Character Keys

This is the "express clerk" at the Jefferson railroad station in "Knight's Gambit" (255).

In "Wash" and again in Absalom! this is the group of armed white men who ride out with the sheriff to the shack where Wash lives to arrest him. They arrive as night falls, so Wash sees them mainly as moving shadows, but in his mind, at least, they are felt to be "men of Sutpen's own kind," the aristocratic leaders of the plantation South, the "arrogant and proud on the fine horses across the fine plantations" whom he had once looked up to, but who now seem to him not just "symbols of admiration and hope," but also "instruments of despair and grief" (547, 232).

This is the "someone in the Square" in "My Grandmother Millard" whom the Yankee officer asks "where General Compson lives" (675).

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In almost every instance it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs. "A Bear Hunt" distinguishes the unnamed townspeople from the people who live in the country.

In Light in August, when Hightower walks home after learning that the Sheriff is closing in on Christmas, he is so shaken that when "someone speaks to him in passing," he "does not even know" that he has been addressed (310). There's no indication of the gender of this passerby, but it's unlikely that a black would speak first in passing a white man, so we identify 'him' as white.

In both "The Unvanquished" and again in the chapter titled "Riposte in Tertio" in The Unvanquished these unnamed people, from various places and social ranks in the county, make up the white portion of the 'congregation' that assembles in the Episcopal Church to hear Rosa confess her sins - her campaign of stealing from the Yankees - and to enjoy the fruits of those sins, the mules and money she disperses into the community.

In The Sound and the Fury Quentin sees this "old man eating something out of a paper bag" (112) when he gets off the interurban car in the town near Cambridge. When he passes the same spot later he notes that the man is gone.

In "Skirmish at Sartoris" and again in the chapter with that title in The Unvanquished Bayard identifies the "six or eight strange white men" who are in charge of the black men who want to vote as "the Northern white men" (70, 71; 206, 207). Many of the men whom Bayard calls "the Jefferson men, the men that I knew" (70, 206), would undoubtedly have called these strangers carpetbaggers, the pejorative term coined by the white South to label men who came into the defeated region after the end of the Civil War.

These men in "Barn Burning" sit atop or stand along the "tall rail fence" beside the horse lot next to the general store and blacksmith's shop, where they spend the Saturday afternoon unhurriedly "swapping and buying" horses (20).

This youth shouts "Barn burner!" at Ab Snopes after his trial as he leaves the general store with his two sons (5). From Sarty's perspective, this boy appears as "a face in a red haze, moonlike, bigger than the full moon," and though the boy is "half again his size," Sarty attacks him (5-6).

Referred to in "Barn Burning" only as the "third man" along with Ab Snopes and the unnamed blacksmith, he "squat[s] on his heels" in rural fashion while taking part in their unnarrated, desultory conversation about "crops and animals" (19).

In "An Error in Chemistry" this "strange Negro youth" (129) is sitting in the driver's seat of Wesley Pritchel's truck as the disguised Joel Flint prepares to sell the property and leave. "Strange" in this context almost certainly means 'not from Yoknapatawpa.' The youth has presumably been hired by Flint to drive the truck.

In "Raid" and again in the chapter with that title in The Unvanquished, this former slave is among the group allocated to Rosa Millard by the Union Lieutenant. He is identified only as a stranger to her, Bayard and Ringo. He steps forward to drive the wagon when the Lieutenant asks for someone who can handle "two span" of mules (53, 111).

The men whom the narrator of "A Courtship" refers to as "the steamboat slaves" (367, 378) are the deckhands and firemen who do the physical work on board Captain Studenmare's riverboat.

The unnamed man whom "Red Leaves" calls "Issetibbeha's body servant" - though there is never any ambiguity about the fact that he is owned as a slave by the Choctaw chief - is the short story's central character, Faulkner's earliest non-white protagonist. According to tribal custom, after Issetibbeha's death he must be killed and buried too; the story's main action focuses on his thoughts and actions as he attempts to escape this fate. Although he is not given a name, the story does give him a biography.

According to Bayard's narrative in "Skirmish at Sartoris" and again in the chapter with that title in The Unvanquished, this Negro porter at the Holston House is "too old even to be free" (71, 207). Bayard's meaning seems to be that while this man is a newly emancipated slave, he has no interest in joining the group of blacks who do want to vote. The man takes one look at the white men who have assembled in the Square on election day, says "Gret Gawd," and retreats into the hotel.

In "Smoke" Granby Dodge sends this man to ascertain from Gavin Stevens “if the way in which a man died could affect the probation of his will” (36).

The mammy who takes care of Narcissa and Bayard's new-born son at the end of Flags in the Dust is referred to only as "the placid, gaily turbaned mountain who superintended his hours" (395).

When Chick sees lights in Gavin Stevens' office in Intruder in the Dust, he thinks that sometimes "the janitor forgot to turn them off" (207).

The oldest of the "three pickaninnies" who live with their parents in the lonely cabin where Young Bayard spends Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in Flags in the Dust; she wears "greasy, nondescript garments, her wool twisted into tight knots of soiled wisps of colored cloth" (364).

The family of the Negro farmer who owns the "scrub bull" in The Mansion watches Mink as he curses them out (9).

The first of two unnamed Negro drivers in The Sound and the Fury. Jason pays him to bring his car to a back street in Jefferson.

In The Mansion Mink sees "a few Negroes" shopping - "trafficking" is the word the narrative uses - in "the small dingy store" in Memphis where he buys animal crackers (319).

In The Hamlet, during the two months they occupy their new house the Houstons hire a "negro woman to cook" for them (238). Besides the woman who cooks for the Varners, she is "the only other hired cook, white or black, in the country" (238).

In "Monk" Warden Gambrell has an unnamed Negro cook who works in his house as a trusty; when the warden's pistol goes missing, he has the cook "severely beaten" on the assumption that he stole it (53). Historically, there were female prisoners at Parchman's, but in this story it seems more likely Faulkner is thinking of the cook as male.

"Red Leaves" refers to the children of the slaves as "pickaninnies" twice: first when the servant sees them in the quarters, "naked in the dust" (328), and at the end, when he imagines the quarters and "the pickaninnies like ebony toys in the dust" (340).

In "Knight's Gambit" the "Negro butler" at the Harriss plantation opens the door to Gavin Stevens and Charles Mallison and "immediately vanishes" (249).

This "small negro boy" who delivers Rosa Coldfield's note to Quentin Compson is the first black character mentioned in Absalom, Absalom! (5).

While "running" away from the Choctaw plantation in "Red Leaves," the servant encounters this "motionless" man, "another Negro" (331). They exchange glances.

In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, various municipal officials stop by Gavin Stevens' office in his absence. The narrator identifies them only as "officials from the city hall and justices of the peace and bailiffs" from various parts of Yoknapatawpha (263, 360).

In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the moonshiner from whom Rider buys whiskey is described as "an unshaven white man" standing at the door of "a hut, a hovel" in the river swamp (246, 140). He is repeatedly referred to as "the white man" during the exchange with Rider. But he expresses concern about Rider's state of mind, and tries to "give" him a pint if Rider will give back the gallon he just bought for "four silver dollars" (246, 140).

In "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun this inhabitant of the settlement is sent to the "post-office-store" to "fetch the old Carolina lock from the latest Nashville mail-pouch" (202, 6).

These are the unnamed men in "An Error in Chemistry" who came to the narrator's grandfather's house to socialize and drink cold toddies.

In "Vendee" and again in the chapter with that name in The Unvanquished Bayard says that this minister is "from Memphis or somewhere," and describes him as a "big refugeeing preacher with his book already open" standing in the cemetery with a slave "holding an umbrella over him" (97, 156). Mrs. Compson and other Jefferson townspeople have asked him to officiate at Granny's funeral, presumably because of her status as both an Episcopalian and a member of the local aristocracy.

The first time this lawyer is mentioned in Sanctuary is in an antisemitic rant by Clarence Snopes about "a Memphis jew lawyer" (266). He appears in person on the day Temple testifies in court; he sits "picking his teeth" at the prosecution's table. There Horace refers to him as "a Jew lawyer from Memphis" (282). The narrative's description is less overtly hostile, but phrases like "his skull was capped closely by tight-curled black hair" and "he had a long, pale nose" (281) do emphasize his ethnicity. His connection with Memphis suggests he represents Popeye's interests.

Members of the irregular Confederate unit that John Sartoris organizes in Mississippi after his original regiment votes him out of command after a year appear first in the first Yoknapatawpha fiction, Flags in the Dust, in the second story about the Civil War that Will Falls rehearses for the Colonel's son Bayard. In that novel Bayard calls them "pretty good men," but adds that they "quit fighting and went home too often" (229); Jenny calls them "a bunch of red-neck brigands" (238).

In "Retreat" and again in The Unvanquished, Bayard sees "six men running in the next field" and then "ten or twelve" or perhaps more who may be chasing the first six or may be part of the same group (25, 57-58). At least some of them are stealing the "stock," i.e. the livestock, of the farmers in the area, and "five men" from the second group attack Granny and her party (25, 58).

In "Vendee" and again in The Unvanquished, what Bayard first sees as a "thing hanging over the middle of the road from a limb" is quickly and chillingly recognized as the body of "an old Negro man, with a rim of white hair and with his bare toes pointing down and his head on one side like he was thinking about something quiet" (111, 177). Grumby has apparently lynched him to serve as a graphic warning to the boys: pinned to his corpse is a badly written note telling them to "Turn back" (111, 177).

The phrases "the women" (119) and "the ladies" (124) are used on several occasions in "A Rose for Emily" to describe the general opinion of all the women in town. They function as a particularly Southern kind of narrative chorus. Presumably, these phrases do not literally refer to every woman, or even every white woman (though they certainly do not include women of color), but rather the genteel white women whose own reputations are impeccable, and who can function as the self-appointed guardians of the town's good name.

When Monk is arraigned, he tries to "make a speech" before this "J.P." - Justice of the Peace (42). (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.

The "JUDGE" who pronounces Nancy's death sentence at the start of the play in Requiem for a Nun is not described at all (40). The phrase "his gavel" confirms the assumption that he is male - as are all the many judges in the Yoknapatawpha fictions; those other judges are also all 'white' and 'upper class,' which is the basis for our other assumptions about this judge (41).

The "men, blue or gray," who were Ab Snopes' adversaries during the Civil War (7). Faulkner's fictions usually distinguish Union from Confederate soldiers, but Ab's war-time activities often made that distinction irrelevant - he had to dodge soldiers in both armies on his private, self-serving missions as a horse thief.

in Requiem for a Nun there are several specific references to the "ladies" of a contemporary Jefferson. A hundred years after the town's naming, two ladies clubs argue over whether "to change the name back to Habersham" (7). (This group also appears in "A Name for the City," 202.) And it is only "a few irreconciliable old ladies" - in other words, ladies who have not reconciled themselves to the South's defeat in the Civil War - who refuse to forget the fact that during the war "a United States military force" burned the town Square (37).

The white children of Jefferson don't directly appear anywhere in Intruder in the Dust, but Chick thinks of them three times. He remembers when he and the other "children on [his] street" played a card game with "an old lady" who lived nearby (58). And he notes the absence of the children who should have been on their porches on Sunday morning, "fresh and scrubbed for Sunday school with clutched palm-sweaty nickels" - but "perhaps by mutual consent" Sunday school has been cancelled (38).

A "shabby man" with "intense, visionary eyes" in Flags in the Dust, he thinks he has perfected a new prototype airplane (384). When he complains that none of "you damned yellow-livered pilots" will test it for him, Young Bayard agrees to fly it (387).

In "Delta Autumn" Ike refers to the illegitimate child that the unnamed young woman brings into the tent only as "a child" and "that" - as in "Is that his?" (278, 277). Its gender is not specified. Swaddled in a "blanket-and-tarpaulin-wrapped bundle," its physical appearance is never described, but legally it is "black" like its mother. Since Don Boyd is its father, its last name could be his, but the story makes it clear that the white father will play no role whatsoever in any future the infant might have.

In Sanctuary the owner of the hotel in Jefferson is described as "a tight, iron-gray man" with "a neat paunch" (180). He is very concerned about propriety: when a committee from the Baptist church complains about Ruby's presence in the hotel, he turns her out.

In "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun "one of the Holston slaves - the cook's husband, the waiter-groom-hostler" - delivers Holston's demand for the lost lock after the bandits and the imprisoned militia have taken apart the jail and escaped (208, 14).

In The Sound and the Fury on both Saturday and Sunday (the first and fourth sections of the novel) various groups of golfers are described playing on the course beside the Compson place. Consistent with the severe conceptual limitations of Benjy's mind, his descriptions of them are very confusing: "they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit" (3). When the third person narrator describes the same actions in the fourth section, it becomes easy to see who is there and what they are doing: Benjy and Luster "watched the foursome . . . move to the tee and drive" (315).