Character Keys
Code![]() |
title | biography | |
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1235 | Unnamed Restaurant Customers 3 |
In "Lion" and again in Go Down, Moses, the other customers in the Memphis restaurant where Boon Hogganbeck and Quentin eat dinner listen to the drunken Boon's stories of Lion and Old Ben. |
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1236 | Unnamed Restaurant Customers 4 |
In The Town there are "half a dozen strangers not even kin to Snopeses by marriage" who are eating in the restaurant when Eck asks about what is really in the hamburgers he's cooking (34). |
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1237 | Unnamed Restaurant Customers 1 |
At noon in Rogers' grocery and restaurant in Flags in the Dust are two different groups of people: there are "a number of customers" in the grocery, not otherwise described, and in the restaurant "a number of men and a woman or so, mostly country people" (119). |
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1238 | Unnamed Revenue Agent 3 |
The "federal revenue agent" in The Reivers who went out to Ballenbaugh's to investigate the production and sale of moonshine whiskey and never returned worked for the Treasury Department (73). The presumption is that he was killed by the moonshiners. 'Revenuers' - as they were called - were charged with enforcing laws against making and distributing illegal liquor. |
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1239 | Unnamed Revenue Agent 2 |
Jack Crenshaw and this man whom The Town does not name are federal officers, "revenue field agents" (182), who "are just interested in whiskey, not photography" (183). They find the moonshine whiskey in Montgomery Ward Snopes' studio. (As officials whose task it is to make sure all alcohol production is properly taxed, 'revenuers' play a prominent role in the lore of moonshine whiskey.) |
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1240 | Unnamed Revenue Officers and Deputies |
In "A Point of Law" and again in Go Down, Moses, the "revenue officers and deputies" whom Lucas remembers worked for the U.S. government (215, 61). Selling or buying alcohol was illegal by Mississippi state law, but in general the moonshiners who made and sold whiskey were prosecuted for evading federal tax regulations. |
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1241 | Unnamed Runaway Slave |
The "runaway slave" mentioned in Absalom! is one of the novel's ambiguities. In describing the "posse" that follows and arrests Sutpen, the narrator says that he "had a larger following than if he actually had been the runaway slave" (36). The use of "the" here clearly implies that a runaway slave had been mentioned earlier, but this is the text's only reference to a "runaway" (years later, during the Civil War, many of the enslaved people in Yoknapatawpha will self-emancipate by following the Union Army - but they are not pursued by any "following" whites). |
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1242 | Unnamed Slaves of Sartorises 3 |
In Requiem for a Nun these are the "slaves" that John Sartoris brings with him, along with "gear and money," when he first arrives in Yoknapatawpha (35). In this novel none of them are given a name or any other individuality. |
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1243 | Unnamed Slaves of Sartorises 1 |
Simon Strother, who was born a slave just before the Civil War began, provides the only depiction in Flags in the Dust of the enslaved men and women who 'belonged' to the Sartoris family. It occurs when he tells Dr. Peabody how the birth of Bayard and Narcissa's son will bring back "de olden times" (391). As his example of those times, he describes "de niggers fum de quawtuhs gethered on de front lawn, wishin' Mistis en de little marster well" when his "Mars' John's" son Bayard was born in 1849 (392). |
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1244 | Unnamed School Children 4 |
In Absalom! the one-room Virginia school that Sutpen attends "for about three months" is "full of children three or four years younger than he" - i.e. 8-10 years old - and "three or four years further advanced" (194). |
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1245 | Unnamed School Children 6 |
The children who go to the segregated white school in Jefferson appear several times in The Town: not in class, but coming to school (running "toward the sound of the first strokes of the school bell," 214); leaving school after "the dismissal bell" has rung (216); and even as part of a marriage proposal: in the midst of their "Lilliputian flow," the much older Wallstreet Panic proposes to Miss Vaiden Wyott, his and the other children's teacher (153). |
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1246 | Unnamed School Children 1 |
In Flags in the Dust Bayard and Raf are passed by "small groups [of] children going home from school" for lunch at noon, and three hours later they again "walk among school children" going home at the end of the school day (119, 126). These children are described as "little girls with colored boxes and skipping ropes" and "boys in various stages of deshabille" (119). |
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1247 | Unnamed School Children 5 |
In "Monk" the "country school" that Monk attends as a first-grader almost certainly was a one-room schoolhouse, and his schoolmates probably ranged in age from six to sixteen or so (48). But when Monk describes his experience there, he tells Gavin that "they [the students] would all read together out of the books," and that, although he was illiterate, "it was fine . . . to hear all the voices together," including his (48). |
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1248 | Unnamed School Girls 1 |
When the present day of his section in The Sound and the Fury Benjy reaches the gate in front of the Compson house, he thinks of it as the place "where the girls passed with their booksatchels" (51). He may simply be remembering the girls who walked past over a decade ago, or more probably is referring to a new generation of girls who walk past his house in 1928. |
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1249 | Unnamed School Girl 1 |
In The Sound and the Fury the unnamed little girl who walks home from school with the Burgess girl is "scared" of Benjy, though her friend assures her that "he wont hurt you" (53). |
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1250 | Unnamed School Girl 2 |
In The Sound and the Fury Miss Quentin tells Jason she needs money to pay back "a girl. I borrowed some money from a girl" (214). It seems more likely, however, that the money is for an abortion, and that this "girl" is her invention. |
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1251 | Unnamed School Children 2 |
The children Addie taught before her marriage in As I Lay Dying are described only from her point of view, which is an avowedly hateful one. To her, they are represented by their "little dirty snuffling noses" (169). She takes pleasure in the thought that when she whips them for "faulting" in school, she becomes part of their "secret and selfish" lives (170). |
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1252 | Unnamed Union Sentry 1 |
In "Raid" and again in the chapter with that title in The Unvanquished this sentry stands outside the tent to which Rosa Millard, Bayard and Ringo are taken after they cross the river. |
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1253 | Unnamed Confederate Sentry |
In Absalom! this sentry guards the tent in the Carolina bivouac where Sutpen and Henry meet. |
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1254 | Unnamed Union Soldier 2 |
In "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished this is the Union soldier among the group at the tent where Rosa Millard is taken after she almost drowns in the river who suggests taking her "to the hospital" (51, 108). |
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1255 | Unnamed Countrywoman 1 |
In Flags in the Dust this unnamed woman is pregnant again when she moves from the countryside into Jefferson with her husband and two children. When her husband is drafted and shipped overseas, she is helped by the Red Cross and Narcissa Benbow. |
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1256 | Unnamed Countrywoman 2 |
The narrator of Sanctuary doesn't say how he knows this young woman carrying an infant on the train is a "countrywoman" (170), but he displays sympathy for the fact that she is forced to stand while the college students occupy the seats in the railway car. |
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1257 | Unnamed Chickasaw |
One of the Chickasaws in "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun wears a "foxhorn" around his neck which Compson blows to call in "his men" from the search for the missing lock (210, 16). |
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1259 | Unnamed Confederate Cavalry 4 |
In "Retreat" and again in The Unvanquished this cavalry unit of indeterminate size stops to talk with Granny and her party on "the third night" of their journey toward Memphis (23, 56). |
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1260 | Unnamed Confederate Cavalry 2 |
In Light in August this is the troop of Confederate cavalry under the command of General Van Dorn to which Hightower's grandfather belonged. During the Civil War it rode into Jefferson and destroyed a Union supply depot, after which most of them rode away. (This event that Hightower is obsessed with is adapted by Faulkner from an actual raid that occurred in 1862 in Holly Springs, a Mississippi town near Oxford.) |
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1261 | Unnamed Confederate Cavalry 3 |
In Light in August this is the smaller party of Confederate soldiers who, after their unit's successful raid on Union supplies in Jefferson, turn back to raid a henhouse; it includes Hightower's grandfather. |
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1262 | Unnamed Confederate Cavalry Officer |
In "Retreat" and again in The Unvanquished this is the officer in command of the Confederate cavalrymen who warns Granny that she should turn back because "the roads ahead are full of Yankee patrols" (24, 56). He apologizes for saying "hell" in her presence, and is chivalrous enough to offer her "an escort" when she insists on going on (24, 56). |
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1263 | Unnamed Union Cavalryman 2 |
In "Ambuscade" and again in The Unvanquished the first "Yankee" Bayard and Ringo ever see is the Union soldier they shoot at. They don't get a close enough look at him first to describe him in any detail, but Bayard does remember thinking - with some surprise - that "he looks just like a man" (10). When he passes the site of the shooting in "Retreat," the next story in the series, Bayard remembers him briefly. |
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1264 | Unnamed Union Cavalryman 1 |
In the story Will Falls tells Old Bayard in Flags in the Dust about the Yankees arriving at Sartoris hoping to capture Colonel John, this is "that 'ere other Yankee" who goes around the house looking for him at the barn (21); John fools him long enough to get around the corner before the man starts shooting at him. When this story is told again in "Retreat" and The Unvanquished this Union soldier, perhaps frustrated by not capturing John Sartoris in the barn, points his "carbine" directly at the two boys, Bayard and Ringo, "and shot at us pointblank" (34, 73). |
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1265 | Unnamed Union Cavalry 4 |
In "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished this troop of Yankee cavalry is camped out at the river ford about twenty miles from the narrative's central river crossing site. |
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1266 | Unnamed Union Cavalry 5 |
In "Raid" and again in the chapter titled "Raid" in The Unvanquished, this is the outfit of Union soldiers who are riding through the countryside in Alabama when Ringo stops them in order to requisition additional property. |
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1267 | Unnamed Union Cavalry 7 |
In Go Down, Moses, this is the "body of raiding Federal horse" - i.e. a Union cavalry unit - that arrives at the McCaslin plantation sometime in 1862, causing the flight of Percival Brownlee (278). |
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1268 | Unnamed Union Major 2 |
In "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished this is the Union officer who asks Drusilla to convince the Negroes camped out at the river to return to their former owners. |
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1269 | Unnamed Union Officer 3 |
This is the leader of the sixty Yankees whom Sartoris captures in "Retreat" and again in The Unvanquished. The officer ruefully says, "Colonel, by God I believe you have fooled us" (31, 68). |
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1270 | Unnamed Union Officer 4 |
In "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished this man is identified only as an "officer," but he is distinguishable by the "stubble of beard and long streak of blood" on his "little white face"; he warns Rosa Millard that the army is preparing to blow up the bridge (49, 105). |
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1271 | Unnamed Union Officer 5 |
The officer in command of the cavalry troop Rosa Millard encounters at the river ford in "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished is not named, but is clearly identified as "a heavy-built man with a red face" (54, 113). We get a good idea why he looks choleric when he reads the Rosa's requisition order and swears - behavior that suggests a lower class origin than the officers, Yankee as well as Confederate, elsewhere in the fictions. |
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1272 | Unnamed Soldiers in Yoknapatawpha Regiment |
Colonel Sartoris' first military command was the regiment that he raised at the beginning of the Civil War. According to Uncle Buck McCaslin in "Retreat," Sartoris "bought and paid for" it, which presumably means that Sartoris underwrote the costs of arming and equipping the unit, though no further details about that process are provided (21). |
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1273 | Unnamed Union Lieutenant 1 |
In "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished, this anonymous Lieutenant executes the erroneous order of the General authorizing Rosa Millard to receive 10 chests, 110 mules and 110 "Negroes of both sexes" (54); he adds an "another hundred" Negroes with the "compliments" of the commanding general (53, 112). |
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1274 | Unnamed Union Lieutenant 2 |
As Rosa Millard and her group return through Alabama in "Raid" and The Unvanquished, they encounter a Union cavalry unit led by this lieutenant who, Bayard says, "didn't look much older than Ringo and me," sounds "like a girl" when he swears, and looks as if he's "fixing to cry" when forced to turn over his troop's horses to her (56, 116-17). |
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1275 | Unnamed Union Lieutenant 3 |
In "The Unvanquished" and again in the chapter titled "Riposte in Tertio" in The Unvanquished this unnamed Union officer berates Rosa for managing to get away with more Yankee mules. Later, looking "about forty and kind of mad and gleeful both at the same time" (87, 140), he comes to the Sartoris plantation to reclaim some of the stolen animals and then, ironically, gives Rosa a voucher to cover the damage he men to the plantation in the process, while pleading with her not to use this new voucher as a means to continue her campaign against the Yankees. |
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1276 | Brother Fortinbride |
"Brother" Fortinbride is a character in two of The Unvanquished stories. A private in Sartoris' regiment, he was seriously wounded in battle at the start of the war. Invalided back to Yoknapatawpha, in "The Unvanquished" he helps Rosa distribute money and mules to the county's poor: although he is a farmer, and a Methodist, he officiates as a vernacular preacher in the services that Rosa Millard organizes in the Episcopal Church in the absence of the regular minister; his title "Brother" is an unofficial religious one. |
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1277 | Unnamed Enslaved Male |
In "Vendee" and again in The Unvanquished Matt Bowden - pretending to be a Tennessee planter chasing Grumby's gang himself - tells Bayard, Ringo and Uncle Buck that Grumby's gang "killed one of my niggers" (104), by which he means one of his enslaved men. It's unlikely that any part of his story is true. |
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1278 | Unnamed People in Heaven |
In "Vendee" and again in The Unvanquished Brother Fortinbride's eulogy for Rosa Millard expresses his faith that in heaven "there are men, women and children, black, white, yellow or red, waiting for her to tend and worry over" (98, 158). This unseen group is perhaps the most racially inclusive group in all the Yoknapatawpha fictions. |
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1279 | Unnamed Negro Voters 1 |
Faulkner relates the time Colonel John Sartoris prevented a group of newly emancipated Negroes from voting in three different texts. In the first, Flags in the Dust, the event is described by Will Falls, who witnessed it "that day in '72" - i.e. 1872 (242). The second time, in "Skirmish at Sartoris" and The Unvanquished, the event is recounted by the Colonel's son Bayard, who witnessed it as an adolescent. |
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1280 | Unnamed Union General 1 |
Two of The Unvanquished stories refer to but don't name a Union general in command of the forces in the area of Yoknapatawpha. In "Ambuscade" this general is mentioned by Sergeant Harrison, who heard "the general" in command of the larger unit to which his cavalry troop belongs say that "if he had enough horses, he wouldn’t always care whether there was anybody to ride them or not" (13, 30). |
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1281 | Unnamed White Men of Yoknapatawpha |
In "Skirmish at Sartoris" and again in The Unvanquished Bayard refers to the men who work with John Sartoris to resist any effort to give voting rights to the recently emancipated slaves as "all the men in the county" and "all the other men in Jefferson" (69, 58; 204, 188). They assemble in the town square "with pistols in their pockets" (69) to prevent black men from voting, and ride out afterwards to the Sartoris place with John and Drusilla to cast their own votes in the election. |
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1282 | Unnamed Enslaved Children 2 |
In Absalom! Mr. Compson describes how on Christmas Eve, "the nigger children, with branches of holly and mistletoe for excuses, [lurked] about the rear of the big house to shout 'Christmas gift' at the white people" (84). Traditionally slaves were given holiday at Christmas, and the tradition of being rewarded for being first to wish someone a merry Christmas, while not exclusively southern or interracial, was part of the festivities. |
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1283 | Ad |
In "Lion," Ad is the cook at Major de Spain's hunting camp and an aide-de-camp to Major de Spain and the others in the hunt for Old Ben. Like Boon, he has high regard for the dog Lion, and the two men compete for the dog's company. Ad observes and reports on Lion's and Boon's confrontation with Old Ben, and mourns the incomparable dog: "Ad stood in the door too, as Boon had done, with the tears running down his face too" (186). |
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1284 | Unnamed Railroad Brakeman 1 |
In "Lion" and again in Go Down, Moses, the brakeman on the logging train serving Hoke's lumber mill talks with Boon about the competitive merits and abilities of the dog Lion and the bear Old Ben, as though the two animals were rivals for the boxing championship. |
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1285 | Mayfield|Maydew |
In "Pantaloon in Black" the country sheriff who arrests Rider is named Mayfield; in Go Down, Moses, his name is changed to Maydew; when Rider's story is retold by Temple in Requiem for a Nun the sheriff is not named. In the first two texts, only his name is changed. In both he tells Rider that "You'll have plenty of fresh air when [the Birdsongs] get ahold of you" (254, 150). |
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1286 | Unnamed Negro Sawmill Fireman |
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the fireman who keeps the fire burning at the sawmill is described as "an older man" (243, 136). He shares his breakfast with Rider. |
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1287 | Unnamed Negro Crap Shooters |
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, six or seven men who work with Rider - three from his timber gang and three or four from the mill crew - are shooting craps with the white night watchman's crooked dice in the tool-room at the back of the mill’s boiler shed. |
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1288 | Unnamed Lynchers |
According to the coroner's official report in "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, Rider dies "at the hands of a person or persons unknown" (252, 147), though the deputy's narration leaves little doubt that at least many of the lynchers are members of the Birdsong clan. |
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1289 | Unnamed Negro Inmates 3 |
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, the other inmates of the county jail where Rider is being held are described in crude burlesque terms when the deputy sheriff tells his wife how he ordered them to try to restrain Rider in the jailhouse: he calls them "the chain-gang niggers" and describes them as "a big mass of nigger arms and heads and legs boiling around on the floor” (255, 151). |
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1290 | Unnamed Negro Sawmill Workers 1 |
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, Rider is the head of "a mill gang" at the sawmill (239, 129). These other Negroes attend Mannie's funeral, and several of them try to help him in his grief. Some of them are also among the workers who shoot dice after hours at the mill. |
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1291 | Unnamed Negro Mourners |
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, the Negroes who gather at Mannie's funeral are "the meager clump of [Rider's] kin and friends and a few old people who had known him and his dead wife both since they were born" as well as the men Rider works with at the mill (238, 130). |
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1292 | Unnamed Woman at Card Party |
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, this woman is a member of the same social club as the deputy's wife. She insists on a "recount of the scores" of the card game that the wife thought she had won (252, 147). |
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1293 | Unnamed Negro Women in Rider's Past |
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, these are the sexual partners with whom Rider consorted before he met Mannie: "the women bright and dark and for all purposes nameless he didn’t need to buy" (240, 131). |
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1294 | Unnamed Census Taker |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the worker for the 1940 U.S. census who visits Samuel Beauchamp in the penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, is described as a "spectacled young white man" with a "broad census taker's portfolio" (256, 351). He is a "year or two younger" than Butch Beauchamp, and he has probably never been wealthy, since the shoes Beauchamp wears are described as "better than the census taker had ever owned" (257, 352). |
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1295 | Unnamed District Attorney in Chicago |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Gavin Stevens calls the "District Attorney in Chicago" to gather information on Samuel Beauchamp (357, 260). |
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1296 | Unnamed Chicago Police Officer |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Samuel Beauchamp is convicted of and executed for shooting and killing a "Chicago policeman" (259, 356). |
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1297 | Unnamed Father of Hamp and Mollie |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Miss Worsham says that "Mollie's and Hamp's parents belonged to my grandfather" (260, 357), which means that they were originally enslaved. |
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1298 | Unnamed Mother of Molly Worsham Beauchamp |
In Go Down, Moses, Miss Worsham tells Gavin Stevens that the "parents" of Mollie Beauchamp "belonged to my grandfather," which means of course that they were enslaved (357). In Intruder in the Dust - where Mollie is named Molly again, Miss Worsham is named Miss Habersham, and Molly's father is not mentioned - the reference to Molly's mother adds the detail that both Molly and Miss Habersham "suckled at Molly's mother's breast" (85). |
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1299 | Samuel Worsham |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Miss Worsham tells Stevens that Mollie "gave [her grandson] my father's name" (261, 358). The narrative tells us that Samuel Worsham left his daughter Belle "the decaying house" she continues to live in (260, 356). |
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1300 | Worsham, Grandfather of Belle |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Belle Worsham tells Gavin Stevens that the "parents" of Mollie and Hamp Worsham were slaves who "belonged to my grandfather" (260, 357). His last name is probably Worsham, but that is not specified. |
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1301 | Unnamed Jefferson Police Officer |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, this is the unnamed "officer" whom Samuel Worsham Beauchamp attacks when he is caught breaking into Rouncewell's store (258, 354). |
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1302 | Unnamed Joliet Undertaker |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Gavin Stevens calls an undertaker in Joliet, Illinois, to arrange for Samuel Beauchamp's body to be sent back to Jefferson after the execution. |
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1303 | Unnamed Negro Undertaker |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the Jefferson undertaker who buries the black citizens of Yoknapatawpha is himself a Negro. It was typical practice throughout the Jim Crow South at the time of the story to segregate funeral parlors as well as cemeteries. The "Negro undertaker" himself does not appear in either text (265, 363). |
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1304 | Unnamed Lawyer 7 |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Samuel Beauchamp was represented at his murder trial by a "good lawyer" (260, 357), at least according to what Gavin Stevens' learns from his calls to the Joliet prison warden and the Chicago district attorney. In his comment in the novel, however, Gavin adds the phrase "of that sort" (357). The text, however, does not explain what "sort" of lawyer he is thinking of. |
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1305 | Unnamed Jefferson Merchants and Professionals 2 |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Gavin Stevens calls at the various offices and stores "about the square" and solicits funds to help pay the costs of bringing Mollie's grandson's body back to Jefferson and giving him a small funeral from "merchant and clerk, proprietor and employee, doctor and dentist and lawyer" (263) - this phrase in the novel adds "and barber" at the end (360). Some give him the "dollars and half dollars" he asks for, and some don't (265). |
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1306 | Unnamed Negroes in Crowd |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the crowd that watches as the coffin carrying Samuel Beauchamp is taken off the train contains a "number of Negroes and whites both" (265, 363). These are the "probably half a hundred Negroes, men and women too," who are there (265, 363). |
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1307 | Unnamed Negro Funeral Parlor Employees |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, this group of "Negro undertaker's men" (265, 363) is at the train station when Samuel Beauchamp's casket arrives in Jefferson; they load it into the hearse. |
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1308 | Unnamed Whites in Crowd |
In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the crowd that watches as the coffin carrying Samuel Beauchamp is taken off the train contains a "number of Negroes and whites both" (265, 363). The Negroes include "men and women too," but the white people there are described as "idle white men and youths and small boys"; there do not seem to be any white women among the spectators (265, 363). |
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1309 | Jobaker|Joe Baker |
In "The Old People" and again in the chapter with that name in Go Down, Moses this man is "a full-blood Chickasaw" Indian (204, 163) and friend of Sam Fathers. He is called both Joe Baker (by the narrator of the story, 205) and Jobaker (by the narrator of the novel, 164, and by himself in both texts, 204, 163). His history is unknown. He "lived in a foul little shack at the fork of the creek" (204, 163). Living as a hermit, he hunted and fished for his livelihood. |
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1310 | Unnamed Chancery Clerk 1 |
Typically, the "Chancery Clerk" mentioned by the narrator of "The Old People" would have been elected to his position (204) . His job would include collecting demographic data and presiding over the chancery court records, which mainly dealt with disputes about property and contracts adjudicated in the court. (Curiously, all mention of this person is gone from the version of the story Faulkner includes in Go Down, Moses: there the phrase is "chancery book in Jefferson," 163). |
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1311 | Unnamed Chancery Clerk 2 |
In The Mansion Gavin Stevens checks the deed for Meadowfill's property in "the Chancery Clerk's office" - which is the only way this official appears in the novel (367). Typically, a chancery clerk would have been elected to his position. His job would have had him collecting data and presiding over the chancery court records, which would have dealt with disputes adjudicated in the court, centering on land and contracts. |
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1313 | Unnamed Federal Commissioner |
Although we never learn the name of the "commissioner" mentioned in "A Point of Law" and again in Go Down, Moses, or much else about him, we know the man who signs the indictments against Lucas and George for moonshining is a federal official - his office is in "the federal courthouse" (216), and moonshining was a federal crime. |
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1314 | Unnamed Lawyers |
Outside the courthouse in "A Point of Law" are "rich white lawyers talking to one another around cigars, the proud and powerful of the earth" (221). When this scene recurs in Go Down, Moses, the people in the group are referred to as "lawyers and judges and marshals" (69). In both texts, the critical perspective on these people seems shared by both Lucas and the narrative. |
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1315 | Unnamed Moonshine Buyers 2 |
The "regular customers" for Lucas Beauchamp's moonshine - whom he thinks of in "A Point of Law" as his "established clientele" (213-14) and in Go Down, Moses as his "established trade" (35) - are not described in either text. It can safely be assumed from the other fictions that all are male. And given the way moonshine is bought and consumed throughout Faulkner's fiction, it is probably safe to assume they are of both races and from various levels of Yoknapatawpha society. |
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1316 | Unnamed Tenant Farmers 2 |
The crowd outside the courthouse in "A Point of Law" includes "other tenants" from the McCaslin-Edmonds place (221). When Faulkner included this scene in Go Down, Moses, he revised the description to read "other people" rather than "tenants" (69). In both texts these poor Negroes are contrasted with the powerful white men on the scene. |
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1317 | Unnamed United States Attorney |
In "A Point of Law" and again in Go Down, Moses 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, 70). This probably makes him an appointee of President Franklin Roosevelt, though that is not said explicitly. He is described as both "angry-looking" (221, 70) and "angry" (222, 71). Secure in his local knowledge and authority, Judge Gowan ignores his one exasperated but uncompleted remark. |
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1318 | Unnamed Negro Young Men |
In "A Point of Law" and again in Go Down, Moses, Lucas Beauchamp compares George Wilkins favorably as a son-in-law to "the other buck niggers" in his neighborhood (213; in the novel this phrase is revised to "nigger bucks," 34). By these offensive terms Lucas refers to other eligible young black males who live nearby. The racist stereotype that, for good reason, we now hear in those terms would not have been felt or meant by Lucas. |
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1319 | Unnamed Executives in St. Louis |
The men who run the company that makes or markets the metal detector Lucas orders work in "St. Louis" (spelled that way in "Gold Is Not Always," 228, but inaccurately as "Saint Louis" in Go Down, Moses, 79) do not appear directly in the text. The salesman whom they send to Yoknapatawpha gives us a good idea of their strictly capitalist ethic when he expresses disbelief that these executives would "send this machine out without any down payment" (228, 78). |
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1320 | Unnamed Local Negroes |
In "The Bear" and again in Go Down, Moses, the narrator points out that the "big woodpecker" heard in the woods is "called Lord-to-God by Negroes" (285, 192). |
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1321 | Turpin 2 |
In The Mansion the name "Turpin" comes up in two different chronological contexts. Both are associated with Frenchman's Bend, but this is the earlier of the two, the "Turpin" who is listed among the five local young men who are courting Eula Varner in the early 20th century (133). |
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1322 | John McLendon|Jackson McLendon |
This man appears in four texts under three different names; in all four he is associated with World War I, but in very different ways. In "Dry September" he is John McLendon, a decorated veteran who takes command of the lynch mob; he has a "heavy-set body," an aggressive temperament, and a wife whom he violently abuses (171). He plays a much smaller role as McLendon in Light in August: a customer at the barbershop who was there when Christmas "run in and dragged [Lucas Burch] out" (87). |
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1323 | Sebastian Gualdres |
In "Knight's Gambit" Sebastian Gualdres is "the Argentine cavalry captain" whom Mrs. Harriss and her children meet in South America after Mr. Harriss’s death (170). He is one of the more exotic figures to appear in Yoknapatawpha. The narrative notes the stereotypical assumptions that the people of Yoknapatawpha have about him as "a Latin" (174), but in its depiction of his courtesy, his pride and his machismo, the narrative itself seems not unwilling to reinforce the stereotypes. |
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1324 | Thomas Jefferson |
Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. President and indirect source of the name of Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha, is only mentioned in two of the fictions: "A Name for City" and again in Requiem for a Nun. Both these texts explain how, by way of a mail carrier named Pettigrew, Jefferson acquired its name; neither says anything about Jefferson as a man or President. |
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1325 | Thomas Pettigrew's Mother |
The mother of the mail rider in "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun was "from old Ferginny" (23). When she named her son "Thomas Jefferson Pettigrew," hoping that that famous name might bring her son some "luck," she also indirectly provided the county seat of Yoknapatawpha with its name (23). |
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1326 | Unnamed Barbers 2 |
In The Mansion the "barbers" at the Memphis "barbers' college" that Virgil and Fonzo attend seem to talk about sex a lot (81). |
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1327 | Tom-Tom Bird |
As "Tom-Tom" in "Centaur in Brass" and as "Tom Tom" in The Town, he works as the day fireman for Jefferson's power plant. (In this context a 'fireman' is someone who keeps a fire in a boiler burning, not one who puts fires out.) In both texts he is a "big bull of a man weighing two hundred pounds, "sixty years old," and married to a young wife he maintains "with the strict jealous seclusion of a Turk in a cabin about two miles down the railroad track from the plant" (16, 152). |
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1328 | Alison Hoake McCarron |
In The Hamlet the mother of Hoake McCarron, Alison McCarron, comes from wealth as her deceased mother was the daughter of a "well-to-do" landowner (149). At nineteen, she eloped with Mr. McCarron a gambler with no definite past, climbing out of a second-story window to avoid her father. Her story is omitted in The Mansion, where she is merely described as a "well-to-do" widow (139). |
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1329 | McCarron, Father of Hoke |
Hoake McCarron's father makes a dashing figure in The Hamlet: a "handsome, ready-tongued, assured and pleasant man who had come into the country without specific antecedents and no definite past" (148). He makes a living gambling "in the back rooms of country stores or the tack rooms of stables" (149) until he elopes with Alison Hoake, returning ten days later to become a good husband and father. He is killed, however, in a gambling house and was allegedly shot by a woman. |
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1330 | (Little) Belle Mitchell |
In Flags in the Dust Little Belle is the young daughter of Belle and Harry Mitchell who, by the end, is Horace Benbow's step-daughter - though Belle herself makes it clear to her new acquaintances in the new town she lives in "that Horace is not her real daddy" (378). When she appears again in Sanctuary she is a young woman. |
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1331 | Mrs. Rouncewell |
In The Town, as the florist in Jefferson, "Mrs Rouncewell" gives her name to a memorable event in Jefferson history, the "Mrs Rouncewell panic" (81). This ensues when her shop runs out of flowers before a major dance. "She ran the flower shop; not . . . because she loved flowers nor even because she loved money but because she loved funerals; she had buried two husbands herself and took the second one's insurance and opened the flower shop and furnished the flowers for every funeral in Jefferson since" (73). In the next novel in the Snopes trilogy, The Mansion, Mrs. |
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1332 | Lorraine |
In The Sound and the Fury 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. |
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1333 | Unnamed Bailiff 4 |
The 'bailiff' who appears in Intruder in the Dust is a product of Chick Mallison's imagination, as he fantasizes about how the character of the white population of Beat Four might be put on trial. |
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1334 | Ludus 1 |
In The Reivers, Ludus works as a driver for the livery stable, but is well known for his "tomcatting" - having affairs with local black women, single and married (13). When he "borry"s a team and wagon from the stable overnight to visit "a new girl" six miles out of town, he gets into trouble with Boon (10). |
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1335 | George 2 |
The character named George who appears in The Hamlet is one of the deputies who help the Sheriff capture Mink. He objects to the Sheriff's decision to take Mink to jail by a back route. |
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1336 | Vernon Tull's Mother |
The "mammy" that Vernon Tull speaks of in As I Lay Dying is his biological mother - not a black caregiver or wet nurse, as would be the case with a 'mammy' in an upper class white Yoknapatawpha family. Vernon thinks of her in reference to the hard lot women have in life: she "lived to be seventy and more" having worked everyday of her life and never having been sick (30). At the end of that life she puts on "that lace-trimmed night gown she had had for forty-five years and never wore," lays down, and tells her family "I'm tired" (30). |