Character Keys
Code | title | biography | |
---|---|---|---|
861 | Unnamed Memphis Police 2 |
In Light in August the police in Memphis arrest the drunken man in Mrs. Hightower's hotel room after her death and also find the pieces of paper on which she wrote and tore up her "rightful name" (67). |
|
862 | Unnamed Memphis Police 1 |
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. |
|
3741 | Unnamed Memphis Officials |
These are the "street- and assessment commissioners" with whom Mr. Binford negotiates and the policemen he pays off as part of his responsibilities as the man of Miss Reba's house in The Reivers (111). |
|
3531 | Unnamed Memphis Mayor |
In The Mansion the "Mayor" of Memphis is an acquaintance of Gavin Stevens's Harvard friend, who promises to seek his help in the attempt to locate Mink Snopes (426). |
|
592 | Unnamed Memphis Lawyer |
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. |
|
3740 | Unnamed Memphis Jockey |
In his account in The Reivers of the first time Coppermine (AKA Forked Lightning) raced against Acheron, Parsham Hood briefly mentions "that Memphis boy" who was riding the horse (220). |
|
2941 | Unnamed Memphis Investigator |
The hypothetical "expert that can tell about bullets" (71) whom Chick imagines in Intruder in the Dust; "somebody from the Memphis police" (188) that Chick assumes Sheriff Hampton will have to call in. Though in a different state, Memphis is the closest large city to Yoknapatawpha. |
|
1565 | Unnamed Memphis Friends of Young Bayard |
In Miss Jenny's account in Flags in the Dust of the wedding and newlywed life that Bayard and Caroline live in Memphis, she mentions "the [aviation] pupils of Bayard's" and his "soldier friends" whom she sees. Like their wives, whom Jenny calls "young women who ought to have been at home," these are all obviously members of the same "lost" generation as Bayard (51). |
|
2600 | Unnamed Memphis Doctor |
In The Hamlet this doctor operates upon V.K. Ratliff, cutting the "right thing out whether by accident or design" (80). |
|
1862 | Unnamed Memphis Counterman |
As Popeye and Temple drive down the Memphis street toward Miss Reba's in Sanctuary, they see "a fat man in a dirty apron with a toothpick in his mouth" inside the diner that they pass (142). |
|
3530 | Unnamed Memphis Commissioner 2 |
The Memphis "Commissioner" in The Mansion is an acquaintance of Gavin Stevens's Harvard friend (426). Gavin's friend enlists his help in the attempt to locate Mink Snopes. Presumably he's the Commissioner of Police, though that isn't made explicit. |
|
1895 | Unnamed Memphis Commissioner 1 |
Miss Reba's description of the police commissioner who patronizes her brothel in Sanctuary is memorable: "a man fifty years old, seven foot tall, with a head like a peanut" (143). Her description of his behavior with one of her prostitute is even more unforgettable: when his cronies broke into the room "they found him buck-nekkid, dancing the highland fling" (143). |
|
3739 | Unnamed Memphis Businessmen |
These are the "liquor dealers," "grocers and coal merchants," "plumbers," "newspaper boy" and other tradesman and laborers with whom Mr. Binford negotiates in The Reivers as part of his responsibilities as the man of the house that Miss Reba runs (111). |
|
2428 | Unnamed Members of Vigilance Committee |
Also called "a posse" (35), the "vigilance committee" in Absalom! that accompanies the county sheriff when he confronts Sutpen on suspicion of theft originally consists of "eight or ten" men (34). In an essentially comic scene, this group follows Sutpen on his courtship errand as their numbers grow (according to General Compson) to "almost fifty" men (35) - including "other horsemen [who] rode into the square" and "others who did not happen to have horses" (35) as well as some of the men who were lounging "on the gallery of the Holston House" when Sutpen reached town (34). |
|
3529 | Unnamed Members of the Sartoris Rifles |
In The Mansion, when the U.S. enters the First World War Mack Lendon organizes a company of soldiers "to be known as the Sartoris Rifles in honor of the original Colonel Sartoris" (204). The only two members of the unit who are named are Lendon himself and Tug Nightingale. The company ships out "to Texas for training" (207). |
|
3528 | Unnamed Members of the Communist Party |
In The Mansion the F.B.I. agent who interrogate Stevens about Linda Snopes Kohl's activities mentions the people in the United States who are "Communist members and agents"; included in this group are "Jewish sculptors and Columbia professors" as well as "important people" (261). |
|
3443 | Unnamed Members of the American Legion |
The American Legion was created in 1919 as an organization for veterans of World War I. Historically it has worked to secure veterans' rights. In The Mansion it is seen both positively and critically. Gavin is thinking of it when he talks about how "the Veterans' clubs and legions" provide "refuge" for the men who fought in the First World War only to find themselves feeling alienated, "betrayed and dispossessed" when they returned to the U.S. (201). |
|
3228 | Unnamed Members of Silver Shirts |
Like the Ku Klux Klan, the next organization that Clarence Snopes joins in "By the People" and The Mansion - "Silver Shirts" - was a real white supremacist, antisemitic organization (131, 334). Its official name was the Silver Legion of America, but its nickname acknowledges its ideological indebtedness to Brown Shirts in Germany, the fascist group that helped bring Hitler and the Nazis to power in the 1930s. It was founded in North Carolina in early 1933. |
|
590 | Unnamed Members of Sartoris' Troop |
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). |
|
1226 | Unnamed Members of Posse 5 |
These are the men in The Town - all "enraged fathers" - who tar and feather "actual schoolmaster" Snopes for taking advantage of an adolescent girl (43). |
|
2869 | Unnamed Members of Posse 4 |
In "An Error in Chemistry" the sheriff sends "Ben Berry and some others" to Joel Flint's house in case the escaped Joel Flint returns there (122). These "others" are not described in any way, though it seems as if they are not members of the sheriff's office, which is why we identify them as a kind of 'posse.' |
|
1227 | Unnamed Members of Posse 3 |
In his hunt for Joe Christmas in Light in August Sheriff Kennedy is joined by a large posse. There are "thirty or forty" men waiting for the bloodhounds who arrive on the train the day after Joanna's body is discovered (296), and the narrative suggests this same group remains on the trail through the following week. |
|
658 | Unnamed Members of Posse 2 |
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). |
|
2191 | Unnamed Members of Posse 1 |
In his hunt for Joe Christmas across the Yoknapatawpha countryside in Light in August Sheriff Kennedy is joined by a large posse. There are "thirty or forty" white men waiting for the bloodhounds who arrive on the train the day after Joanna's body is discovered (296), and the narrative suggests this same group remains on the trail through the following week. |
|
2129 | Unnamed Members of Other Congregations |
After Hightower refuses to resign from his pulpit in the Presbyterian church in Light in August, members of other churches in Jefferson come to see him "out of curiosity for a time" (69). The other main denominations in Jefferson are Episcopalian, Baptist and Methodist. |
|
2427 | Unnamed Members of Mob outside Wedding |
In Absalom! almost a hundred "boys and youths and men" gather outside the Methodist church to jeer Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Sutpen when they emerge from the wedding . The "men who composed the mob" are identified as men "from the drovers' tavern on the edge of town" (39), and as "traders and drovers and teamsters" (44). |
|
3633 | Unnamed Members of Mob |
In Intruder in the Dust the white people who crowd Jefferson's main streets in anticipation of the arrival of a lynch mob from Beat Four are from everywhere in Yoknapatawpha except Beat Four. It begins to form on Sunday morning, with a small group made up of young men from town. |
|
3227 | Unnamed Members of Ku Klux Klan 2 |
In "By the People" and again in The Mansion Clarence Snopes uses Yoknapatawpha's Ku Klux Klan to advance his own political career, which serves as the occasion for Faulkner's one explicit engagement with the Klan as an element in U.S. history. Historically the Klan is a terrorist, white supremacist organization that came into existence in the South after the surrender at Appomattox and the abolition of slavery. |
|
2769 | Unnamed Members of Ku Klux Klan 1 |
As part of the account in Go Down, Moses of Reconstruction in the South, these white men "armed in sheets and masks" who terrorize freed blacks are described (277). The details of the description suggests the Ku Klux Klan, especially "formalized regalia of hooded sheets" and "fiery christian symbols" (276), but this group is never given a label. And astonishingly, the narrator suggests that its original founders were the descendants of the carpetbaggers from the North, lynching "the race their ancestors had come to save" (276). |
|
3527 | Unnamed Members of Jehovah's Shareholders |
In The Mansion, "Jehovah's Shareholders" is the name of a religious sect inside Parchman's Penitentiary (111). According to the novel's narrator, it was "headed by self-ordained leaders who had reached prison through a curiously consistent pattern: by the conviction of crimes peculiar to the middle class, to respectability, originating in domesticity or anyway uxoriousness" (111). |
|
2128 | Unnamed Members of Hightower's Congregation |
In Light in August the old men and women, pillars of the church, are among the first to "astonished and dubious" about Reverend Hightower's obsessions (61). Others increasingly view his behavior and preaching with suspicion, and gossip about him and his wife - though they also raise funds to pay for Mrs. Hightower's treatment in a sanatorium and cook meals for him during her absence. |
|
3352 | Unnamed Members of Frenchman's Bend Church |
In his hypothetical account in The Town of Flem's return to Frenchman's Bend in 1927, Gavin mentions the members of the church there, but only in the context of Mrs. Varner's authoritarian control of the "terrified congregation" and the "ministers" whom she "selects and chooses and hires" herself - she "fires them too when they don't suit her" (306). Still according to Gavin, one of these ministers was plowing "a cotton field" when she passed by in her buggy and noticed him: she ordered him "to go home and bathe and change his clothes" before she "ordained" him herself (306). |
|
3226 | Unnamed Members of Clarence Snopes' Gang |
In "By the People" and again in The Mansion, during his youth in Frenchman's Bend Clarence Snopes is the leader of a "gang of cousins and toadies" (89, 328) who terrorize the community around Frenchman's Bend. They fought and drank and beat Negroes and terrified young girls" (89) - slightly revised to "fought and drank and gambled and beat up Negroes and terrified women and young girls" in the novel (328). |
|
3351 | Unnamed Members of Byron Society |
Byron Societies were originally literary groups that met to read and discuss the works of George Gordon, Lord Byron. By the time of The Town, the Jefferson version of the Byron Society was essentially a social club for upper and middle class women. Like the Cotillion Club, membership in the Society confers social prestige. |
|
2126 | Unnamed Member of the Posse |
When the men chasing Christmas in Light in August are led by the dogs to the Negro woman "wearing a pair of man's shoes," one "member of the posse" identifies the shoes as the fugitive's (329). |
|
3738 | Unnamed McCaslin Slaves 2 |
In The Reivers Lucius Priest tells his grandson (also named Lucius Priest) that when their common ancestor Lucius McCaslin came to Mississippi in 1813, he brought "his slaves and foxhounds" with him "across the mountains from Carolina" (61). Presumably one of these enslaved people is the grandmother of Ned McCaslin, who has her own Character entry; otherwise this novel says nothing more about these people. More about some of them, at least, can be found in Faulkner's earlier novel, Go Down, Moses. |
|
424 | Unnamed Mayor 2 |
The mayor of Jefferson is mentioned in "Uncle Willy," though not named or seen, when the women who live in Willy's neighborhood march with their children toward his office to complain about the woman whom Willy has married and brought home from a brothel in Memphis. |
|
412 | Unnamed Mayor 1 |
One of the three town mayors in "A Rose for Emily," and the only one without a name, this man takes office in the early 20th century, and seems much less chivalrous than his 19th-century predecessor, Colonel Sartoris, who treats Emily as a lady who should not be bothered about financial matters . This new mayor sees her first and foremost as a tax-payer, though he is chivalrous enough to offer "to send his car" to bring her to the town's offices to pay her long-overdue property tax (120). |
|
2125 | Unnamed Matron of Memphis Orphanage |
In Light in August the matron of the (all-white) orphanage in Memphis is "past fifty, flabby faced, with weak, kind, frustrated eyes" (133). When she hears that Joe Christmas is being called a Negro, she decides to place him with a family as quickly as possible. She seems to have the child's interests at heart, both in making sure Christmas doesn't have to go to the "colored" orphanage, and in keeping the rumors about his race from McEachern, the white man who adopts him. |
|
118 | Unnamed Maternal Uncle of Issetibbeha |
In "Red Leaves" the "son and brother" of the well-to-do family of Issetibbeha's mother presumably also has some "Negro blood," as she does (321). But his behavior links him to the upper class: after Doom gets his sister pregnant, he seeks him out "with a pistol" (318) to avenge the family's honor. Years later, however, as the "maternal uncle" of the child she bears, this brother "conducts" Doom on a trip abroad, to Paris and elsewhere in Europe (320). |
|
3323 | Unnamed Masons in Frenchman's Bend |
Uncle Billy's Frenchman's Bend Masons are in charge of Eck Snopes' funeral in The Town. (The first American chapters of the social order known as Freemasonry were organized in Pennsylvania in the early 18th century. Many of the Founders of the Revolutionary era were Freemasons, which is why the U.S. dollar includes masonic symbolism. Not long after the Revolution ended there were 'lodges' in all the states, but I confess it's surprising to think that such a small and impoverished place as Frenchman's Bend had its own chapter.) |
|
2853 | Unnamed Marshals of Napoleon |
"Napoleon's marshals," otherwise known as the Marshals of the Empire, are characterized in "Appendix Compson" as a "glittering galaxy of knightly blackguards" (325). Napoleon reinstated the rank of marshal, the highest military rank in France, in 1804, and appointed 26 marshals, 18 of them in one month. These men were notable for reflecting his own preferences, rather than for having reached a given level of accomplishment. Nearly all lived luxurious lifestyles, at least in part due to their newly elevated status. |
|
1121 | Unnamed Marshal 3 |
In Requiem for a Nun, Jailor Tubbs refers to the man whose job it is to arrest "drunks and gamblers" only as "the Marshal" (209). In Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions the "marshal" is a peace officer whose jurisdiction is the town of Jefferson. |
|
1120 | Unnamed Marshal 2 |
In "Uncle Willy" the marshal helps Uncle Willy's self-appointed guardians try to control him. In Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions the "marshal" is a peace officer whose jurisdiction is the town of Jefferson. |
|
589 | Unnamed Marshal 1 |
In "That Evening Sun" the marshal, Jefferson's main police officer, arrests Nancy and accompanies her to jail. On the way, he stops - but does not arrest - Mr. Stovall after he kicks Nancy in the mouth, knocking out her teeth. |
|
1860 | Unnamed Married Woman 2 |
According to Miss Reba in Sanctuary, among the women who have sought attention from Popeye over the years is "a little married woman" who "offered Minnie twenty-five dollars just to get him into the room" (145). |
|
730 | Unnamed Married Woman 1 |
In As I Lay Dying, both Cash and Darl believe that sex is the reason Jewel sneaks out every night, and each tries to imagine whom he is "rutting" with (131). Cash believes she must be "a married woman somewhere," because of the sexual "daring and staying power" she seems capable of (132). (It turns out, as Cash says later, that "it aint a woman" at all, 133.) |
|
3483 | Unnamed Married Couple |
This married couple gives Goodyhay and Mink a ride to the chapel in The Mansion; the car they drive is "hard-used and a little battered" (304). |
|
2649 | Unnamed Marriage Witnesses |
At Mink Snopes' wedding in The Hamlet, these "two passing men" - men who happen to be walking past the office of the Justice of the Peace - are called in to witness the ceremony (264). |
|
1564 | Unnamed Marine Private |
In Flags in the Dust the insignia on this marine's uniform identifies him as belonging to the Second Marine Division, which saw heavy combat during World War I; he expresses his contempt for Horace's Y.M.C.A. uniform, which marks him as a non-combatant, by "making a vulgar sound of derogation" and spitting, "not exactly at Horace's feet, and not exactly anywhere else" (158-59). |
|
3524 | Unnamed Marine |
In The Mansion Dad mentions this "mama's boy" when he tells Mink about Goodyhay's experiences during World War II. According to him, during a landing on a Japanese-held island, this Marine got "scared or tangled up in something" while under attack and had to be rescued by Goodyhay (295). |
|
588 | Unnamed Marauders |
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). |
|
2425 | Unnamed Man with Dogs |
Since Sutpen believes that his "guests" will expect him to use "dogs" (rather than his slaves) to track down the escaped architect in Absalom!, this is the "man with the dogs" (178). |
|
2124 | Unnamed Man with Candy |
This is the man in Light in August who sells Joe Christmas the "stale and flyspecked box of candy" he had won "for ten cents on a punching board in a store" (191). |
|
2599 | Unnamed Man with Broken Wagon |
On Eck's first day alone in the blacksmith shop in The Hamlet, this man brings in his "wagon with a broken hound" for repair (72). The "hound" in question is part of the wagon's frame, rather than a dog. |
|
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. |
|
3636 | Unnamed Man Who Steadies Max |
In "Knight's Gambit" this man "grabs Max" to prevent his loss of control during his fencing "lesson" with Sebastian Gualdres (190). |
|
3373 | Unnamed Man Who Questions I.O. Snopes |
When I.O. blunders in The Town by saying "I reckon it's a few things I could tell a jury myself about - ," this unnamed man asks him, "Tell the jury about what?" (253). |
|
2598 | Unnamed Man Who Gives Directions |
In The Hamlet Ratliff asks this man in Columbia, Tennessee, about "the whereabouts of his [Ratliff's] cousin," and sells him a sewing machine (61). |
|
2123 | Unnamed Man Who Finds Hightower |
This is the "man" in Light in August who finds Hightower in the woods about a mile from town, tied to a tree and beaten unconscious (72). |
|
2424 | Unnamed Man Who Buys Store |
In Absalom!, Judith Sutpen finds a buyer for the crossroads store about a year after her father's death. The man himself never appears in the novel, but the money he pays her is used to buy at least one and possibly two of the tombstones in the Sutpen's graveyard. |
|
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. |
|
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. |
|
1856 | Unnamed Man outside Reba's 2 |
In Sanctuary Temple sees "a man in a cap" twice when she leaves Miss Reba's to make a phone call (228). The first time he is "standing in a door[way]" (228), and it seems fairly certain (without being made explicit) that he is a confederate of Popeye who is there to keep an eye on her. |
|
1857 | Unnamed Man outside Reba's 1 |
Standing outside Miss Reba's brothel in Sanctuary, Virgil and Fonzo see this man get out of a taxi with a "plump blonde woman" (192). The couple's behavior outside the door causes Fonzo to suck in his breath, and Virgil to assume that they must be married, but while the narrator never says so explicitly, it's clear enough that she is a prostitute and he is one of her customers. He leaves in the taxi after dropping her off at the house. |
|
1339 | Unnamed Man outside Mottson |
The man lives at the place outside Mottson where the Bundren’s stop to mix cement for Cash's leg in As I Lay Dying. He loans them a bucket, but after smelling the corpse they are carrying retreats to watch them from his porch. |
|
2423 | Unnamed Man or Two |
In Absalom! Sutpen hires Wash Jones and "another man or two" to help in his post-war effort to restore Sutpen's Hundred to its pre-war status (130). Rosa identifies them as "men like Jones" (134). |
|
2122 | Unnamed Man Killed by Calvin Burden |
All Light in August says about this man is that he was killed in St. Louis by Calvin Burden I "in an argument about slavery" (242) - though since Calvin is a fierce abolitionist, we can assume this man is pro-slavery. |
|
3804 | Unnamed Man in Texas |
This is the Texan with whom Anse McCallum traded fourteen rifle cartridges for two of the same kind of horses that appear in The Hamlet. The man also tried to trade four more horses for a rifle, but Anse refused. |
|
1859 | Unnamed Man in Shirt Sleeves |
In Sanctuary Horace sees but cannot overhear this "gesticulant" man in "his shirt sleeves" haranguing the crowd that gathers in front of the jail after Lee Goodwin is convicted (293). While it seems certain that he is inciting them to violence against Lee, the crowd remains "quite orderly" after he finishes "talking himself out" (293). |
|
2939 | Unnamed Man in Nightshirt |
In Intruder in the Dust Chick's fantasy of Miss Habersham's long drive through the counties around Yoknapatawpha climaxes when, along a lonely country road, she is confronted by "a man in his nightshirt and unlaced shoes, carrying a lantern," who asks her where she's trying to go (185). |
|
1700 | Unnamed Man in Mottson |
In The Sound and the Fury, when this man "comes along" the sidewalk outside the closed Mottson drugstore, Jason asks him if there's a "drugstore open anywhere" and when "the northbound train" runs (312). |
|
2938 | Unnamed Man in Mob 4 |
This is "the fourth" of the four men in the mob outside the jail who speak to Sheriff Hampton on Monday morning in Intruder in the Dust. He is wearing either a "felt hat" or a "sweat-stained panama," but is not described, except as one of the "massed duplicates" of the first man, who has "brown farmer's hands" and a "brown weathered face" (137). |
|
2937 | Unnamed Man in Mob 3 |
This is "the third" of the four men in the mob outside the jail who speak to Sheriff Hampton on Monday morning in Intruder in the Dust. He is wearing either a "felt hat" or a "sweat-stained panama," but is not described, except as one of the "massed duplicates" of the first man, who has "brown farmer's hands" and a "brown weathered face" (137). |
|
2936 | Unnamed Man in Mob 2 |
This is "the second" of the four men in the mob outside the jail who speak to Sheriff Hampton on Monday morning in Intruder in the Dust. He is wearing either a "felt hat" or a "sweat-stained panama," but is not described, except as one of the "massed duplicates" of the first man, who has "brown farmer's hands" and a "brown weathered face" (137). |
|
2935 | Unnamed Man in Mob 1 |
This is one of the four men in the mob outside the jail who speak to Sheriff Hampton on Monday morning in Intruder in the Dust. This first man is vividly described with "his brown farmer's hands" and "his brown weathered face," "curious divinant and abashless" (137). |
|
2354 | Unnamed Man in Memphis Station |
In "Lion" and again in Go Down, Moses this "man in uniform" (the story, 188) or "man in a uniform cap" (the novel, 222) approaches Boon in the washroom at the station in Memphis to tell him he he can't drink there, but in both texts, after looking "at Boon's face," he decides to say nothing. The cap suggests he may be a porter, in which case he'd be a Negro, but that isn't made explicit. |
|
1696 | Unnamed Man in Livery Stable |
This man in The Sound and the Fury tells Quentin that the marshal is not there, and that he doesn't recognize the little girl with Quentin: "Them furriners. I cant tell one from another" (130). But he does point Quentin toward the district where those 'foreigners' live. |
|
2934 | Unnamed Man in Car |
In Intruder in the Dust we only hear the voice of this "young man" in the car that circles the Square on Sunday night: "no words, not even a shout: a squall significant and meaningless" (48). |
|
1753 | Unnamed Man in Barber Shop |
This is one of the barber shop clients in "Dry September" who debate whether to take vigilante action against Will Mayes. Unlike the "drummer" and the client who "had been a soldier" (172), he is not individualized in any particular way. Although he worries that the other men are talking too loudly, he goes along with them on the lynching. |
|
3215 | Unnamed Man from Vicksburg Roadhouse |
The narrator of "Race at Morning" calls the man with whom his mother ran off "two years ago" a "Vicksburg roadhouse feller" (307). "Roadhouse" is a dialect term for an inn or tavern on the side of a road. This man may have worked there, or perhaps the phrase just means the roadhouse is where he and "maw" met (307). |
|
1617 | Unnamed Man Driving Wagon |
In Flags in the Dust this "white man" has just turned his mule-drawn wagon into the lane that leads to the livery stable when Bryon and the stallion rush toward him (130). |
|
1551 | Unnamed Man Driving Ford |
More a symbol of modernity than a character in Flags in the Dust, this man is driving badly and wearing "a woman's stocking wrapped about his head and tied beneath his hat" when he swerves into the path of Young Bayard's car, causing the accident in which Old Bayard dies (326). |
|
2095 | Unnamed Man at Vinson's Tavern |
In "Miss Zilphia Gant," the "oldish" man in "in the background" at the tavern where Gant stays is vividly described as a drunkard "with cunning reddish pig's eyes and matted hair which lent a kind of ferocity to the weak face which they concealed," but beyond that his place in the narrative remains vague (368). It's likely that he is Mrs. Vinson's husband or father, but all the text says about their relationship is that they are occasionally heard "cursing one another in the back" of the tavern (369). |
|
1697 | Unnamed Man at Pump |
In The Sound and the Fury Quentin notices this man "filling a pail" with water from the pump where Shreve is helping him wash his face (165). |
|
1858 | Unnamed Man at Party |
Little Belle is at a "house party" somewhere when Horace calls her at the end of Sanctuary (299), with someone whom readers only hear, as a "masculine voice" who interrupts Belle to try to tell Horace something before Belle "hushes" him (300). |
|
2121 | Unnamed Man at Max's |
This is the "second man" who is at Max's house when Joe arrives there looking for Bobbie in Light in August; Joe had "never seen" him before, but he is obviously a kind of partner in Max and Mame's prostitution racket (214). He certainly dresses the part of a gangster from this era: "His hat was tipped forward so that the shadow of the brim fell across his mouth" (214). He assists Max and Mame's hasty departure from town. He beats Joe into insensibility. |
|
3737 | Unnamed Man at Hell Creek Bottom |
The Reivers doesn't provide much detail about the unscrupulous man who cultivates a patch of mud in order to sell his services to mired automobile travelers. Physically he is "a gaunt man, older than we - I anyway - had assumed" (86). |
|
2500 | Unnamed Man at Gas Station 2 |
In "Monk" there are two unnamed men present when Monk is found holding a pistol beside a man who has been shot. This is the man who did not do the killing - though of course he becomes an accomplice when he refuses to tell the truth about who did do the killing. |
|
2499 | Unnamed Man at Gas Station 1 |
In "Monk" there are two unnamed men present when Monk is found with a pistol in his hand beside the man who has been shot. This is the one who, five years later, confesses on his deathbed "that he had fired the shot and thrust the pistol into Monk's hand, telling Monk to look at what he had done" (49). |
|
1699 | Unnamed Man at Compson House |
In The Sound and the Fury Benjy remembers seeing "a head come out" of the room where "Father was sick" (34). "It wasn't Father," he knows - though he doesn't know his father has just died - but someone Benjy has not seen before. He seems to be taking charge when he tells T.P. to take Benjy "out of the house," which suggests he might be a doctor (34). |
|
2422 | Unnamed Man at Church |
In Absalom!, this man - whom Rosa calls a "fool" (17) - tries to stop Sutpen's coachman from beating the horses. |
|
3056 | Unnamed Male Relatives of Girl in Car |
In her "terror and . . . ratlike desperation," the girl riding in the car that Christmas flags down in Light in August tries to defend herself against him with the threat of her "pappy and brothers" who live "right up yonder!" (285). She seems too frightened to be making them up. |
|
3523 | Unnamed Mail Clerk |
In his speculations in The Mansion about the source of the anonymous letter accusing Linda of being a Communist, Gavin imagines and then dismisses this "mail clerk" at Parchman as a possible source of information, assuming anyone in that position would probably not be very competent at keeping track of the mail (269). |
|
1114 | Unnamed Mail Carrier 6 |
It's likely that in The Mansion "the mail carrier" (33) and "the mail rider" (140) who deliver the mail to Frenchman's Bend are the same unnamed person. As the "rider" he delivers a "special wrote-out private message" from Hoke McCarron to Eula Varner (140). As the "carrier," he also gives Mink a ride to Jefferson, until he kicks Mink off the wagon for accusing him of stealing his five-dollar bill (33). |
|
1119 | Unnamed Mail Carrier 5 |
In his hypothetical account of Flem's trip back to Frenchman's Bend in The Town, Gavin mentions why he could not ride with the "mail carrier," who takes passengers there "for a dollar" (305). Like other rural areas, Yoknapatawpha's Rural Free Delivery network employed multiple mailmen; this "carrier" is probably not the same person as the mail "rider" to delivers the mail to Whiteleaf and also charges a dollar for other services (176). |
|
1118 | Unnamed Mail Carrier 4 |
In The Town this mail rider delivers "a dollar's worth of furnish every Saturday morning" to Grover Cleveland Winbush's mother - that is, a dollar's worth of food staples (176). (Working for the Rural Free Delivery program, mail carriers distributed mail from central post offices in towns like Jefferson to the people who lived in the surrounding countryside.) |
|
1115 | Unnamed Mail Carrier 3 |
"By the People" notes that symbolically "now," because farm families made so many of their purchases by mail, the "R.F.D. carrier" is "by proxy tailor and seamstress to rural America" (87). ("R[ural] F[ree] D[elivery]" brought mail directly to Americans who lived in the countryside, away from post offices. According to Wikipedia, the service began in Mississippi in 1901.) |
|
1116 | Unnamed Mail Carrier 2 |
When Charles Mallison passes through Jefferson at the start of World War II in "Knight's Gambit," he thinks how soon newspapers delivered by the "RFD carrier" report the news of the local young men who have been killed in the fighting (251). The federal "R[ural] F[ree] D[elivery]" system brought mail directly to Americans who lived in the countryside, away from post offices. |
|
1117 | Unnamed Mail Carrier 1 |
In "Shall Not Perish," the Griers' mail is delivered by a "carrier" who drives a car or truck (101). This service was known as "Rural Free Delivery." |