Character Keys
Code | title | biography | |
---|---|---|---|
2289 | Mannie Hait |
Mannie Hait first appears in "Mule in the Yard," and then returns in her role as widow and adversary of mules and I.O. Snopes when Faulkner re-tells the story in The Town. In both texts she staunchly defends her house against both adversaries, but is defeated by her own carelessness. In the end, however, despite the loss of her house, she manages to get even with one mule and one Snopes. |
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2288 | Lonzo Hait |
The "defunct husband" of Mrs. Hait - called simply Hait in "Mule in the Yard" (252) and Lonzo Hait in The Town - was helping I.O. Snopes cheat the insurance company when he (along with a string of I.O.'s mules) was killed in a train accident on a blind curve next to his house in Jefferson. According to what his widow says to I.O. in both texts, "you paid him fifty dollars a trip each time he got mules in front of the train in time" (262, 262). |
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2287 | Unnamed Town Officers 1 |
In "A Bear Hunt" these "town officers" must be local law enforcement officials who, less than a week after Luke Provine appears in town carrying a black sample case, discover that what he is selling is bootleg whisky, a serious crime in Yoknapatawpha, which like the rest of Mississippi prohibited the sale of alcohol - not only during, but also before and after Prohibition (64). (Mississippi did not legalize liquor until the 1960s.) The story suggests they arrest Provine for his crime, but allow Major de Spain to "extricate" him from the charge (64). |
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2286 | Unnamed People in Want |
The narrator of "A Bear Hunt" identifies a group of men who, "since the last year years, cannot find work" (64). The chronological reference probably points to the Great Depression of the 1930s, an era defined by mass unemployment and what the story calls "men among us now whose families are in want" (64). |
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2285 | Unnamed Negro Men at Picnic |
These black men in "A Bear Hunt" were at a Negro church picnic some twenty years ago when they were set upon by the pistol-wielding Provine gang, then taken "one by one" and tormented and demeaned by having the celluloid shirt collars they wear burned, "leaving each victim’s neck ringed with an abrupt and faint and painless ring of carbon" (65). The ring may have been "painless," but the psychological scar it left is not - as beccomes clear when it is revealed at the very end of the story that one of men who was forced to wear it is Ash. |
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2284 | Unnamed Negro Men at Hunting Camp |
An unspecified number of black men are present in the hunting camp in "A Bear Hunt." Their role in the annual hunt is to cook and do other odd jobs around the camp. As blacks and as servants, they tend to be ignored or not noticed by the white hunters except when they are sought for some reason, as happens when Major de Spain calls for Old Man Ash to fetch him a drink when Ash has gone to the Indian mound. One of these other black servants appears with the "demijohn and fixings" and reports that Ash has gone "up to'ds de mound" (74). |
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2283 | Unnamed Friend of Narrator |
One of the boys in town who, "on a dare," joins the unnamed narrator of "A Bear Hunt" when he was fifteen to spend a night on the Indian mound (66). During and afterwards, they do not speak about their experience, apparently awed by it; the narrator says even though they were children, "yet we were descendants of people who read books and who were - or should have been - beyond superstition and impervious to mindless fear" (66). |
|
2282 | Unnamed Fellows |
Ratliff calls the first people he encounters upon returning to Jefferson after his misadventure at the hunting camp in "A Bear Hunt" the "first fellow" and "a fellow" (66). They ask about his facial injuries - one in standard English, one in a country vernacular - and their questions provide Ratliff with a way to begin his story. They don't seem to be the "you" (67), however, to whom he "is telling" the story itself (63). |
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2281 | Unnamed Church-Going Ladies |
This group of "ladies," most of whom are likely residents of Jefferson, are described by the narrator of "A Bear Hunt" as "scurrying and screaming" when, some twenty years earlier, the Provine gang would occasionally "terrorize" them by galloping horses in their midst as they were going to or from church on Sunday mornings (64). |
|
2280 | Unnamed Friends of Narrator |
These are the friends of the unnamed narrator of "A Bear Hunt" who associate the Indian mound with "secret and violent blood" and a "savage and sudden destruction" (65). As descendants of "literate, town-bred people," their feelings about the "profoundly and darkly enigmatic mound" stem from their romantic ideas about Indians gotten from the "secret dime novels which we passed among ourselves" (65). One of the boys joins the narrator for a night atop the mound. |
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2279 | Provine, Children of Lucius |
The unnamed children of Lucius Provine. The narrator of "A Bear Hunt" makes only one direct reference to them, saying their father "makes no effort whatever to support his wife and three children" (64). |
|
2278 | Provine, Brother of Lucius |
The dead brother of Luke Provine. According to the narrator of "A Bear Hunt," it has been "years now" since he, Luke, and another man, Jack Bonds, "were known as the Provine gang and terrorized our quiet town after the unimaginative fashion of wild youth" (63-64). |
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2277 | Fraser 2 |
Mr. Fraser is the "childless widower" who takes Monk in after his grandmother's death and teaches him how to make whiskey as well as he made it himself (45). They live together for ten years, until Fraser's death. The narrator of "Monk" speculates that "it was probably Fraser who gave [Monk his] name," and the citizens of "the county got to know [Monk] or become familiar with him, at least" through his association with Fraser (45). |
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2276 | Fraser 1 |
Fraser in one of the hunters at Major de Spain's camp in "A Bear Hunt," seen only in a brief scene in which he is playing poker. His role is to give voice to the annoyance that the rest of the hunting party feels listening to Luke Provine's bout of hiccups. |
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2275 | Jack Bonds |
In "A Bear Hunt" Bonds is a "dead and forgotten contemporary" of Luke Provine when he was a young man. According to the narrator, it has been "years now" since Bonds, along with Luke and Luke's unnamed brother, "were known as the Provine gang and terrorized our quiet town after the unimaginative fashion of wild youth" (63-64). |
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2274 | John Basket |
In "A Bear Hunt," John Basket is a Chickasaw who lives in the settlement near the Indian mound, and well-known as moonshiner who makes what Major de Spain describes as "bust-skull whiskey" (75). Basket unwittingly becomes an accomplice in Ash's act of revenge against Luke Provine when Ratliff offhandedly suggests Luke visit the Chickasaws to get a cure for his hiccups. (There are two other Indians named 'Basket' in three other stories, but there's no indication of a relationship among them.) |
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2273 | Unnamed Suitors of Elly |
In "Elly" the various men whom the title character kisses in the shadows on her veranda are described as "youths and young men of the town at first, but later . . . almost anyone, any transient in the small town whom she met by either convention or by chance, provided his appearance was decent" (208). |
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2272 | Unnamed Sewing Women |
These "sewing women" make the trousseau for Elly's wedding, coming to her house "daily" after the engagement to Philip is announced (214). Their race is not specified, which typically means 'white' in Faulkner's fiction, but at the same time domestic workers in the fiction are typically 'black,' so we have chosen to call these women's race unknown. |
|
2271 | Unnamed Group of People Elly Invents |
While talking to Philip in "Elly," Elly invents this "party" of people she will be visiting in order to explain her forthcoming absence - and her need for his silent cooperation. She says that the group she'll be with is comprised of "people you don't know and that I don't expect to see again before I am married" (215). |
|
2270 | Unnamed Man Plowing |
Elly remembers this "man plowing in that field" when she and Paul returned to the car after their tryst (207). Her self-consciousness about being seen by him is clear, but nothing about him is. He could be a farmer, or a field hand, or a sharecropper. He could be white or black, but because Faulkner typically specifies race when a character isn't white, and because Elly is particularly anxious about this man's having seen her and Paul together, it seems likely that he is white. |
|
2269 | Unnamed Uncle of Paul |
According to a story that Elly's friend "just heard," Paul de Montigny has an uncle who "killed a man once that accused him of having nigger blood" (209). In the friend's mind, this story 'proves' that Paul himself is black, but while believing in 'black blood' as a kind of curse tells us something about the friend and the culture she grew up in, "Elly" does not allow us to say whether Paul even has an uncle, much less whether any of the friend's other assumptions and implications are true. |
|
2268 | Unnamed Man Paul's Uncle Killed |
According to the friend in "Elly," this unnamed man was killed by Paul's uncle after he had suggested that the uncle was part black - or as the friend puts it, in language that reminds us that in the racist world of the story, such a 'suggestion' is actually an accusation, that the uncle had "nigger blood" (209). The friend says she "just heard" this story (209). Elly calls it a lie. So it's possible neither the incident nor the uncle ever existed. |
|
2267 | Unnamed Friend of Elly |
Elly's unnamed friend entertains Paul de Montigny in her home, but is quick to judge Elly for the latter's interest in him. Elly's friend smokes, furtively, in her home, presumably hoping to escape detection by her parents. But if she too is rebellious, it is within very fixed limits. When Elly defends her behavior with Paul by reminding this girl that "you invited him into your house," she replies "I wasn't hid in the cloak closet, kissing him, though" (210). And despite entertaining Paul, she takes the signs of his mixed racial identity as proof of Elly's "queer taste" (209). |
|
2266 | Unnamed Cousin of Elly |
In the short story names after her, Elly stays in her cousin's room during her visit to her uncle and aunt in Mills City. The cousin herself does not appear, but her bedroom is filled with "the frivolous impedimenta of a young girl" (217). |
|
2265 | Unnamed Mother of Elly |
Elly's mother lives with her, her husband and especially her mother-in-law in a "biggish house" in Jefferson (208). She is a negligible figure in her daughter's life, though it is her suggestion that Elly drive to Mills City to pick up that mother-in-law that precipitates the story's violent climax. |
|
2264 | Unnamed Father of Elly |
Elly's father lives in Jefferson with her, his wife, and especially his mother. He is a negligible figure in her life, dominated as it by his mother. The one time he and Elly are together, at breakfast, Elly thinks: "He said nothing, apparently knew nothing" (211). |
|
2263 | Ailanthia |
Elly's grandmother - Elly's father's mother - lives in Elly's family's home in Jefferson, though she is formerly of Louisiana. Her given name is Ailanthia, as is that of the granddaughter after whom "Elly" is titled. Elly's grandmother is frequently described as cold: "cold, piercing" (209), with "that cold, fixed, immobile, inescapable gaze of the very deaf," having lost her hearing 15 years before the story takes place (212). The narrator calls her an "old woman whose hearing had long since escaped everything and whose sight nothing escaped" (223). |
|
2262 | Unnamed Uncle of Elly |
The uncle of the title character of "Elly" is the son of her grandmother Ailanthia; he lives in Mills City with his wife and daughter. |
|
2261 | Unnamed Car Drivers |
Although "Elly" begins and ends on the road between Jefferson and Mills City, the only other drivers mentioned in the story are referred to, obliquely, at the very end, after the accident, when Elly thinks, "They won't even stop to see if I am hurt" (224). Their presence is indicated only by the "snore of an engine, the long hissing of tires in gravel" that she hears on the road above her (223). |
|
2260 | Unnamed Aunt of Elly |
In "Elly," Elly's aunt is the wife of Ailanthia's son. She lives with her husband and daughter in Mills City. |
|
2259 | Philip |
Philip is "a grave, sober young man of impeccable character and habits" who courts the title character of "Elly" with clock-like regularity (213). As a Jefferson boy whom she has known "from childhood," Philip is the epitome of a suitable husband for Elly (213). His draw as a suitor is indicated in the same breath as his current occupation: "an assistant cashier in the bank, who they said would be president of it some day" (213). |
|
2258 | Elly |
The title character of "Elly" is eighteen years old. She "lives in Jefferson . . . with her father and mother and grandmother in a biggish house" (208). Elly has inherited her given name, Ailanthia, from her grandmother, a link that Faulkner uses to underscore the generational tension between the grandmother's Victorian sexual repression and Southern racial prejudices, and Elly's restlessness with these taboos. |
|
2257 | Paul de Montigny |
There is a lot that "Elly" never explains about Paul's character - where he lives, for example, and what he does - but the one mystery that matters most is his racial identity. Paul visits Jefferson as a white man, but the friend who introduces him to Elly insists he is really black. As part of her proof, she recounts a story in which Paul's "uncle killed a man once that accused him of having nigger blood" (209). |
|
2256 | Unnamed Neighbor of Sutpen 1 |
Sutpen's "nearest neighbor" in "Wash" lives a mile away from his plantation; when after the war Sutpen gets too drunk to get home on his own from the store, Wash walks to this man's place and borrows a wagon to carry him in (540). |
|
2255 | Unnamed Slaves at Sutpen's |
These are the enslaved people in "Wash" who call Wash "white trash behind his back" (536), and to his face pointedly ask him "Why ain't you at de war, white man?" (537). When they do that, Wash can see their "white eyes and teeth behind which derision lurked" (537). "Most" of Sutpen's slaves leave to follow the Union army toward freedom after "Sherman passes through the plantation" (537). |
|
2254 | Unnamed Slave at Sutpen's |
In "Wash" this "house servant" - also called a "Negress" - is "one of the few Negroes who remained" at Sutpen's after the Sherman and the "Federal troops" had passed through (537). She refuses to allow Wash Jones to enter the Sutpen mansion while Sutpen is away at the war - not even by way of "the kitchen steps" (537). (Her treatment of Wash anticipates the character of Clytemnestra in Absalom, Absalom!, but there is no hint in the story that she is related to the white family she serves.) |
|
2253 | Unnamed Half-Grown White Boy |
In "Wash," this "half-grown white boy" finds the body of Thomas Sutpen lying outside the tumble-down fishing camp. After "a mesmerized instant" in which he looks at Wash looking at him through a window in the camp, he runs off to report the crime (546). Although Faulkner omits his race (and a hyphen) when he returns to this "halfgrown boy" in Absalom!, he does add a couple of aural details to make the event more dramatic: the boy is "whistling" when he first sees the body, and he "screams" when he sees "Wash in the window, watching him" (229). |
|
2252 | Dicey|Negro Midwife |
In both "Wash" and Absalom! Milly's baby is delivered by an old Negro midwife who lives in a cabin "three miles" from the fishing camp (542, 230). The short story refers to her mainly as "the Negress" (535), but Sutpen once calls her "Dicey" (544). She is not named in the novel. In the short story she witnesses Wash killing Sutpen, "peering around the crazy door with her black gargoyle face of a worn gnome" (545), while in the novel she only hears this event from inside the camp. In both texts she flees as soon as it happens. |
|
2251 | Unnamed Young Man in Beyond |
This young man is the first to speak with the Judge in Beyond (and in "Beyond"). He died in a car accident when, late for his wedding, he was "driving fast" and "had to turn" when a "child ran into the road" (784). He assumes that the Judge is looking for his own wife, and he sympathizes with him because "It must be hell on the one who has to watch and wait for the other one he or she has grown old in marriage with, because it is so terrible to wait and watch like me, for a girl who is a maiden to you" (784). |
|
2250 | Unnamed Legal Witnesses |
In "Beyond" Judge Allison's angry thoughts about Pettigrew include the detail that the last will and testament that Pettigrew is ignoring was signed in the "presence of witnesses" (797). He doesn't mention who they were. |
|
2249 | Unnamed Two House Servants |
During his childhood, as Judge Allison describes it in "Beyond," these "two house servants" (790) would supervise his infrequent trips to play outside barefoot in the garden. |
|
2248 | Unnamed People Who Telephone Judge |
All "Beyond" says about this group is that "they" telephoned the Judge to tell him that his son had been killed (789). "They" probably refers to a single representative of an official group, like a police officer, doctor, or hospital representative, or perhaps a concerned neighbor. |
|
2247 | Unnamed Other Children |
These "other children" in "Beyond" are the ones who gave the young mother's son the scars he bears "one day when they were playing" (794). It isn't clear if this happened in a previous life, or in Beyond, but what the mother says - "they didn't know they were going to hurt him" (794) - adds to the details in the story that suggest a connection between this anonymous mother and son and Mary and Jesus in the New Testament. |
|
2246 | Unnamed Neighbors of Judge Allison |
When he returns to Yoknapatawpha from Beyond, still unable to accept his death, the judge thinks about "the neighbors" who will see his "clocklike passing" as he walks home at the same time he used to (795). |
|
2245 | Unnamed Mourners at Judge's Funeral |
The people at the Judge's funeral in "Beyond" are not directly mentioned, but their presence can be presumed by the reference to "the line of motor cars at his gate" (797). |
|
2244 | Unnamed Mother in Beyond |
This is the mother whom Judge Allison meets in "Beyond," a young woman who wears "a plain, brushed, worn cape" with "a plain, bright, pleasant face" and "a pleasant, tranquil voice" (791). When she first appears she is "carrying a child" (791), but she does not provide any details about her previous existence. She treats her son "with an air fond and unconcerned," soothing him when he fusses and doling out toys to him (793). Ingersoll tells the judge to "Follow her" (791). |
|
2243 | Unnamed Man Who Wrote Little Women Books |
While telling Judge Allison whom he might expect to meet in other parts of Beyond, Mothershed mentions "the one that wrote the little women books. If he ain't there, he ought to be" (788). The book titled 'Little Women' was of course not written by a man, and the story doesn't give any further information about either the books or the person Mothershed is thinking of. One possibility is Edward Stratemeyer (1863-1930), who wrote books under pseudonyms for boys as well as girls, but there's no way to say if Faulkner is even thinking about an actual children's book author. |
|
2242 | Unnamed Old Gentleman |
This "old gentleman" gave the toy soldiers to the boy that the Judge meets in Beyond (793). He himself does not appear, but the boy's mother describes him as having "lived here a long time, they say," and being "quite wealthy," "with a white mustache and that kind of popping eyes that old people have who eat too much" (793). He often sits with the woman and her child, "talking and breathing hard" (793). |
|
2241 | Unnamed Footman |
According to the mother that the Judge meets in Beyond, the "old gentleman" who gave the toy soldiers to her son "has a footman to carry his umbrella and overcoat and steamer rug" (793). Typically, a 'footman' is a liveried servant - and not usually found in an American, much less a Southern context. Domestic servants in Yoknapatawpha are black, but given the British locutions here - including "umbrella" and "steamer rug" - there's no reason to assume this footman is. |
|
2240 | Unnamed Fiancee of Young Man |
This young lady was to marry the "young man" whom the Judge meets in Beyond when, on the morning of the wedding, he was killed in a car accident (783). |
|
2239 | Unnamed Extra Groom |
In "Beyond" Judge Allison mentions the "extra groom" who went with the Allison family when they rode to church in order to tend his son's pony while they were in services (790). "Groom" here means a person employed to take care of horses. |
|
2238 | Unnamed Eulogist |
When the Judge returns home in "Beyond" he hears "the drone of a voice" in another room as he slips back into "his clothes," "recently pressed" for his funeral (797). The voice and the smell of flowers in the air indicate that the Judge's funeral is being held in his home; the speaker could be a minister (the Judge says that he still occasionally attends church) or another political or civic figure. |
|
2237 | Unnamed Crowd at Entrance to Beyond |
When the Judge enters and again when he leaves Beyond, he encounters a "throng" of people "clotting" through the "narrow entrance" to the place (783, 795). He doesn't like crowds, so the fact that he is in one is "definitely unpleasant," "quite unpleasant" (783, 795). However, in both instances the crowd itself seems quite orderly and calm. |
|
2236 | Unnamed Christians |
These are the "preachers" and the "Jesus shouters" in "Beyond" whom Mothershed rails against; he blames them for the fact that he found himself in Beyond after committing suicide (786). |
|
2235 | Unnamed Child With Scars |
The hands and feet of this child whom the Judge meets in "Beyond" have been scarred by "the other children . . . one day when they were playing" (794). He likes to play with his toy soldiers, one of which is named Pilate, given to him by "an old gentleman who has lived here a long time" (793). A querulous little boy, he seems at the moment mostly "tired of his toys" (793). Like his mother, he evokes the story of Christ, with which the judge has struggled during his adult life. |
|
2234 | Unnamed Child in Road |
This is the child who "ran into the road," forcing the "young man" whom the Judge meets in "Beyond" to swerve his car; as he tells the Judge, he missed the child but died himself (784). |
|
2233 | Unnamed Aunts of Judge Allison |
In "Beyond" these two women live with Howard Allison and his mother during Howard's boyhood; they run the house, rigidly control Howard's life, and patronize his mother. |
|
2232 | Mothershed |
In "Beyond" Allison meets Mothershed: a self-proclaimed nihilist in life, who is in Beyond after committing suicide. Of him the Judge says, "for the last fifteen years my one intellectual companion has been a rabid atheist, almost an illiterate, who not only scorns all logic and science, but who has a distinct body odor as well" (789). The Judge's characterization of Mothershed is odd, since they spent their afternoons discussing thinkers like Ingersoll, Voltaire, and Paine (786, 787). |
|
2231 | Robert Ingersoll |
Historically, Robert Ingersoll was a late 19th-century orator and philosopher nicknamed "The Great Agnostic," whose rejection of Christianity was widely discussed in his day and in Faulkner's. In "Beyond," Faulkner locates Ingersoll in the story's version of heaven, and gives him the role of interlocutor to the protagonist's doubts about God and the afterlife; Ingersoll listens to what Judge Allison says about his life and ideas, but he doesn't offer any solutions or answers. |
|
2230 | Chlory |
Chlory cooks and keeps house for Judge Allison in "Beyond"; the keening she does when he dies is described as "slow billows of soprano sound as mellow as high-register organ tones and wall-shattering as a steamer siren" (782). |
|
2229 | Unnamed Father-In-Law of Judge Allison |
Judge Allison's father-in-law in "Beyond" was "a Republican" with whose politics the Judge agrees (789). Politically, Allison and his father-in-law are very much in the minority in Yoknapatawpha. |
|
2228 | Sophia Allison |
The mother of Judge Allison in "Beyond," Sophia, was a sickly woman and highly overprotective of her son. Howard's aunts ran the house, patronizing Sophia and keeping Howard under control; Sophia herself is also very controlling of her son. On those occasions when she allowed him to go barefoot outside, for example, "I would know that for every grain of dust which pleasured my feet, she would pay with a second of her life" (790). |
|
2227 | Mrs. Howard Allison |
The wife of Judge Allison in "Beyond" is a rather vague character; the only things we know about her are that the Judge was twenty-eight when they married and she bore a son in 1903. |
|
2226 | Judge Howard Allison |
Judge Allison, the central character of "Beyond," is the child of a sickly woman; he describes his life this way: "She died when I was fourteen; I was twenty-eight before I asserted myself and took the wife of my choice; I was thirty-seven when my son was born" (790). He is a Federal judge, "a Republican office-holder in a Democratic stronghold" who shares the political leanings of his wife's father and a "great reader" whose "life is a solitary one" (789). He is a lifelong religious skeptic whose doubts have only intensified since his son's death eighteen years ago. |
|
2225 | Howard Allison II |
Judge Howard Allison's only son and namesake in "Beyond" is, as the Judge puts it, "the last of my name and race" (789). Young Howard loved riding his pony: "they were inseparable," the Judge says, and he carries a picture of the two of them (790). They boy was killed at the age of ten, found "dragging from the stirrup" of the pony (789). Although he does not appear in the story, one of the inhabitants of Beyond reports seeing him ride by on his pony "every day" (794). |
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2224 | Unnamed Union Soldiers 5 |
According to "There Was a Queen," both Miss Jenny's father and her husband were killed during the Civil War, by the men whom she refers to as "them goddamn Yankees" (733). |
|
2223 | Unnamed Federal Agent |
The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not begin investigating bank robberies until the Depression, a decade after the Sartoris bank was robbed. But Faulkner is almost certainly thinking of the F.B.I. in "There Was a Queen" when he has Narcissa identify the man with whom she has sex as "a Federal agent" who came into possession of the letters she is anxious to get back while pursuing "the man who had robbed the bank" (740). |
|
2222 | Unnamed Yankees in Crowd |
When describing the people who gather to stare at Joanna's murdered body and her burning house, the narrator of Light in August refers, briefly but very specifically, to three categories of people who are not just from the county or the "immediate neighborhood" or from town (287): one of these categories consists of "casual Yankees" who, like "the poor whites" and "the southerners who had lived for a while in the north," identify the crime as the work of "Negro" and actually "hope" that Joanna had been "ravished" as well as murdered (288). |
|
2221 | Unnamed Union Soldiers 4 |
Although Yankee soldiers do not appear directly in Light in August, according to the account of Van Dorn's cavalry raid that Hightower tells his wife Jefferson was "a garrisoned town," meaning that Union soldiers were stationed there, and to attack it the troop with which his grandfather rode had to travel "for a hundred miles through a country where every grove and hamlet had its Yankee bivouac" (483). |
|
2220 | Unnamed Union Officer 2 |
According to the report that reaches the Hightower's house during the Civil War in Light in August, this "Yankee officer" shoots and kills Pomp, Gail Hightower's father's personal slave, "to protect his own life" when Pomp attacks him "with a shovel" (477). |
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2219 | Unnamed Wounded Civil War Soldiers |
In Light in August Reverend Hightower's father learns how to practice medicine during the Civil War by helping the Confederate doctors work on the "bodies of friends and foe alike" (473). |
|
2218 | Unnamed Employees at Sheriff's Office |
In Light in August Sheriff Kennedy's office apparently includes other deputies or employees besides Buford, though their identities never come into focus. When Bryon goes to that office to talk to Kennedy, "they" tell him that Kennedy is busy with "the special Grand Jury" (415). When Mrs. Hines goes there, the Sheriff sends her to see Christmas at the jail "with a deputy" (447). When Grimm goes there, "they" tell him that the sheriff is at home, eating; in this third case, "they" even have lines of dialogue, including a joke about Kennedy's weight (454). |
|
2217 | Unnamed Father of Planing Mill Worker |
In Light in August, this man is mentioned by one of the workers at the planing mill, who says his "pappy" told him how "folks" in Jefferson felt the Burden place "ought to be burned, with a little human fat meat to start it good" (49). |
|
2216 | Unnamed Negro Woman on Mourner's Bench |
When Christmas disrupts the revival meeting in the black church in Light in August, this woman, "already in a semihysterical state" from the service, calls him "the devil!" and "Satan himself!" before running straight at him (322). He knocks her down. (A regular feature at revival meetings, the 'mourner's bench' is set in front of the pulpit for repentant sinners to occupy.) |
|
2215 | Unnamed Woman at Farm House |
In Light in August this "gaunt, leatherhard woman" recognizes Joe Christmas when he comes to her door for food; when he asks "what day this is," she tells him it is Tuesday, and threatens to call her man if he doesn't go away (332). |
|
2214 | Unnamed White People 2 |
Most of the time if Faulkner's narrative does not specify someone's race, it is safe to assume they are 'white,' and the majority of the characters in Light in August are 'white' too. But the "white people" this entry specifically refers to are the residents of Jefferson who live in the neighborhood next to the town's black district, whom Christmas sees during his walk on Friday evening. |
|
2213 | Unnamed Jefferson Children 2 |
The "town" of Jefferson plays a prominent and pervasive role in Light in August, but the only time the narrative refers to the town's children is when it describes the occasional "negro nursemaid" who would pass Hightower's "with her white charges" (59). |
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2212 | Unnamed Wedding Guests |
When Nathaniel and Juana get married in Kansas, Joanna tells Christmas in Light in August, "everybody they could get word to or that heard about it, came" (250). |
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2211 | Unnamed Undercover Revenue Agent |
One of the hypothetical characters in Light in August, this "undercover man" does not actually appear in Jefferson, but he is fairly vividly conjured up in the imagination of "the town," which is "just waiting" this man to arrest Brown for selling moonshine whiskey (46). At the time the novel takes place, Prohibition made it illegal to sell alcohol anywhere in the U.S. But Yoknapatawpha is 'dry' throughout its imaginative history, meaning that it was always illegal to sell alcohol there. The federal agents who enforced this law were colloquially called 'revenuers.' |
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2210 | Unnamed Two Men 3 |
At the country dance in Light in August, these two men restrain Bobbie from physically attacking the fallen McEachern. |
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2209 | Unnamed Two Men 2 |
After Doc Hines tries to incite the people of Mottstown to kill Christmas in Light in August, these "two men" bring him "home in a car"; one drives while the other "holds Hines up in the back seat" (345). At his house they "lift him" from the car and "carry him through the gate" (345). They would have carried him into the house, but after they tell Mrs. Hines about the capture of Christmas, she insists on taking her husband inside herself. |
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2208 | Unnamed Two Men 1 |
In Light in August Reverend Hightower's father returns home from the Civil War in a wagon; when it stops in front of his house, these "two men lift him down and carry him into the house" and to his bed (468). |
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2207 | Unnamed Truck Driver 2 |
In Intruder in the Dust one of the "long-haul" truck drivers who patronize the all-night cafe in Jefferson can, at least hypothetically, let the the town's night marshal know whenever his phone is ringing (206). |
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2206 | Unnamed Truck Driver 1 |
In Light in August the driver of the truck that arrives at the planing mill "loaded with logs" tells the men working there the latest news from the fire at the Burden place (49). |
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2205 | Unnamed Texas Rangers |
One of Nathaniel Burden's adventures in the West in Light in August involves "helping some Rangers" clean up "some kind of a mess" with "some folks" and a deputy who is "treed in a dance hall" (247). The law enforcement group commonly referred to as the "Texas Rangers" has been in existence since well before Texas became a state in 1845. |
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2204 | Unnamed Texas Deputy |
This lawman appears in the account of Nathaniel Burden's adventures on the frontier before the Civil War in Light in August. Some men have him "treed in a dance hall" in Texas (247). |
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2203 | Unnamed Texans |
One of Nathaniel Burden's adventures in the West in Light in August involves "some folks" in Texas who have a "deputy treed in a dance hall" (247). |
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2202 | Unnamed Negro Children 3 |
These "two negro children" who approach Joe Christmas near the end of his flight across Yoknapatawpha in Light in August "look at him with white-rolling eyes" when he asks what day it is; when he tells them to "go on," he stares at the spot "where they had stood" as they run away (336). The narrative does not say if they are male, female or one of each. |
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2201 | Unnamed Stranger 2 |
Over the course of several pages in one of the chapters he narrates in The Mansion, Ratliff imagines how the unconventionally triangular relationship among Charles Mallison as an adolescent, Gavin Stevens and Linda Snopes might look to "a stranger that never happened to be living in Jefferson or Yoknapatawpha County ten or twelve years ago" (123). |
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2200 | Unnamed Stranger 1 |
This "stranger" in Light in August is a hypothetical figure, offered by the narrator as an example of the type of person who might pay attention to the sign in front of Hightower's house, which over the years the townspeople have come to ignore, and then mention it to "some acquaintance in the town" (59). |
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2199 | Unnamed Store Proprietor 2 |
"The proprietor" of the "small tight neatly-cluttered store" where Mink buys his first food after leaving prison in The Mansion takes advantage of Mink's ignorance about prices (286-86). |
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2198 | Unnamed Store Proprietor 1 |
The man who owns the "odorous and cluttered store" where Hightower shops in Light in August claims to have known "all the time" that Joe Christmas "wasn't a white man" (308) - but he does not say how he knew. |
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2197 | Unnamed Station Agent 2 |
In Light in August the railroad agent in Mottstown tries to talk Mrs. Hines into renting a car rather than waiting for the "two oclock in the morning" train to Jefferson (360). |
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2196 | Unnamed Staff of Little Rock Orphanage |
In Light in August the staff at the orphanage in Little Rock call the police when Doc Hines tries to have Joe admitted. |
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2195 | Unnamed Southerners Who Lived in North |
When describing the people who gather to stare at Joanna's murdered body and her burning house, the narrator of Light in August refers, briefly but very specifically, to three categories of people who are not just from the county or the "immediate neighborhood" or from town (287): one of these categories consists of "southerners who had lived for a while in the north" who, like "the poor whites" and "the casual Yankees," identify the crime as the work of "Negro" and actually "hope" that Joanna had been "ravished" as well as murdered (288). |
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2194 | Unnamed Southern Prostitutes and Madams |
During his fifteen years on the road, Joe has sex with many prostitutes. In what the narrative calls "the (comparatively speaking) south," whenever he doesn't have money to pay them, he tells them afterward that he is "a negro" - a kind of race card that apparently puts the transaction so far outside the bounds that all Joe risks by asserting it is a cursing from "the woman and the matron of the house" (224). |
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2193 | Unnamed Son of Lena Grove |
This boy is born in Joe Christmas' cabin on Joanna Burden's property on the same day that Christmas is lynched in Jefferson in Light in August. When Hightower asks his name, Lena says "I aint named him yet" (410). Joe's grandmother, who is there at his birth, calls him "Joey," confusing him with the child who was born to her daughter Milly, whom she has not seen since he was a baby over thirty-six years ago (397). Lena's baby's father has abandoned him, but at the end of the novel Lena is taking him with her as she resumes her travels. |
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2192 | Unnamed Slaves at Burden Place |
When he returns to the Burden place after Lena's baby is born in Light in August, Hightower has a brief vision of the antebellum plantation that it once was, and in particular of "the rich fecund black life of the quarters," the "fecund [enslaved] women" and their "prolific naked children" (407). |
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2191 | Unnamed Members of Posse 1 |
In his hunt for Joe Christmas across the Yoknapatawpha countryside in Light in August Sheriff Kennedy is joined by a large posse. There are "thirty or forty" white men waiting for the bloodhounds who arrive on the train the day after Joanna's body is discovered (296), and the narrative suggests this same group remains on the trail through the following week. |
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2190 | Unnamed Minister in Santa Fe |
In Light in August, this is 'the white minister in Santa Fe" - in other words, he's a Protestant from the U.S. rather than a Catholic priest from Mexico - whom Nathaniel Burden hears about. Nathaniel and Juana hope he will marry them, but as they arrive in Santa Fe they see "the dust of the stage" that was carrying him away (247). The fact that he had been there inspires them to live in Santa Fe "a couple more years," hoping he will return (247). He never does. |