform of "their fight for freedom" (191). |
|
3742 | Unnamed Men on the Square |
In The Reivers Boon brags to this "group of men on the Square" about how fast he can make the car go (40). Many of the Yoknapatawpha fictions include a reference to the un- or under-employed men who hang around the Courthouse during the day; presumably these men are of that variety. |
|
3741 | Unnamed Memphis Officials |
These are the "street- and assessment commissioners" with whom Mr. Binford negotiates and the policemen he pays off as part of his responsibilities as the man of Miss Reba's house in The Reivers (111). |
|
3740 | Unnamed Memphis Jockey |
In his account in The Reivers of the first time Coppermine (AKA Forked Lightning) raced against Acheron, Parsham Hood briefly mentions "that Memphis boy" who was riding the horse (220). |
|
3739 | Unnamed Memphis Businessmen |
These are the "liquor dealers," "grocers and coal merchants," "plumbers," "newspaper boy" and other tradesman and laborers with whom Mr. Binford negotiates in The Reivers as part of his responsibilities as the man of Miss Reba's house (111). |
|
3738 | Unnamed McCaslin Slaves 2 |
In The Reivers Lucius Priest tells his grandson (also named Lucius Priest) that when their common ancestor Lucius McCaslin came to Mississippi in 1813, he brought "his slaves and foxhounds" with him "across the mountains from Carolina" (61). Presumably one of these enslaved people is the grandmother of Ned McCaslin, who has her own Character entry; otherwise this novel says nothing more about these people. More about some of them, at least, can be found in Faulkner's earlier novel, Go Down, Moses. |
|
3737 | Unnamed Man at Hell Creek Bottom |
The Reivers does not describe the unscrupulous man who cultivates a patch of mud in order to sell his services to mired automobile travelers in much detail. He is "a gaunt man, older than we - I anyway - had assumed" (86). |
|
3736 | Unnamed Livery Stable Employees |
These are the employees of Priest's livery stable in addition to the five who are mentioned by name. The Reivers characterizes them as "all the Negro drivers and hostlers" and "the last lowly stall cleaner" (7). Besides the day and night foremen, apparently the only white employee is Dan Grinnup. |
|
3735 | Unnamed Italian Peddler |
In The Reivers Otis mentions the "I-talian wop" who has a "fruit and peanut stand" in Memphis' Court Square (139). |
|
3734 | Unnamed Italian Bootlegger |
In The Reivers Lucius has heard that the place he knew as Ballenbaugh's "is now a fishing camp run by an off-and-on Italian bootlegger" (71). (It was illegal to buy or sell alcohol in Mississippi until 1966.) |
|
3733 | Unnamed Hunters and Fishermen |
In The Reivers the typical patrons at Ballenbaugh's in its modern iteration are described as "fox- and coon-hunters and fishermen" who return "not for the hunting and fishing but for the table that Miss Ballenbaugh set" (74). |
|
3731 | Unnamed Friends of Paul Rainey |
In The Reivers these people from elsewhere would accompany the wealthy businessman and hunter Paul Rainey on his trips to hunt "bear and deer and panther" in Mississippi (163). |
|
3730 | Unnamed Negro Father of Girl |
In The Reivers the Sheriff says that Boon's white friends can "settle" the problem caused by his accidental shooting of a "Negro girl" by "giving her father ten dollars" (15). The father himself does not appear in the text. |
|
3729 | Unnamed Dog Aficianados, Trainers and Owners |
In The Reivers Lucius' description of the men who attend the annual hunting dog competitions in Parsham brings together the lower class South ("overalled aficionados") and the upper class North ("northern millionaires") and includes "the professionals who trained the fine bird dogs" (163). |
|
3728 | Unnamed Parsham Deputy |
In The Reivers the driver of the Stanley Steamer that arrives in Parsham to carry Boon and the others back to jail in Hardwick is driven by "another deputy," or at least someone "in a badge" (253). |
|
3727 | Unnamed Convict |
In The Reivers Nat warns Otis about his behavior by mentioning "a boy like you back there in Jefferson" who is now in "the state penitentiary at Parchman" (139-40). It's not clear whether he is thinking of an actual person, or inventing one to threaten Otis. |
|
3726 | Unnamed Citizens Who Dislike Ballenbaugh's |
In The Reivers the people who live in the vicinity of Ballenbaugh's and seek to close it down include "sheriffs" (who campaign on the promise to run Ballenbaugh and his crew out of Yoknapatawpha), "angry farmers" (who know their livestock is being stolen by that crew), and "ministers and old ladies" (who object to the place on moral grounds, 73). On the other hand, Lucius tells his grandson that "sensible people" from further away were willing to allow the place to exist (74). |
|
3725 | Poleymus, Children of Constable |
"All" of Mr. and Mrs. Poleymus' children "are married and gone"; The Reivers does not say how many they had, or where they went (251). |
|
3724 | Unnamed People in Carriages and Wagons |
This entry represents the people in The Reivers who are in a "carriage or wagon" when the automobile being driven by Boon moves through the Square (39). Some of these horse- and mule-drawn vehicles have "women and children" in them, and some are being driven by women (39). Grandfather Priest's behavior changes, depending on the gender of the driver, but in either case, both the animals and the people are often startled by the presence of the car. |
|
3723 | Unnamed Car Passengers |
Besides the immediate Priest family, Aunt Callie, Delphine and "our various connections and neighbors and Grandmother's close friends" and "one or two neighbor children" all take turns riding in the car whenever Boon takes it out in The Reivers (37, 41). |
|
3722 | Unnamed Automobile Salesman 3 |
According to Boon, the Memphis man who sold Grandfather the car in The Reivers said to run the engine every day. |
|
3721 | Unnamed Boys in the Neighborhood |
In The Reivers Lucius Priest mentions "all the other boys on the street" he lives on (3). During May they play baseball on Saturdays. |
|
3720 | Unnamed Negro "New Girl" |
At the time The Reivers begins, Ludus is romancing "a new girl, daughter (or wife: we didn't know which) of a tenant" farmer who lives six miles from town (10). Apparently she likes "peppermint candy" (11). |
|
3719 | Unnamed "Brassy-Haired" Woman |
This woman in The Reivers one of Jefferson's more colorful residents, and not just because of her "brassy" (or orange-red) hair (25). Coming "from nowhere" and staying only "briefly," during the 1930s she transforms the "Snopes Hotel" into a place known to "the police" as "Little Chicago" (254). Presumably Lucius' reference to her as a "gentlewoman" is ironic (25): given Chicago's association in the popular mind at that time with the underworld, her boarding house must have been a fairly wild place. |
|
3717 | Unnamed Negro Old Man |
When he describes his situation on the verge of launching the forbidden trip to Memphis in The Reivers, Lucius says "I was in the position of the old Negro who said, 'Here I is, Lord. . . ." (62). He (or Faulkner) may have a specific person in mind, but this tempted black man seems more like the product of Lucius' imagination, and a suggestive one at that. |
|
3716 | Unnamed Negro "Boys" |
This entry represents the group that Lucius refers to in The Reivers when he wonders how heroic his role in the story really is. If the Negro Bobo has the automobile, he thinks, then all the adventurers would have to do to get it back is "send one of the family colored boys to fetch it" (224). These "boys" don't ever appear in the narrative, and it's not clear what "family" they are connected with - McCaslin? Priest? Edmonds? |
|
3715 | Unnamed Voyeurs |
This is the group that Lucius contemptuously refers in The Reivers as the "brutal and shameless men" (155) who pay Otis a dime to watch his aunt, Miss Corrie, "pugnuckling," having sex, with paying customers (154). |
|
3714 | Unnamed Young Man Sartoris Killed |
In The Reivers the "twenty-year-old Yoknapatawpha County youth" who was killed by Colonel John Sartoris cannot be specifically identified (73). In other Yoknapatawpha fictions Sartoris kills a number of different men. If Faulkner is thinking of one of them here, it is most likely the man Sartoris shot as a robber in both Flags in the Dust (1929) and "An Odor of Verbena," the last story in The Unvanquished (1938). |
|
3713 | Unnamed Union Soldier 4 |
This Union soldier in The Reivers is the "picket of Fitz-John Porter's" - i.e. a man on look-out duty as part of Porter's Union division at Gaines's Mill, Virginia - who shot and killed Grandfather Priest's father during the CIvil War (278). |
|
3712 | Unnamed Union General 3 |
In The Reivers this is the "Yankee general" whom the party of Confederate cavalrymen that included Theophilius McCaslin "almost captured" when they rode "at a gallop into the lobby" of the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis (94). Both he and the event may be apocryphal, though to the Priest family, Lucius says, it is all "historical fact" (94). |
|
3711 | Unnamed Wives of Ned McCaslin |
In The Reivers Lucius notes in passing that Delphine is the wife Ned has in 1904, and that during his lifetime he "ran through four wives" (31). This entry represents the other three, none of whom are given names, or individualized in any way. The narrative doesn't even indicate Delphine's place in the sequence of four. |
|
3710 | Unnamed Wife of Parsham Doctor |
In The Reivers the "fat iron-gray woman in pince-nez" who opens the door at the Parsham doctor's house might be his sister, but since he mentions his marriage a few pages later it seems more likely that she is his wife (185). |
|
3709 | Wylie 2 |
This "Mr Wylie" in The Reivers is a "family friend" of the Priests in 1905 (69). He lives on the place "eight miles from Jefferson" that his ancestor, "the first Wylie" in Yoknapatawpha, moved to sometime before the Civil War (69, 73). (In earlier editions of the novel his and his ancestor's name was Wyott.) |
|
3708 | Wylie 1 |
The man whom Lucius refers to in The Reivers as the "first Wylie" seems to have played a major role in shaping Yoknapatawpha County (71). When he set up his store at a crossing over the Tallahatchie River, the Indians still lived in the area. Because his place was "the head of navigation" - the furthest "small steamboats" could travel upriver from the Mississippi - the "whiskey and plows and coal oil and peppermint candy" that Yoknapatawpha imported from Vicksburg and the "cotton and furs" that it shipped out to the world were loaded or unloaded at his place (72). |
|
3707 | Mr. Wordwin |
Mr. Wordwin, a cashier at the Bank of Jefferson, plays his small part in The Reivers when he accompanies Boon to Memphis to fetch Grandfather's new car, but the narrative adds that he is "a bachelor, one of our most prominent clubmen or men about town" who has been "a groomsman in thirteen weddings" (30). |
|
3706 | Mack Winbush |
In The Reivers "Mack Winbush's" is where one can buy the moonshine whiskey that Cal Bookwright makes (12), but the text does not say if Winbush's is a farm or juke joint or something else. |
|
3705 | Birdie Watts |
Birdie Watts runs the brothel "across the street" from Miss Reba's in The Reivers (107). |
|
3704 | Virgil |
The "single temporary clerk" who mans the desk at the Parsham hotel is named Virgil in The Reivers but not described (190). |
|
3703 | Vera |
In The Reivers Vera works as one of the prostitutes at Miss Reba's. Because she is away, "visiting her folks up in Paducah," Boon and Lucius stay in her room (99). |
|
3702 | Unnamed Parents of Vera |
The "folks" whom Vera is visiting in The Reivers are presumably her parents (99). |
|
3701 | Mr. van Tosch |
In The Reivers the man who owns Coppermine (i.e. Lightning) is named van Tosch. He is originally from Chicago, but on a trip to Memphis decided he liked it so much that he moved to Tennessee and became a breeder of race horses. It is because he is "a foreigner" (281) - i.e. from the North - that he does not behave correctly when his black employee, Bobo, asks for money to help him out of trouble. But the narrative treats him favorably as a friend of both Colonel Linscomb and Grandfather. |
|
3700 | Son Thomas |
In The Reivers Son Thomas is "the youngest driver" who works at Maury Priest's livery stable (4). The "Son" in his name is not connected to any specific parents. |
|
3699 | Mr. Rouncewell 2 |
In The Reivers Mr. Rouncewell is an agent for a company that "supplies all the stores in Yoknapatawpha County" with oil (48). Either he or the oil company is also far-sighted enough recently to have added "a special tank of gasoline" to the tanks holding oil (48). His name suggests a connection to "Mrs. Rouncewell's boarding house" (26), where Boon lives, and there are men named Rouncewell in both The Town and The Mansion he could be, or be related to, but the novel does not make any of those connections explicit. |
|
3698 | Miss Rhodes |
At the end of The Reivers Lucius notes that "Miss Rhodes was going to let me make up the [school] work" he missed while having his adventure in Tennessee (296). She is obviously his teacher - and a very understanding one too. |
|
3696 | Paul Rainey |
The "Paul Rainey" whom Lucius mentions in The Reivers was a real Northern millionaire famous for his love of hunting (163). As Lucius notes, he "liked our country enough to use some of [his] Wall Street money" to purchase 11,000 acres of Mississippi land as a hunting preserve (163). Faulkner's father Murry knew him personally. |
|
3695 | John Powell |
In The Reivers John Powell is "the head hostler" at the Priest livery stable (4). A hostler is someone who looks after horses. On his twenty-first birthday, as "ineffaceable proof that he was . . . a man" (6), he bought a pistol that he carries to work in his overalls. Having the gun in the stable is against the rules, but he and Maury Priest handle this "moral problem" (6) by ignoring the its existence, "as mutual gentlemen must and should" (8). As part of the history of this gun the narrative mentions "his wife" and "his father" (6). |
|
3694 | Mrs. John Powell |
John Powell's wife is not named in The Reivers, but she is mentioned as having "stitched a neat strong pocket" inside his overalls for the pistol he chooses to carry (7). |
|
3693 | Mr. Powell |
Mr. Powell is John Powell's father in The Reivers. John works for him "on the farm" to earn the money with which he buys "a .41 caliber snub-nosed revolver" from him (6). |
|
3692 | Mrs. Poleymus |
The wife of Parsham's Constable in The Reivers had a stroke "last year," and "cant even move her hand now" (257). |
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3691 | Mr. Poleymus |
As Ned puts it in The Reivers, the Parsham constable, Mr. Poleymus, "may be little, and he may be old; but he's a man, mon" (251). Ned admires the way he takes care of his wife, who has had a stroke, washing and feeding her. He also sorts out the various characters and their doings with a clear sense of humanity and justice. |
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3690 | George Peyton |
Among the well-known sportsmen who come to Parsham every winter for the "National Trials" of pedigree bird dogs, Lucius mentions four names. Two are identifiable as real men (Horace Lytle and Paul Rainey). Lucius, the narrator of The Reivers, compares "George Peyton" to Lytle: the two are "as magical among bird dog people" as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb are to baseball fans (189). Although we haven't been able to confirm it, this pairing suggests that like Lytle, Peyton is a real person. |
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3689 | Otis |
In The Reivers Otis is Corrie's nephew, visiting Memphis from his home in Arkansas in order to acquire "refinement" (97). Although he has his fifteenth birthday in the course of the story, he is smaller than the 11-year-old Lucius. As Lucius says the first time he sees Otis, "there is something wrong about him" (104). By the time Lucius calls him a "demon child" (154), most readers are likely to agree. |
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3688 | McWillie |
The young black who rides Acheron against Lucius and Lightning in The Reivers is named McWillie. According to Lucius, "for size and age and color [he] might have been Lycurgus' twin" (220). |
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3687 | Mr. McDiarmid |
Mr. McDiarmid is one of the two judges at the horse race in The Reivers. Lucius describes him, memorably, as the operator of "the depot eating room, who . . . could slice a ham so thin that his entire family made a summer trip to Chicago on the profits from one of them" (229). |
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3686 | Horace Lytle |
The "Horace Lytle" whom Lucius mentions in The Reivers in connection with Parsham's annual hunting dog show is almost certainly the real Horace Lytle who in 1927 became the gun dog editor of the magazine Field & Stream. The bird dog he refuses to sell for $5000 - Mary Montrose - was real too: she won the New York Dog Show in 1917. |
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3685 | Luster |
The Luster in The Reivers works in the livery stable, though his specific job is not made clear. (There's no suggestion that this Luster is the same person who works for the Compsons in The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!.) |
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3684 | Butch Lovemaiden |
Butch, the deputy sheriff who bullies Boon and Corrie in Parsham in The Reivers, says his last name is "Lovemaiden" (187). This could be true, though it's not impossible that he gives himself that name as another way to annoy Boon. He is described as being "almost as big as Boon and almost as ugly, with a red face and a badge" (168) and "a bachelor" (190). Lucius says he smells of "sweat and whiskey" (170). |
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3683 | Mrs. Linscomb |
The Colonel's wife is away during The Reivers, visiting in "Monteagle," which is the name of a real town in southeastern Tennessee (277). |
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3682 | Colonel Linscomb |
In The Reivers Lucius calls him "the aristocrat, the baron, the suzerain" (228). He does not appear in person until late in the story, but is invariably referred to as "Colonel Linscomb" by the other characters Lucius meets in Parsham. His plantation (which contains the track on which the horses race) and mansion (where the story unwinds after the races are over) are both extremely lavish and well-maintained. He is obviously an old friend of Grandfather Priest. |
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3681 | Grandmother Lessep |
The mother of Lucius' mother. The only information about her that Lucius provides in The Reivers is that "Grandmother and Grandmother Lessep lived far enough apart to continue to be civil and even pleasant" to each other (45). "Grandmother" is his father's mother. The Lesseps live 300 miles from Jefferson. |