Character Keys

The crowd outside the Burden house in Light in August is, like so many crowds in the fictions, an audience in search of sensations. Although the white people of Yoknapatawpha had avoided Joanna's place for decades, within minutes after her corpse is discovered in the burning house a huge crowd gathers there. It is comprised mostly of white men (who, the narrator pointedly says, "would not have allowed their wives" to call on Joanna while she lived there, 291-92), although the crowd includes "the women" too (289).

The narrator of "Two Soldiers" is amazed at the number of people he sees in Memphis: the "folks from ever'where" and the "rushing cars and shoving folks" are clearly the most people that he has ever seen (93).

In his Easter sermon in The Sound and the Fury Rev. Shegog mentions the two men who were crucified on either side of Jesus. He refers to "de thief and de murderer" (296). The "thief" is presumably the man mentioned in the Gospels who rebukes the other criminal for mocking Jesus and asks Jesus to remember him when he reaches heaven.

When Dewey Dell goes into the Mottson drugstore in As I Lay Dying, there are "folks at the fountain" - that is, customers at the lunch counter (199). She doesn't want to talk to Moseley in front of them.

In The Town Charles naively - or perhaps coyly - describes the men from "the next towns" and elsewhere who visit Montgomery Ward's photographic studio at night this way: "going and coming through the side door in the alley; and them the kind of men you wouldn't hardly think it had ever occurred to them they might ever need to have their picture struck" (131).

In Sanctuary Horace refers to Lee Goodwin's "good customers," the men of Yoknapatawpha who regularly bought whiskey illegally from him in the past but turned on him once he was arrested (127).

As an itinerant salesman, of sewing machines and anything else that he can swap or sell, Suratt regularly meets and does business with the lower class population of at least three counties, including Yoknapatawpha. The groups he talks with in "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard" include men "squatting . . . on the porch of a crossroads store," and "women surrounded by laden clotheslines and blackened wash pots" (138).

Mink has two actual daughters; this "daughter" who lives in "the Delta" is one he invents in The Mansion to keep the Negro cotton farmer from identifying him (439).

The unnamed narrator of "Hair" mentions his daughter in passing: when he says women "can't help it" if they "grow up too fast," he adds "I have a daughter of my own, and I say that" (133).

This is the "daughter" who is born to the "girl whom [Zilphia] used to visit" when a teenager (374); the narrator of "Miss Zilphia Gant" notes that at least some of the dresses this child wears were made by Zilphia.

These are the "dead pilots" that the title "All the Dead Pilots" refers to, and they are of two kinds: the aviators like Sartoris, who were killed in the First World War, and the ones who physically survived the war but now find themselves alienated from the contemporary society that has moved past their sacrifices. The survivors are said to have "died" psychologically on Armistice Day, living on only in "snapshots hurriedly made, a little dog-eared with the thirteen years" that have elapsed since November 11, 1918.

In "A Rose for Emily," the unnamed Union soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson lie in "the cedar-bemused cemetery" in "ranked and anonymous graves" (119).

In The Town Sheriff Hub Hampton's "office deputy," Miss Elma, is identified as the "widow of the sheriff Mr Hampton had succeeded last time" (183). This previous sheriff is not otherwise described.

The "delinquent girls" who live in a Memphis institution do not appear in Light in August, except as the recipients of charity from Reverend Hightower (58).

In Light in August "five or six deputies" from Jefferson and Mottstown help the sheriffs of these towns escort Joe from the jail in Mottstown to the car that will take him to Jefferson (356).

This deputy sheriff escorts Lee Goodwin on his trips between the jail and the courthouse in Sanctuary. (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 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.)

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 The Reivers this unnamed deputy holds Ludus after Boon shoots at him, and then escorts Ludus to Judge Stevens' office. (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 "Smoke," this deputy follows up the health officer's report about Old Anse's behavior in the cemetery, and discovers the old man's body. (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.)

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.

This unnamed deputy recounts the second and last section of "Pantaloon in Black" as both a short story and a chapter in Go Down, Moses, although much of the language used to characterize him serves to undermine his authority as a narrator. He is "spent" and "a little hysterical too" after both the manhunt for Rider and the lynching (252), and his wife shows no sympathy at all for him or for the story he's trying to tell her. Instead, she offers the narrative’s only portrait of the deputy sheriff: "You sheriffs! Sitting around that courthouse all day long talking.

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.

Both "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard" and The Hamlet refer to the enslaved people who labored on the Frenchman's place before the Civil War as "the progenitors of saxophone players in Harlem honky-tonks" (136, 375). Nothing more is said, but implicitly this reference the narrative looks ahead both to the Great Migration in which millions of southern blacks moved to northern cities (a movement that was just beginning at the time the story and the novel take place) and to the Jazz Age of the 1920s

All we know about this character in Sanctuary is that, when Horace asks the post office clerk at the University if he knows where Temple has gone, the clerk in reply asks him if he is "another detective" - suggesting that a detective of some kind has already been looking for Judge Temple's missing daughter (171). We don't even know if he is a private detective, or a policeman.

In a passage added to the "Retreat" chapter of The Unvanquished, Bayard describes these poor whites as "the people whom the niggers called 'white trash'" - though he himself refers to them several times as "white trash" too (48-49). Their low status is defined in part by the fact that they "owned no slaves" (49). They farm "little patches of poor hill land" near the McCaslin place and in some cases "live worse than the slaves on the big plantation" (49). According to Bayard, they "look on Uncle Buck and Buddy like Deity Himself" (49).

In "Tomorrow," the District Attorney of Yoknapatawpha apparently feels so certain that Bookwright will be found not guilty that he "conducts the case through an assistant" (91), and does not otherwise appear in the story.

In an odd twist, after Mink's conviction in The Mansion, this District Attorney who prosecuted Mink meets with Mink's lawyer and the judge who oversaw the trial to try to figure out what kind of sentence to give him, for Mink's sake and the public's.

In "Appendix Compson," this district Chancellor annually reviews the financial reports submitted by Jason Compson as the "guardian and trustee" of his niece (342).

This is the Jefferson doctor in "Dry September" whom Minnie Cooper's friends send for when she suffers a nervous breakdown. He is "hard to locate" (181). (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.

This is the doctor whom Lucas Beauchamp goes to get when Zack Edmonds’s wife has trouble in labor in Go Down, Moses; he arrives too late to prevent her death. (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.

The first of the two unnamed doctors who appear in Sanctuary is the Jefferson physician who attends Ruby's child; after her child has a bad night in the hotel, Ruby tells Horace that "I finally got the doctor" (135). The doctor who appears in all three previous Yoknapatawpha novels is named Peabody, described as the fattest man in Yoknapatawpha County, but this doctor is someone else, "a young man with a small black bag" whom Horace obviously has never seen before (135).

The "doctor" who examines Cotton after he is brought to jail in "The Hound" is not named, or individualized in any way (163). (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.

The Jefferson doctor who appears twice in Light in August is not named. Some years before the events of the story, he arrives at a cabin where Gail Hightower has just delivered a stillborn Negro baby. In the novel's present he is also the doctor whom Byron Bunch contacts when Lena goes into labor in a different cabin; again he arrives too late, but this time after Hightower has successfully delivered the baby.

"The doctor" in Absalom! treats Charles E. S-V. Bon after the fight at "the negro ball" (164). (In the various fictions there are three named Jefferson doctors who appear more than once - Habersham in the early life of the town; Peabody and Alford in the 20th century - but there are also over a dozen doctors who are never named.

While waiting on Dr. Schofield to amputate his leg in "The Tall Men," Buddy McCallum recalls another doctor and a more unbearable wait during the First World War. He remembers, "It took a long time for the doctor to get around to all of us, and by that time it was hurting bad." Presumably American and most certainly overworked, this doctor patiently treats the "heap" of injured soldiers "racked up along a bank outside a field dressing station" (51).

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).

After Fraser dies in "Monk," this unnamed man driving "the truck or the car" sees Monk and says, "All right, Monk. Jump in" (45). He takes Monk to a gas station two or three miles from Jefferson.

In The Mansion the member of Goodyhay's sect who gives Mink a ride into Memphis (and whom the narrative only refers to as "the driver," and does not describe at all, 312) knows his way around the city.

Although never named, the drug store clerk in "Uncle Willy" plays a large role in the plot. He arrives in Jefferson "about six months" before Reverend Schultz and Mrs. Merridew hire him to manage the drugstore while Willy undergoes drug treatment in Memphis (232). No one in Jefferson "knows anything about him," but he arrives in town with "letters to the church," which is apparently the basis on which he is hired (232). He completely transforms the store - making it attractive to the "town trade" that had previously shunned it (233).

In Flags in the Dust the "youthful clerk" in the drug store who re-wraps the package that Joan dropped in the street also "stares at her boldly" (319).

The drugstore in Jefferson appears in many of the Yoknapatawpha fictions, but it is not identified with an owner with any consistency. So in As I Lay Dying the pharmacist who is at lunch when Dewey Dell walks into the drugstore, the employer whom MacGowan refers to as "the old man" and "the old bastard," has to remain unnamed (242, 247). He clearly does not know about MacGowan's unethical behavior.

In The Sound and the Fury this drummer appears at the hardware store where Jason works, and the two men discuss cotton. Jason invites him to go to the drugstore to get "a dope" (191). ( "Drummer" is an outdated term for a traveling salesman; "dope" is an outdated term for a Coca-Cola.) Because he thinks Jason believes him to be a Jew, he tells Jason that "my folks have some French blood" (191).

In "Smoke" this "drummer" - a familiar term for traveling salesman when the story was written - supplies the drug store with the unpopular "city cigarettes" that will play such a major role in solving the crime (28).

In The Town this drummer is imagined by Jefferson observers to have oversold some commodity to Wallstreet Panic Snopes, thus making it necessary for him to borrow money.

In The Sound and the Fury Jason rages against the "every dam drummer" that comes to Jefferson, all of whom he imagines have sexual relations with his niece, Quentin (239). "Drummer" is an archaic term for a salesman who travels from town to town. We know that Miss Quentin is sexually active, though these specific partners are products of Jason's imagination.

"Drummers," as traveling salesmen were called, appear three times in Sanctuary sitting in chairs or standing or getting into a "bus" along the curb outside the hotel in Jefferson, first when Horace gets a room for Ruby, again the morning after he speaks with Temple, and then again when he waits in the hotel for a train to take him back to Kinston (124).

Walking through the Square in The Mansion, Mink sees the "drummers sitting in leather chairs along the sidewalk" in front of the Holston House (37). A 'drummer' was a traveling salesman.

In the hallway of the Negro brothel that Clarence takes them to, Virgil and Fonzo see "a drunk white man in greasy overalls" arguing with two Negro men (198). His overalls identify him as lower class, and tell us something about the socio-economic standing of the brothel's clientele, but no other details, about the man or the argument, are given in Sanctuary.