Character Keys

In "Death Drag" Mr. Harris owns the car that Ginsfarb 'rents' for use in the air show - the quotation marks indicate how Ginsfarb skips town before paying him.

In both "The Tall Men" and The Town, Gombault is a federal marshal in the district that includes Yoknapatawpha. He is only mentioned in the later novel, but in the earlier story he plays a major role. One of Faulkner's most palatable lawmen, Mr. Gombault is repeatedly described as old, yet he moves "quickly, easily" (61). He displays a deep understanding of human behavior as he deals shrewdly with both Mr. Pearson and the McCallum family, and is perhaps one of the "Tall Men" of the story's title as the final line identifies him as a "tall, lean old man" (61).

Belle Mitchell's first husband Harry is described in Flags in the Dust as "a cotton speculator and a good one; he was ugly as sin and kind-hearted and dogmatic and talkative" (188). Conventional to a fault, Harry does not know his wife Belle is having an affair with Horace, whom he likes. After Belle divorces him, Young Bayard sees him in a Chicago nightclub with a young woman who is apparently trying to rob him. In Sanctuary, where Belle is married to Horace Benbow, he is just referred to as "a man named Mitchell" (106).

At almost any time of day, apparently, the porch in front of Varner's store serves as the gathering place for groups of men from nearby farms in "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard." While sitting on the porch they discuss local events and characters.

According to the story Quentin Compson heard and recalls in The Sound and the Fury, it takes three Memphis policemen to subdue the naked Negroes who disturb the peace in the throes of a religious trance.

In "A Bear Hunt," the married but unnamed and unenumerated daughters of Manfred de Spain occur to the unnamed narrator when he speculates they might have been given a sewing machine by Mrs. de Spain. Manfred is usually depicted as a bachelor, but a son of his is mentioned in "Shall Not Perish."

Minnie's former husband in Sanctuary - the first text in which she appears - is described as a "cook in a restaurant" who "didn't approve of Minnie's business" as a maid in a brothel, so he took everything he could from her and "went off with a waitress in the restaurant" (209-10). Minnie sounds glad to be rid of him. The husband referred to in The Mansion is named Ludus - and while he too steals Minnie's money, he also beats her savagely (89); although he's currently in prison, it's not clear that Minnie is rid of him.

In The Reivers Otis tells Lucius that Corrie (whose full first names are "Everbe Corinthia") is named for his "Grandmaw" (153). Since he is identified as Corrie's nephew, it seems likely that this woman is also her mother, or as Otis calls her, her "maw"; she died when Corrie herself was a young girl (153).

The first Justice who appears in "Barn Burning" is a "shabby, collarless, graying man in spectacles"; he presides over the Ab Snopes' trial in makeshift court in a general store (4). Described as having a "kindly" face, he discourages Harris from making young Sarty Snopes undergo questioning (4). While the Justice does not have enough evidence to convict Ab of burning Harris' barn, he tells him: "I can't find against you, Snopes, but I can give you advice. Leave this country and don't come back to it" (5).

In Intruder in the Dust Chick assumes he and his Uncle Gavin will have to "find a J.P.," a Justice of the Peace, to get legal permission to exhume Vinson Gowrie's body (72). (The office of justice of the peace derives from traditional British legal practice, where justices belonged to the landed gentry. In Mississippi the office is an elected one.

In Absalom, Absalom! Thomas Sutpen is arraigned before a justice of the peace. (The office of justice of the peace derives from traditional British legal practice, where justices belonged to the landed gentry. In Mississippi the office is an elected one.

There are five characters in the fictions identified only as "Joe." This one lives in Memphis, where he is the proprietor of the Grotto club in Sanctuary (247); he is bald, and lacks culture (he thinks "The Blue Danube" is a blues song, for example, 244), but he does his best to keep Red's funeral as dignified as possible.

There are five characters in the fictions identified only as "Joe." This one has the most significant role to play as the unlikely agent of justice in "Hand upon the Waters." He is “a man not large, but with tremendous arms and shoulders; an adult, yet with something childlike about him” (68). Like Lonnie Grinnup, Joe has severe mental disabilities, being “deaf and dumb” (68). Joe, an “orphan” (70, 71), was “adopted” by Lonnie Grinnup, and he remains fiercely loyal to Lonnie after Lonnie's death.

In The Hamlet one of the deputies who help the Sheriff capture Mink is named Jim. He drives the surrey in which they carry the prisoner back to Jefferson.

The barnstormer named Jake in "Death's Drag" is "also a Jew" (like Ginsfarb). Dressed in a suit and "handsome in a dull quiet way" (188), he looks to the narrator like "a man of infrequent speech" (unlike Ginsfarb). It's worth noting that although the narrator identifies the two men as Jewish, he qualifies that by saying that "the spectators saw" that they "were of a different race from themselves, without being able to say what the difference was" (188).

Faulkner tells the story about the young girl in Jefferson during the Civil War who writes her name on a window pane with a diamond ring three different times, each time changing the details. In The Unvanquished the girl is named Celia Cook; in Intruder in the Dust she is unnamed; in Requiem for a Nun - which develops her action into a poignant symbol of persistence and temporality - her name is Cecilia Farmer. The story is apparently based on a real event in the history of Oxford, Faulkner's home town.

The jailer in "That Evening Sun" is characterized only by his actions. He cuts Nancy down when she tries to hang herself in jail and then beats her. (According to the "Corrected Texts" that Noel Polk edited for Vintage International, Faulkner spelled "jailer" with an 'e' in "That Evening Sun," "An Error in Chemistry" and Intruder in the Dust with an 'o' in "Monk," Requiem for a Nun and The Reivers.

At least two and probably three of the Yoknapatawpha county sheriffs are named "Hampton." They are all named, or nicknamed, "Hub," except for one "Hope Hampton." They appear in five novels and one short story. While the scholarly consensus is that there are two Sheriff Hamptons, our data suggests that there are three: grandfather, father and son - or perhaps great-grandfather, grandson and great-grandson. This youngest of them is definitely the son of a Sheriff Hampton in both the novels in which he appears.

The married daughter of Sheriff and Mrs. Hampton lives in Memphis, where she is expecting a child during the events of Intruder in the Dust.

At least two and probably three of the Yoknapatawpha county sheriffs are named "Hampton." They are all named, or nicknamed, "Hub," except for one "Hope Hampton." They appear in five novels and one short story. While the scholarly consensus is that there are two Sheriff Hamptons, our data suggests that there are three: grandfather, father and son - or perhaps great-grandfather, grandson and great-grandson. In either case, this is the earliest Hampton, who is is county sheriff in two novels, both set around the turn into the 20th century: The Hamlet and The Reivers.

A "fierce thin wiry man" in The Hamlet (233), Jack Houston's father is a farmer of some wealth with a large section of land that is worked by sharecroppers. He has a somewhat strained relationship with his son, whom he teaches to farm. His eventual death causes Jack to return home after thirteen years away.

The "younger of the two negroes" who work in the restaurant that occupies the back half of Rogers' store in Flags in the Dust. He has a "broad untroubled" and "reliable sort of face" (120). In return for serving setups to Young Bayard and Rafe MacCallum, they share some of Henry MacCallum's moonshine whisky with him. (He is not related to the Houston who appears in the Snopes trilogy.)

The Henry in The Mansion works as Houston's farmhand.

On the list of Civil War military leaders that appears in Requiem for a Nun, there are "two Johnstons" (188). There were actually three Confederate Generals named Johnston, but it's likely that Faulkner is thinking of Joseph, who has his own character entry, and Albert S. Johnston, who was killed early in the War but not, according to the narrative, before he would have heard the Confederates' "shrill hackle-lifting yelling" during the fighting (188). (The other possibility is the less famous Robert D. Johnston. Only 'Joe' Johnston appears in other fictions.

In "Shall Not Perish," when Mrs. Grier consoles Major de Spain for the loss of his son in the early days of World War Two, she mentions her own grandfather who fought in the Civil War, adding that "I reckon his mother didn't know why [he had to enlist] either, but I reckon he did" (109).

Maw Grier's brother Marsh fought and was wounded in World War I. For Mrs. Grier in "Two Soldiers," her brother's decision to enlist in 1917 gives her a way to appreciate why in 1941 her oldest son Pete has "got to go" to the another war. For Mr. Grier, however, Marsh's "actual wound on the battlefields of France" means the family has already contributed "enough" to U.S. war efforts (85). Mrs. Grier mentions her brother again in "Shall Not Perish."

In "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun "Doctor Peabody" is one of the "new faces" that arrive in Yoknapatawpha after the first group of pioneers and becomes "old Doctor Habersham's successor" as the community's physician (206). He is presumably an ancestor of the Doctor Peabody who in other fictions takes care of Yoknapatawpha's sick and wounded until well into the twentieth century, but neither text ever specifies the relationship between the two men. This earlier Peabody provides laudanum to add to the whiskey given to the militia for their celebration.

The second of the two unnamed doctors in Sanctuary is the Florida doctor whom Popeye's mother consults about her sickly child; he tells her to "feed him eggs cooked in olive oil" (305). (It is possible that Faulkner is making a strange and subversive reference to the cartoon characters Popeye and Olive Oyl; both these E. C. Segar characters had appeared in newspapers at least two years before Sanctuary was published.)

Along with the similarly vague group of "ministers" (123), this group of "the doctors" in town visit Emily Grierson's house to persuade her to relinquish her father's corpse (124).

This is the doctor in The Hamlet who inspects Mink Snopes after his suicide attempt. (This very minor character is probably also the same "doctor" as the one who examines Cotton in the story "The Hound," but since Faulkner has changed 'Cotton' to 'Mink' when he revised that story for inclusion in the novel, it seems appropriate to enter this doctor as a different character too.)

There are over a dozen Jefferson physicians in the fictions, but the doctor in the story "Uncle Willy" is invented by Willy as a way to get his rich sister in Texas to buy him a car. According to Willy's letter to her, this doctor prescribes a car as a way to save Willy from having "to walk back and forth to the store" in his fragile health (235). According to the narrator, Willy wants the car in order to get to the moonshine stills in the hills outside Jefferson and to the brothels in Memphis.

The doctor who works at Hoke's sawmill appears anonymously in "Lion" and by name, as Doctor Crawford, in Go Down, Moses. He's not a veterinarian, but when in the short story Boon shows up "just before daylight," and "drags him out of bed like a sack of meal," he goes to the hunting camp and works on the wounded Lion (196). In "Lion" he also treats Boon, and in the novel treats both Boon and Sam.

In The Town this deputy brings a suitcase to Montgomery Ward Snopes' studio, so Sheriff Hampton can lock up Snopes' "album" (174) of ""French postcards" (171). (As is also the case with county sheriffs, there are many unnamed deputy sheriffs in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. It's possible that Faulkner is imagining at least some of these deputies as recurring, especially when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment. However, there is no way to be sure of that, so it is more accurate to represent each of these deputies as a separate character.)

In "Error in Chemistry," this unnamed deputy accompanies the sheriff to investigate the initial call from Joel Flint about his wife's death. He may or may not be the same as one of the named deputies in the story.

In "The Hound" there is a character referred to as "the second deputy" in the group of officers who arrest Mink Snopes (162). He rides in the front seat of the sheriff's "battered Ford" car with "the driver," a man named Joe (163). (Joe is presumably the story's 'first' deputy.)

This is the first of the two deputy sheriffs who appear in The Mansion; he escorts Mink to Parchman Penitentiary. (As is also the case with county sheriffs, there are many unnamed deputy sheriffs in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. It's possible that Faulkner is imagining at least some of these deputies as recurring, especially when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment. However, there is no way to be sure of that, so it is more accurate to represent each of these deputies as a separate character.)

In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, the wife of the deputy who narrates much of the last section of the story is described as "a stout woman, handsome once, graying now and with a neck definitely too short, who looked not harried at all but choleric" (252, 147). She is impatient with her husband, and preoccupied with her own concerns; her rapid movements between kitchen and dining room suggest her lack of interest in her husband's account of a black man's lynching.

This is one of the two deputies mentioned in "Monk." This one is the officer who arrests Monk in the gas station. He may or may not be the same one who later transports him to the state penitentiary by train. (As is also the case with county sheriffs, there are many unnamed deputy sheriffs in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. It's possible that Faulkner is imagining at least some of these deputies as recurring, especially when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment.

In "Uncle Willy" the man who takes Darl Bundren in handcuffs to the mental hospital is described as "a fat deputy sheriff that was smoking a cigar" (228); he did not appear in Faulkner's original account of this event, at the end of the novel As I Lay Dying (1930). (As is also the case with county sheriffs, there are many unnamed deputy sheriffs in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. It's possible that Faulkner is imagining at least some of these deputies as recurring, especially when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment.

Although Addie Bundren only appears in As I Lay Dying, she is one of the most memorable women characters in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, and in her impact on her children both before and after her death a great example of the role 'absence' plays in Faulkner's world. A former school teacher who came to Frenchman's Bend from Jefferson, Addie is the matriarch of the Bundren family who is lying on her death bed when the narrative begins. Her spiteful wish to be buried in Jefferson initiates and drives the journey at the center of the novel.

In "Uncle Willy" the sheriff, the county's chief law enforcement officer, locks Willy's drugstore after the clerk has stolen most of its stock and disappeared. (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions. Obviously in some of these cases - at least when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment - Faulkner may be thinking of the same unnamed character, or one of the half dozen "Sheriff Hampton"s who also appear in the fictions, but from the texts themselves there is no way to establish that.)

At the end of "Hand upon the Waters" the "sheriff of the county" visits Stevens to wrap up the details of Stevens' unofficial investigation. He tries to get Stevens to confirm that Joe murdered Boyd Ballenbaugh. Stevens does not take the bait. (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions.

While the sheriff of Yoknapatawpha never appears in person in "Knight's Gambit," Robert Markey mentions him when he tells Gavin Stevens that "your sheriff will have to send someone" to help take Max Harriss into custody (232). Later Stevens mentions a different officer of the law when he instructs his nephew to send a message to the Memphis police that includes this phrase: "use police per request Jefferson chief if necessary” (214). While the county sheriff is a familiar character in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, there is no other mention in them of a "chief" of police.

The county sheriff who oversees the assessment and payment of property taxes on the Mardis-Holland property never appears directly in "Smoke." (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions. Obviously in some of these cases - at least when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment - Faulkner may be thinking of the same unnamed character, or one of the half dozen "Sheriff Hampton"s who also appear in the fictions, but from the texts themselves there is no way to establish that.)

The county sheriff who appears in Sanctuary is "a fat man, with a broad, dull face"; he arrests Lee Goodwin in the first half of the novel, and then, just before Lee is lynched, expresses his hope that the crowd outside the jail "wont do anything" (293). (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions.

The antebellum "sheriff of the county" who leads the "posse" that follows and then arrests Sutpen on suspicion of having committed some kind of crime (34, 35) in Absalom! is probably not Major de Spain, who is the county sheriff in the years immediately following the Civil War.

The man who is referred to simply as "the coroner" in Sanctuary man may also be the local undertaker, but all one can say for certain is that he "sits over" Tommy's body as it lays in the funeral parlor trying unsuccessfully to learn the corpse's last name (113).

In As I Lay Dying Kate is one of Vernon and Cora Tull's two daughters. The way she appears in her parents' narrative sections suggests that she is clear-eyed if not angry and cynical about the place that she occupies as a poor woman. She calls out the woman who changed her mind about buying her mother's cakes as one of "those rich town ladies" (7) and even gets ahead of the plot of the novel when she predicts that Anse will "get another [wife] before cotton-picking" (34). She may also be attracted to Jewel Bundren.

The children of Frenchman's Bend farmer Vernon Tull and his wife are all girls, but there is no consensus among the fictions about how many daughters they have. In the earliest representation of the Tull family, As I Lay Dying, there are two, named Eula and Kate. In "Spotted Horses" there are three - none named. In The Hamlet, there are four, again not named; though one of these girls is referred to as the "biggest" when all four appear at the Snopes trial, they are described as a unit when they "turn their heads as one head" (357).