Character Keys

Pruitts appear in two different texts - "That Will Be Fine" (1935) and "Tomorrow" (1940) - but there seems to be no connection between the group in each text. In "Tomorrow" Rufus Pruitt is a working-class farmer, a sharecropper's son. He and his mother narrate part of the Fentry-Thorpe saga, helping Chick and Gavin to solve the mystery of Stonewall Jackson Fentry's behavior.

One of Elnora's three children in the short story "There Was a Queen," Saddie works as Miss Jenny's caretaker, "tending her as though she were a baby" (728). "Saddie" may be a corruption of 'Saturday.' She sleeps in the big house, "on a cot beside Virginia Du Pre's bed" (728). Genealogically, she is Miss Jenny's great-niece, the illegitimate granddaughter of her brother John, though that relationship is not discussed by any of the characters. (In the earlier novel Flags in the Dust, Elnora has only one child - Isom.)

"Saint Francis" - known as Francis of Assisi, the Catholic friar who founded the Franciscan Order in the early 13th century - wrote the words that Quentin Compson remembers on the first page of his section in The Sound and the Fury in the song "The Canticle of the Sun": "All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death, From whose embrace no mortal can escape."

Sally Rand was a minor actress and nightclub dancer who became famous at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair when she danced apparently naked, using a pair of ostrich feather "fans" to reveal and conceal her body in provocative ways that got her arrested four times in one day (323).

Although the narrator of The Hamlet calls the Varner's cook the "only servant of any sort in the whole district" (11), the Varner's also have a manservant. Among his jobs is carrying Eula "until she was five or six": "the negro man staggering slightly beneath his long, dangling, already indisputably female burden" (106).

This is not the Indian named "Had-Two-Fathers" who plays a minor role in "Red Leaves." This is the character best known as Sam Fathers, though as he tells Quentin Compson in Faulkner's second Indian story, "A Justice," his Indian name was "Had-Two-Fathers" too (345). In that story he is the child of a Choctaw named Crawfish-ford and an enslaved woman whom Doom, the chief, won gambling on a Mississippi riverboat.

The Samson who appears in The Town is a porter at the Snopes Hotel.

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).

In "Go Down, Moses," and again in the chapter with that title in the novel Go Down, Moses - the only texts he appears in - Samuel is the grandson of Lucas and Molly Beauchamp. As he tells the census taker, to whom he identifies himself by his real name, Samuel Worsham Beauchamp was "born in the country near Jefferson, Mississippi" (256, 351). Like well over a million rural black southerners by the 1930s, he has relocated to the urban north.

She is one of three daughters of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline in Light in August. Unlike their older brother Nathaniel, who is dark like their mother, all three daughters have blue eyes.

Other than Colonel John, the only Sartorises referred to in Absalom! are "Sartoris' womenfolks," who use their "silk dresses" to sew the regimental flag that Yoknapatawpha's Confederate volunteers carry to the Civil War (63).

In "Uncle Willy" Secretary is the name of the "negro boy" whom Willy hires to drive his car (235). In Faulkner's South, even adult black men are often called "boys" by white people, so although the juvenile narrator says that Secretary is "about my size" (235), he also says that Secretary is "older than me" (241) - though we have no way to know how much older. Both the narrator and Willy describe Secretary as "burr-headed," i.e. with short, bristly hair (235).

In "Ambuscade" and again in The Unvanquished, the top sergeant in the Union troop that arrives at Sartoris is named Harrison. He may be the Yankee who is first spotted by Ringo and Bayard looking at the plantation through field glasses; if so, it is his horse that they kill attempting to shoot him. He was clearly angered by that shooting, which cost the regiment "the best horse in the whole army" (29). Much more hostile to Rosa Millard than his commanding officer, he orders other soldiers to search the house in search of the "little devils" who did the shooting (29).

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.

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 county sheriff in Light in August is named Watt Kennedy. Described as a "fat, comfortable man" (287), "with little wise eyes like bits of mica embedded in his fat, still face" (420), he investigates the murder of Joanna Burden and pursues Joe Christmas across the countryside (287). Like so many other characters in this novel, he never appears elsewhere in the Yoknapatawpha fictions.

In The Mansion Stillwell is the "gambler who had cut the throat of a Vicksburg prostitute" who is an inmate in Parchman Penitentiary at the same time as Mink (107). He is the ringleader of the group of prisoners who try to break out, and the only one who escapes successfully. Subsequently he threatens to kill Mink when Mink is finally released.

Sickymo was a U.S. marshal in Jefferson during Reconstruction, a period in which more than 2,000 African-Americans - many of them, like Sickymo, former slaves - held public office. Because he is illiterate, he "signs his official papers with a crude cross" (277).When still a slave, he stole alcohol, diluted it, and stored it in a sycamore tree in order to sell it - hence his name. His character and tenure in office are referred to in Go Down, Moses as an instance of the evils that befell the defeated (white) South after the loss of the Civil War.

In Light in August Simms may be the owner of Jefferson's planing mill; he is definitely the man in charge of it. He hires Christmas and Brown (aka Burch) at the planing mill.

In Light in August Simon McEachern is more than forty years old when he adopts the five-year-old Joe Christmas from the Memphis orphanage and takes him to the farm where he and his wife live. The narrative describes him as "somehow rocklike, indomitable, not so much ungentle as ruthless" (143-44). His voice is that "of a man who demanded that he be listened to not so much with attention but in silence" (142).

The British commander that Charles Stuart Compson fought under in the "Appendix Compson" (326), Banastre Tarleton, was known in England as an outstanding military leader during the Revolutionary War, which he joined at the age of 21. In America, however, Tarleton had a reputation for savagery on the field; he and his men participated in the capture of Charleston, and later became infamous for what Americans called the "Waxhaws Massacre" in South Carolina in 1780.

Physically described as "mountainous" (26) and identified as one of Jefferson's best cooks in Flags in the Dust, Rachel works for Belle and Harry Mitchell, and makes no effort to disguise her preference for Harry over his wife.

He is Skeet MacGowan in his first appearance, in As I Lay Dying. He is Skeets McGowan in Intruder in the Dust and The Town. He is Skeets Magowan in The Mansion. But in all four he is a the kind of drugstore clerk that used to be called a 'soda jerk' or, as Faulkner writes it in the last two novels, a "soda-jerker" (42, 208) - the clerk who served sodas and ice cream at the lunch counters that used to be found in most drugstores. Defined another way, 'jerk' seems to describe his character too, especially in As I Lay Dying.

McKinley Smith in The Mansion is the "son of an east Texas tenant farmer" (373).

The one member of the Snopes family who appears in "Shingles for the Lord" is not given a first name, and only given two minor roles to play in the story: he brings the ladder to the church in his wagon (38), and is among the members of the congregation who are there to watch as the church burns down (41).

The Mansion calls this Snopes "the last" in the sequence of Snopeses who move from Frenchman's Bend to Jefferson, and also "the old one" (136). He is extremely choleric: "fierce eyes under a tangle of eyebrows and a neck that would begin to swell and turn red" as soon as he felt challenged (136). He doesn't actually move into town, but reaches a point "in sight of the town clock" and then refuses to go further (136), settling into a place where he can wage war against the boys who try to raid his "water-melon patch" (137). Some people think he is "Mr Flem's father" (i.e.

Many of the many Snopeses who appear in the fictions are "descendants" of Ab Snopes (6), but the specific group referred to in "Barn Burning" is made up of the unnamed Snopeses who are alive in "later years," later, that is to say, than the first introduction of automobiles into Yoknapatawpha - i.e. sometime after about 1920 (6). The narrative notes that the "same quality" that makes Ab handle his mules badly will characterize the way these future Snopeses try to "put a motor car into motion" (6).

While Abner and Lennie Snopes' older son Flem is one of the most prominent inhabitants of Faulkner's imagination, and their younger son Sarty the central character of one of his greatest short stories, neither of their twin daughters gets much attention in the two texts in which they figure.

In Flags in the Dust Sol is the porter who helps Horace with his luggage when he returns to Jefferson from France.

Sometimes-Wakeup is one of Doom's two uncles in "A Justice," the brother of the Man prior to Doom, and he lives "by himself in a cabin by the creek" (349). He is apparently a recluse, whom the People only see when they take him food. After Doom murders the Man and the Man's son, Sometimes-Wakeup is next in the order of succession, though he declines to accept the position.

In The Town Byron Snopes has four children with an unnamed Apache woman in New Mexico. They are probably all legally illegitimate, and all are wearing overalls when they get off the train station in Jefferson. None are named, but two are specifically identified as "boys" (378). Charles Mallison's narrative does not differentiate between these boys. (All four children are mentioned in one phrase in The Mansion, as Byron's "four half-Snopes half-Apache Indian children, 327.)

The narrator of Sanctuary tells us that Lee and Ruby's child is "not a year old" the first time he appears in the story - sleeping in a box behind the stove, where "the rats cant get to him" (18). Ruby is carrying him or caring for him throughout the rest of the novel. His appearance is another of the novel's unsettling elements. When Horace looks at him lying on a bed, for example, the child is "flushed and sweating, its curled hands above its head in the attitude of one crucified, breathing in short, whistling gasps" (135).

In The Reivers Son Thomas is "the youngest driver" who works at Maury Priest's livery stable (4). The "Son" in his name is not connected to any specific parents.

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).

In "Hair," Sophie Starnes is the daughter of landowners in Alabama. She is said to be a "thin, unhealthy" girl, with "straight hair not brown and not yellow" (139). Over her mother's objections, she becomes engaged to Henry Stribling - AKA Hawkshaw - the "son of a tenant farmer" (138). Before they can marry, however, Sophie dies of "some kind of fever" (138).

Sophonsiba is Hubert Beauchamp's sister and the one who insists that their plantation be called "Warwick," as a claim on the family's purported connection to English royalty. The onstage role she plays in Go Down, Moses tends toward absurdity rather than elegance, in part because it is related through nine-year-old Cass Edmonds: "Her hair was roached under a lace cap; she had on her Sunday dress and beads and a red ribbon around her throat" (12).

In The Sound and the Fury Spoade is the last name of a senior at Harvard College with Quentin in 1910. He jokingly calls Shreve Quentin's "husband" (78). Quentin says Spoade has "five names, including that of a present English ducal house" (91-92), but he never thinks of him except as "Spoade" - his first name is never given. He is from South Carolina, and lives up to the image of a southern aristocrat in a number of ways besides his name, including the fact that he goes to chapel every day in dishabille.

In The Sound and the Fury the local justice of the peace or magistrate who hears the complaint against Quentin involving Julio's sister is referred to only as "Squire" (139). His courtroom is "a bare room smelling of stale tobacco" and "a scarred littered table," the book in which he enters Quentin's name is a "huge dusty" one, and he himself has "a fierce roach of iron gray hair" and wears "steel spectacles" (142). He fines Quentin but releases him without a formal charge.

The Stevenses are one of the older Yoknapatawpha families, but there is confusion about its earlier members. The first appearance of a Stevens is in "A Rose for Emily"; he is the eighty-year-old mayor of Jefferson referred to as "Judge Stevens" (122). According to Brooks, Dasher and Kirk, three of the scholars who create charts or indices of Faulkner's characters, this man is the same Judge Stevens who is Gavin's father in half a dozen other fictions.

In "That Evening Sun," Mr. Stovall, the cashier in the Jefferson bank and "a deacon in the Baptist church," knocks Nancy to the ground and "kicks her in the mouth" when she accuses him of having failed to pay her for sex (291). In Requem for a Nun, where Nancy reappears as a major character, Temple Drake re-tells this event; she does not name the man, but refers to him as a "pillar of the church" (96).

The man who owns the timber that Vinson and Crawford Gowrie are harvesting in Intruder in the Dust is first referred to as "Uncle Sudley Workitt" (215), and later identified as the boys' mother's "second or fourth cousin or uncle or something" (217). He is described as "an old rheumatic man" and "half blind" (219).

In the story V.K. Suratt tells in Flags in the Dust about Doctor Peabody amputating his grandfather's leg, he mentions that the whiskey and (presumably) the pain caused "granpappy" to "cuss and sing so scandalous" that "the women-folks and the chillen went down to the pasture behind the barn" until the operation was over (136). (Suratt himself appears frequently in the fictions, in the later ones as V.K. Ratliff. His character remains essentially the same, but in those later fictions the Ratliff family is different from this Suratt one.)

V.K. Suratt's "oldest brother" appears briefly in Flags in the Dust as the person who taught him how "to chop cotton" fast if he wanted to keep from losing his toes (137).

After the young Thomas Sutpen is turned away from the front door of the Tidewater plantation house in Absalom!, he suddenly recognizes his responsibility to "all the men and women that had died to make him" and "all the living ones that would come after him when he would be one of the dead" (178).

This is the first of the two illegitimate Sutpen children in Absalom! that one of Thomas' older sisters gives birth to during the family's journey across Virginia; he or she was born in "a cowshed" (183).

Although his name evokes the way enslaved Negroes were often named, Sylvester's John is actually one of the young Chickasaw men who are interested in Herman Basket's sister in "A Courtship" - until it becomes clear that Ikkemotubbe wants her. After that, he is one of the young men who willingly help Ikkemotubbe's courtship.

When Requiem for a Nun begins, the baby daughter of Gowan and Temple Drake Stevens has been murdered by Nancy.

All we know about this Confederate brigade commander mentioned in The Unvanquished is that when John Sartoris returns to Mississippi after being demoted by his troops, "Uncle Buddy" McCaslin apparently stays behind as a sergeant "in Tennant's brigade in Virginia" (51).

Although always a minor character, this black man reveals a lot about how Faulkner's imagination led him into and out of the haunted issue of slavery and its legacy. In his first published appearance he is "Tennie's Jim" in the hunting story "The Bear"; in that character he's a revised version of "Jimbo," one of the servants Major de Spain takes with him in "The Old People" on his annual hunting trips into the big woods.