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Code title biography
2308 Sarah

Sarah - Uncle Rodney's older sister, George's wife and woman whom the narrator of "That Will Be Fine" calls "mamma" (265) - is greatly upset by Rodney's behavior, mostly because gossip about it would damage "the family's good name" (267). She is very class-conscious, but also genuinely concerned about her younger brother: "mamma cried and said how Uncle Rodney was the baby and that must be why papa hated him" (268).

2307 Georgie

Georgie, the seven-year-old narrator of "That Will Be Fine," tells the essentially sordid and ultimately fatal story of his uncle Rodney from a perspective that emphasizes both the ignorance and self-centeredness of childhood. He never questions or recognizes Rodney's various forms of social and criminal misbehavior, and his loyalty to Rodney has its roots less in family love than in greed.

2306 Unnamed Baby of Louisa

This is the youngest child of Uncle Fred and Aunt Louisa. Georgie's narrative in "That Will Be Fine" does provide either its name or its gender.

2305 Louisa 2

In "That Will Be Fine," the narrator's cousin Louisa is the young daughter of Aunt Louisa and Uncle Fred.

2304 Fred 2

In "That Will Be Fine" this is the Fred who is the young son of Aunt Louisa and Uncle Fred.

2303 Aunt Louisa

In "That Will Be Fine," Aunt Louisa is married to Uncle Fred and mother to Louisa, Fred, and an unnamed baby. As Rodney's older sister, she repeatedly rationalizes her brother's behavior. She hides his misdoings from their father, and pleads for Mr. Pruitt to give him time to get the two thousand dollars he needs to cover his theft from the Compress Association.

2302 Fred 1

In "That Will Be Fine," this is the Fred who is Georgie's uncle and Aunt Louisa's husband; he lives with his wife's parents in Mottstown. Fred is aware of Rodney's crimes but unable to do much about them.

2301 Emmeline

In "That Will Be Fine," Emmeline is the nursemaid for Aunt Louisa's baby. She takes Mandy's place in cooking breakfast, complaining "that she was going to waste all her Christmas doing extra work they never had the sense she give them credit for and that this looked like to her it was a good house to be away from nohow" (279).

2300 Mrs. Church

In "That Will Be Fine," after Mrs. Church pays a call on Mrs. Pruitt, she gossips about her with the women of Grandpa's family, saying that she uses too much makeup, does not dress properly, and drinks.

2299 Yance

In "Vendee" Bayard says that the livestock pen at Ab Snopes' cabin was "just like the one Ringo and Yance and I had built at home" (100). The reference to Yance is puzzling, since no character with that name is ever mentioned anywhere else in the fictions, and other Unvanquished stories describe in detail how Bayard, Ringo, Joby and Loosh build that pen at Sartoris. Faulkner might just have forgotten Joby's name: when he reprinted this story as a chapter in The Unvanquished, he changed the name "Yance" to "Joby."

2298 Benbow Family

In Flags in the Dust the Benbows are identified as one of the oldest and most prominent Yoknapatawpha families, though they do not figure among the county's large plantation owners, and individual members of that family play major roles in that novel, Sanctuary and "There Was a Queen." In "Skirmish at Sartoris," however, as a short story and again as a chapter in The Unvanquished,the family is mentioned only as the antebellum owners of a "carriage" and the slave - "Uncle Cash," or Cassius - who drove it (66).

2297 Unnamed Union General 2

In Requiem for a Nun the carpetbagger named Redmond associates himself with this general, "the brigadier commanding the force which occupied Jefferson" (183). (Historically, the Union forces who burned (but did not occupy) Oxford in 1863 were under the command of General Andrew Jackson Smith, who is mentioned as "General Smith" in other Yoknapatawpha fictions.)

2296 General Joseph Mower

Requiem for a Nun mentions the "general of the United States army" who takes charge of Jackson, Mississippi, after Union troops captured and burned it (87). Historically, this officer was named Joseph A. Mower. He served in Sherman's corps during the 1863 campaign against Vicksburg (87).

2295 Unnamed Town Wit 1

The narrator of "Mule in the Yard" singles out from 'the town' as a group this one "town wag" who sends I.O. Snopes a printed train schedule, his wry commentary on all the mules that Snopes loses in "accidents" with freight trains on the "blind curve" on the railroad tracks (252).

2294 Unnamed Mule Drovers

In "Mule in the Yard" these men help I.O. Snopes 'drive' (i.e. move - no vehicle is involved) his newly purchased mules from the railroad station past the Hait house to his pasture.

2293 Unnamed Customers of I.O. Snopes

In "Mule in the Yard," these "farmers and widows and orphans black and white" (252) buy mules from I.O. Snopes.

2292 Unnamed Claims Adjuster

On behalf of the railroad company, this claims adjuster in "Mule in the Yard" pays Mannie Hait the sum of $8500 after her husband gets run over by one of their trains. On this occasion he also thwarts I.O. Snopes, by refusing to pay anything for the mules who were killed in the accident.

2291 Unnamed Bank President 1

Along with the cashier who works for him, this banker in "Mule in the Yard" tries to convince Mannie Hait to invest her settlement money in bonds or a savings or a checking account. (When Faulkner re-tells this event in The Town, the president of the bank is "Major de Spain himself," 244.)

2290 Spilmer

Spilmer may or may not still be alive, but the property above the ravine ditch where Mannie Hait hides and shoots a mule bears his name in both "Mule in the Yard" and The Town.

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.

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).

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).

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).

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.

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).

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).

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.

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).

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).

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.

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).

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.)

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).

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).

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).

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).

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).

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.'

2210 Unnamed Two Men 3

At the country dance in Light in August, these two men restrain Bobbie from physically attacking the fallen McEachern.

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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