Character Keys

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Code title biography
1989 Durley

Durley is one of the men standing around on Mrs. Littlejohn's lot the evening of the auction in "Spotted Horses." He is the one who suggests that Ernest should track down Mrs. Armstid to tell her that her husband has been injured (177).

1988 Unnamed Young Girls 2

These young girls in "Hair" come "giggling down to the post office and soda fountain in the late afternoon" (141) to flirt with the young fellows.

1987 Unnamed Young Fellows

These young fellows in "Hair" are "loafers that pitch dollars all day long in the clubhouse yard" (141) while waiting to flirt with the young girls who walk by. ("Clubhouse" is almost surely a misprint for "court house"; see the Location entry for Courthouse Square in "Hair.")

1986 Unnamed People of Division

The people who live in the small hamlet of Division are one of the sources of information about the Starnes family that the narrator of "Hair" draws on. Once all the Starneses have died, these residents expect the Starnes' Alabama kin to claim the house. Division folks also note Hawkshaw's annual April visits to "clean up that empty house" (141), and in between they help themselves to the house's picket fence for firewood.

1985 Unnamed Brother-in-Law of Maxey

Maxey's brother-in-law in "Hair" owns a barber shop in Porterfield, Alabama. When he goes on vacation, Maxey takes his place at the shop.

1984 Unnamed Sexual Partners of Susan Reed

According to the narrator of "Hair," when Susan Reed became promiscuous, "she never drew any lines" - the males she went with included "schoolboys, married men, anybody" (135). None of these males appear directly in the story, but apparently everyone in town, except perhaps Hawkshaw, knows about them.

1983 Sophie Starnes

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).

1982 Will Starnes

In "Hair," Will Starnes is the father of Sophie, Henry Stribling's (Hawkshaw's) first fiancee. He owns a house and land, all mortgaged. Starnes is lazy - some people suggest he may have died because "he was too lazy to keep on breathing" - and unambitious, "satisfied to be a landowner as long as he had enough to eat and a little tobacco" (138). He does not object to Sophie's engagement to Stribling, whom Mrs. Starnes considers to be beneath them.

1981 Mrs. Will Starnes

Mrs. Starnes, mother of Sophie Starnes, becomes widowed after Will Starnes dies. He leaves her with a mortgage on the house in Division that Stribling (Hawkshaw) promises to pay off. Although the narrator refers the Starnes as "backwoods folks" (139), Mrs. Starnes believes her family's status is nonetheless superior to Stribling's (she calls him "one of these parveynoos" [140], i.e. parvenus). When she dies, Hawkshaw buys her headstone.

1980 Susan Reed

Susan Reed is an orphan who is taken care of by the Burchett family in "Hair"; possibly she is their niece or cousin, but the narrator hints that she may be the illegitimate child of either Mr. or Mrs. Burchett. We first encounter her as a "thin little girl," "about five" years old, with "big scared eyes," and "straight, soft hair, not blonde and not brunette" (131). Once she reaches adolescence, however, her innocent look disappears and she becomes promiscuous, with "flimsy off-color clothes" and a "face watchful and bold and discreet all at once" (135).

1979 Starneses in Alabama

In "Hair," the Starneses in Division have "kin" (140) elsewhere in Alabama. The storekeeper and other neighbors in Division wonder if these folks will claim the Starnes house after Mrs. Starnes' death.

1978 Matt Fox

The narrator of "Hair" says Matt Fox, a barber at Maxey's barber shop, "knew more about Hawkshaw than Maxey" (133), which surprises the narrator because Matt does not talk much. Matt is also married and described as a "fat, flabby fellow, with a pasty face and eyes that looked tired or sad something" (133). He is "funny" and "almost as good a barber as Hawkshaw" (133).

1977 Mitch Ewing

In "Hair" Mitch Ewing is one of the narrator's sources of information about Hawkshaw. Because of his job at the railroad station, Ewing knows that Hawkshaw buys a ticket every year to a "junction-point," a station from which "he can go to Memphis or Birmingham or New Orleans" (143). (He may be the same character as the young man named "Mitch" who drinks with Bayard Sartoris in Flags in the Dust.)

1976 Mrs. Cowan

Mrs. Cowan owns and runs the Jefferson boarding house where Hawkshaw and Mitch Ewing live in "Hair." She never appears directly in the story, but Matt Fox says that she's the only woman Hawkshaw knows.

1975 Burchett Children

In "Hair" the Burchett's have "two or three more children" of their own, in addition to Susan Reed, the one they adopted (131).

1974 Mrs. Burchett

Along with her husband, Mrs. Burchett is the guardian of Susan Reed in "Hair." The narrator repeats the local rumor that Susan may be her illegitimate child, but this is never confirmed. Mrs. Burchett seems to be more involved with Susan's care than Mr. Burchett. However, she easily succumbs to Susan's deceptions. According to the narrator, Mrs. Burchett doesn't know that when Susan becomes a teenager, she stops going to school and forges the report cards that Mrs. Burchett signs.

1973 Mr. Burchett

Mr. Burchett is the guardian of Susan Reed in "Hair." The story's narrator repeats the local rumors that Susan may be Mr. Burchett's illegitmate child, but this is never confirmed.

1972 Bidwell

In "Hair" Bidwell is the storekeeper in Division who has the key to the Starnes's house; he shows the narrator around it, and "opens the Bible" which records the mortgage payments Hawkshaw made (146).

1971 Unnamed Daughter of Narrator

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).

1970 Unnamed Subadar

At the time of the story, 'subadar' was a rank roughly equivalent to captain, given to Indian nationals who led Indian troops as part of the British armed forces. The subadar in "Ad Astra" identifies himself as a "prince" in India, "my country" (408). Before the War, Bland saw him deliver a speech in Oxford, England, a time when the subadar himself says "I was a white man also for that moment" (409). In France he is attached to a battalion of Indian soldiers who serve the British military, probably by relaying British orders to them.

1969 Unnamed President of France

The man the American M.P. in "Ad Astra" refers to simply as "your president" when he's arguing with the French officer is Raymond Poincare, who was President of France during World War I.

1968 Unnamed Poilus

The rioters at the Cloche-Clos in "Ad Astra" include these "three poilus" - i.e. French soldiers (423). "Poilu," originating in the word for "hairy," was a common name for French infantrymen in World War I, since many of them did not shave or get their hair cut.

1967 Unnamed Patronne

The patronne in "Ad Astra" is the manager and owner of the Cloche-Clos. An old woman who wears steel spectacles and knits, she thoroughly understands the threat posed to her business by the Allied aviators and their German prisoner. She loudly expresses her outrage that this German - whom she calls a "Boche!" (422) - has been brought into her bistro: "Eight months since the obus I have kept them in a box against this day: plates, cups, saucers, glasses, all that I have had since thirty years, all gone, broken at one time!

1966 Unnamed Military Mechanics

According to the narrator of "Ad Astra," two military mechanics were required to "shoehorn" the exceptionally large Comyn "into the cockpit of a Dolphin, like two chambermaids putting an emergency bolster into a case too large for it" (410). (The Sopwith Dolphin was one of the standard British fighter planes during the First World War.)

1965 Unnamed Indian Troops

The Indian subadar in "Ad Astra" refers to the colonial troops brought to Europe from India to fight for England during the First World War as "my people" (424). It needs to be said, however, that as they are described, they are not people so much as stereotypes, and the racial assumptions behind the stereotypes are clearly Faulkner's. The subadar also calls them "children" (425), who thought of the rifles they were issued as "spears" (424). When a "whole battalion" went into battle without loading those rifles, less than twenty survived (425).

1964 Unnamed German Husband

In "Ad Astra" the captured German aviator explains that one of his brothers was shot and killed by this resident of Berlin, presumably after the man discovered his wife's affair.

1963 Unnamed German Soldier

According to the captured German pilot in "Ad Astra," this unnamed soldier assassinates his brother Franz, a General serving on the army's general staff, in the revolutionary fighting that breaks out in Berlin at the end of World War I.

1962 Unnamed Son of Captured German Aviator

In "Ad Astra," because of the War, this young son of the captured German aviator, who lives in Bayreuth with his mother, has never seen his father.

1961 Unnamed Wife of Captured German Aviator

The wife of the German prisoner in "Ad Astra" is described by her husband as "the daughter of a musician who wass peasant" (418). While he is at war, she lives in Bayreuth with their son. She keeps her husband informed by letter of significant changes in the family.

1960 Unnamed Father-in-Law of German Prisoner

In "Ad Astra" the captured German aviator says his own aristocratic family profoundly disapproved when he told them "I haf married the daughter of a musician who was peasant" (418).

1959 Unnamed Captured German Aviator

Bandaged and "sick" in "Ad Astra," the German pilot whom Monaghan has shot down on the day Germany surrenders is nonetheless described as wearing the appearance of "a man who has conquered himself" (412). Born into a noble family in Prussia as the oldest of four brothers, he repudiated his hereditary title. He studies music at the university in Bayreuth, marries a woman beneath his privileged class, and fathers a child with her. Over time, however, the loss of each of his three younger brothers sends him back to military service.

1958 Unnamed German Patrol Leader

Apparently this aviator in "Ad Astra," whom the narrator refers to as the "Hun patrol leader," was the pilot who shot down Sartoris' brother's plane (414). He may in turn have been shot down by Sartoris; Hume says that Sartoris "must have got him" during the week he spends in the sky seeking to avenge his brother, but as the narrator says, "we didn't know" if the enemy pilot Sartoris shot down was the one he was after (414). (During the First World War, "Hun" was a derogatory term for the German enemy.)

1957 Unnamed Youngest Brother of German Prisoner

The youngest of four German brothers in "Ad Astra" flourishes in the German military service, beginning as a "cadet of dragoons" (417) and eventually becoming an aviator. When his eldest brother last sees him, he "iss now ace with iron cross by the kaiser's own hand" (419). In 1916, he is shot down by the Canadian air ace Bishop.

1956 Unnamed Twin Brother of Franz

In "Ad Astra" the third child of the German family (and a younger brother of the German prisoner) is the twin of Franz. He feels no obligation to serve his family, and according to his oldest brother, he "did nothing in Berlin" (417). Although he comes home to be assume the title of Baron, his brother continues: "he does not stay at home. In 1912 he iss in Berlin newspaper dead of a lady's husband" (418). It seems likely that the "lady" is this man's mistress.

1955 Unnamed German Lady

It seems apparent in "Ad Astra" that this Berlin woman is having an affair with one of the German prisoner's twin brothers; according to the captive, at least, in 1912 his brother is reported in the Berlin newspapers as "dead of a lady's husband" (418). This is the extent of her appearance in this story.

1954 Unnamed German Kaiser

The "kaiser" whom the German aviator refers to without naming in "Ad Astra" is Kaiser Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Victor Albert von Hohenzollern); he ruled Germany as emperor from June 1888 to November 9, 1918. On that date, having lost the support of the army, he abdicated, and fled the country a day later. The German prisoner says he does not serve "baron and kaiser" (418), but he is proud when his brother Franz is declared "ace iron cross by the kaiser's own hand" (419).

1953 Unnamed German Baroness

The mother of the German prisoner in "Ad Astra" is at times distant from her eldest son, because of her husband's disapproval. After her husband's death, she informs this son of developments within the family. Very shortly before the day of the story, she writes again to inform him that since his last living brother is dead, he must be assume the title of Baron after all.

1952 Unnamed German Baron

The father of the captured German aviator in "Ad Astra" is a nobleman - as the aviator puts it, "my people are of Prussia little barons" - who does not approve when his eldest son renounces the title of "baron" (417). The father dies during the War of natural causes.

1951 Unnamed German Aviators 1

This group is more like a casualty statistic than a character. The World War I aviators in "Ad Astra" keep track of their successes by counting each enemy plane they shoot down as a "Hun": thus Sartoris shoots down "three Huns" in his quest to avenge his brother's death (414), and Monaghan refers to the "thirteen Huns" he "got" (416). ("Hun" was the derogatory term the Allies used for their German opponents.)

1950 Unnamed Friends and Acquaintances of Monaghan

In "Ad Astra" Monaghan's father's wealth enables his son to attend Yale and to become acquainted with well-to-do people. The senior Monaghan charges his son to remind these "fine friends," these privileged individuals, that "every man is the slave of his own refuse" and that "your old dad," who made his money working with sewers, "is the king of them all" (415)

1949 Unnamed French Sergeant

In "Ad Astra" this sergeant accompanies the French officer when he confronts the aviators about bringing the German prisoner into the cafe.

1948 Unnamed French Officer

In the bistro in "Ad Astra," a French officer, "tall, with a gaunt, tragic face," implies that Monaghan and the military policeman should remove the German prisoner from the premises (422). The officer has a glass eye, probably as a result of the war; it is described as "motionless, rigid in a face that looked even deader than the spurious eye" (422).

1947 Unnamed French Customers in Cloche-Clos

The residents of Amiens who gather in the Cloche-Clos to celebrate the end of the War in "Ad Astra" had to endure great destruction and loss of life. They are "astonished" and "outraged" by the presence of a German aviator, even as a prisoner, in the bistro, and their resentment eventually boils over into violence (411).

1946 Unnamed King of Britain

The "damned king" of England in "Ad Astra" - whom Monaghan refers to contemptuously and whom the Irish Comyn denies is "his damned king" - was George V (416). King George V ruled the United Kingdom from 1910 to 1936. He was also Emperor of India during this period.

1945 Unnamed American Military Policeman

As an American military policeman (A.M.P.), this unnamed character in "Ad Astra" competes with Monaghan for control over the German prisoner. Mystified by the company of headstrong and independent aviators in which he finds himself, he insultingly asserts his authority over the French officer at the Cloche-Clos in Amiens, thus helping to bring on the riot. The French officer calls him a "devil-dog" - a World War I era slang term for a U.S. Marine (422).

1944 Unnamed Allied Aviator 3

This Allied aviator in "Ad Astra" helps Sartoris take revenge on the German pilot who shot down his brother by flying an out-moded airplane as the bait in Sartoris' trap. The narrator says "we" never knew who this aviator was (414).

1943 Unnamed Allied Aviator 2

This "somebody" is the pilot in "Ad Astra" who witnessed Sartoris "roosting about five thousand feet above an old Ack.W." - i.e. Sartoris is circling in his plane above a comrade flying a less maneuverable aircraft "for bait" to attract the German aviator who had shot down his brother (414). Ack.W. was military slang for a British World War I plane made by Armstrong Whitworth.

1942 Unnamed Allied Aviator 1

This character is "the other guy" in "Ad Astra" who was flying with Sartoris' brother when he was shot down (414). He is serving as a British aviator, presumably in the same "Camel squadron" as Sartoris, but given all the non-English aviators in the story, we cannot say where he was from (414). The Sopwith Camel was a standard single-seat British aircraft during World War I.

1941 Monaghan, Father of Buck

An immigrant to the U.S., Monaghan's father brags about his "Shanty Irish" origins, but at the time of "Ad Astra," he is a self-made millionaire who began his rise to wealth by collecting refuse and finally by building municipal sewage systems. Monaghan quotes him: "When you're with your fine friends, the fathers and mothers and sisters of them you met at Yale, ye might just remind them that every man is the slave of his own refuse and so your old dad they would be sending around to the forty-story back doors of their kitchens is the king of them all" (415).

1940 Monaghan, Grandfather of Buck

This is one of Faulkner's characters who are defined by absence and indeterminacy. In "Ad Astra," when the aviator Monaghan explains his "Shanty Irish" origins, he gives a memorable description of his father, but he cannot trace his ancestry before that: other than saying his father came "out of a peat bog," which suggests the Irish peasantry, Monaghan claims, "I don’t know what my grandfather was. I don’t know if I had one. My father don’t remember one. Likely it could have been one of several" (415).

1939 Hume

The character in "Ad Astra" named Hume is probably another Allied aviator, but in the story his role is to narrate the way Sartoris managed to avenge his brother's death.

1938 Franz

In "Ad Astra," Franz is the elder of a pair of twins who are younger brothers to the captured German officer. When his older brother refuses to become baron, Franz, as next in line, is passed over because he is already committed to the career of a military officer. Franz becomes baron designate when the younger twin is killed in Berlin by a jealous husband. Franz progresses through the ranks from colonel to "general of staff" (419), but near the end of the War is assassinated by a German soldier in Berlin.

1937 Das

The name "Das" is a common South Asian name, derived from Sanskrit. One of its meanings, however, is 'servant,' so it may be used by the subadar in "Ad Astra" not as a name but as a kind of title or label. In either case, this character is "the headman" who supervises the native military personnel; after the battalion's disastrous attack on German lines, he reluctantly admits to the subadar that his troops crossed No Man's Land with unloaded rifles, and almost their entire batallion was annihilated (425).

1936 Bishop 1

William Avery Bishop (1894-1956) led all Canadian aviators during World War I, being credited with shooting down 72 German planes. The captive German aviator of "Ad Astra" reports that one of his younger brothers, an ace pilot himself, "iss killed by your Bishop . . . that good man" (419).

1935 Unnamed Negro Laundresses 2

Quentin's narrative in "That Evening Sun" begins by evoking the "Negro women" who used to carry the clothes they had washed for their white customers in bundles on their heads (289); now they fetch and deliver it in automobiles or have lost their jobs to commercial laundry services.

1934 Unnamed Negro Husbands

In the old days described by Quentin's narrative in "That Evening Sun," the husbands of the town's Negro laundresses sometimes "fetch and deliver" the clothes their wives have washed (290).

1933 Unnamed Queen

This "queen" is the protagonist of the grim fairy tale that Nancy begins to tell the Compson children (302). Like Nancy, she "has to cross a ditch to get into her house quick and bar the door," but is afraid of the "bad man" who is hiding in the ditch (303). The question of the racial identity of these characters is not definitively answerable, but given how closely Nancy's tale is drawn from her own immediate life, it seems appropriate to make both the villain and the heroine of it black. This "queen" then is the only upper class Negro character in Faulkner's fiction.

1932 Unnamed Bad Man

This "bad man" is the antagonist of the story - a kind of grim fairy tale - that Nancy begins to tell the Compson children (302). The question of the racial identity of this man, and the "queen" who also appears in Nancy's unfinished story, is not definitively answerable, but given how closely Nancy's tale is drawn from her own immediate life, it seems appropriate to make both the villain and the heroine of it black.

1931 Mr. Lovelady

In "That Evening Sun," Nancy tells the Compson children that "I got my coffin money saved up with Mr. Lovelady" - or as Quentin's narrative explains, Mr. Lovelady is "a short, dirty man who collected the Negro insurance, coming around to the cabins or the kitchens every Saturday morning, to collect fifteen cents" toward a fund to pay for their funerals (308). He lives at the hotel with his wife and only daughter. Though he and his family occupy only part of a paragraph, the details of their story are provocative: Mrs. Lovelady commits suicide, and after leaving town with his daughter, Mr.

1930 Mrs. Lovelady

Mrs. Lovelady, the wife of the white man who collects insurance money from the local Negroes in "That Evening Sun," commits suicide "one morning" (308). Quentin's narrative gives no further account or explanation of that act.

1929 Daughter of Mr. Lovelady

Mr. Lovelady's daughter is mentioned in passing in "That Evening Sun." She is described as a "child, a little girl," who lives in the hotel with her father and mother (308). When her mother commits suicide, though, Lovelady "and the child went away" (308). He returns alone, and we learn nothing more about his child's fate.

1928 Aunt Rachel

Aunt Rachel never directly appears in "That Evening Sun." Quentin says she is "old," and lives in a cabin "by herself" near Nancy, smoking "a pipe in the door, all day long" (294). The "Aunt" in her name is clearly conventional, part of the way the Jim Crow culture stereotypes Negroes, but it's not clear whether she is "Jesus' mother": "Sometimes she said she was and sometimes she said she wasn't any kin to Jesus" (294). Quentin's father suggests Nancy could "go to Aunt Rachel's" for safety, but that doesn't happen (306).

1927 Unnamed Young Women in New York

During the First World War, Ruby worked in New York City, where according to her description in Sanctuary "even the little ratty girls [were] wearing silk," presumably as presents from all the "soldiers with money to spend" (278).

1926 Unnamed Negro Woman in Window

In Sanctuary, as Popeye and Temple drive along the street with Miss Reba's on it, they see on the "second storey gallery" of one of the "dingy" houses "a young negress in her underclothes" (142). Her undress and the location of the building suggest she is a prostitute, but that is not made definite.

1925 Unnamed Woman in Red Dress

Among the people attending Red's funeral in Sanctuary, this "woman in a red dress" deserves to be singled out. She plays a role that recurs in Faulkner's fiction: the agent of chaos. Just as the crowd "grows quiet" listening to the orchestra play a hymn, she enters "unsteadily"; her first word is "Whoopee" (245). Later, her demand that Joe "get that damn stiff out of here and open the [crap] game," accompanied by "a burst of filthy language" (248), sets off the violence that brings the funeral literally crashing to an end.

1924 Unnamed Woman in Grotto Club

While Temple is in the "washroom" of the Grotto club in Sanctuary, she and another woman "examine one another's clothes with brief, covert, cold, embracing glances" (233).

1923 Unnamed Woman in Alley

In Sanctuary Ruby tells Temple that she once gave away a fur coat "to a woman in an alley" (62). Ruby lived in many different places, so there's no way to tell what city the alley might be in - and the text provides no other information about the woman at all.

1922 Unnamed White People outside Jail

After describing the convincted "negro murderer" who sings spirituals from inside the jail and the "few negroes" who "gather along the fence" to sing with him (114), Sanctuary goes on to note the "white people" who "slow and stop" to listen (115).

1921 Unnamed Vaudeville Singers

In Sanctuary the "male quartet" hired for Red's funeral from "a vaudeville house" brings "the older women" to tears "singing mother songs" and "Sonny Boy" "in close harmony" (247).

1920 Unnamed University Men

Sanctuary provides a generic description of the male "students in the University" who date Temple on the weekends. They are characterized almost entirely in terms of their clothes - "hatless" even when outside, wearing "knickers and bright pull-overs," or at dances the formally clad "black collegiate arms" and pairs of "black sleeves" (29).

1919 Unnamed University Dean

The administrator in Sanctuary who puts Temple on academic probation "for slipping out at night," i.e. for dating on weeknights, is referred to simply as "the Dean" (57) - perhaps the Dean of Women Students.

1918 Unnamed American Soldier 1

This man appears in Sanctuary in the story Ruby tells at two different times, to Temple and and then later to Horace, about how when Lee was stationed in the Philippines he "killed another soldier" in a brawl over a local woman (59).

1917 Unnamed Alabama Jailer

After Popeye is convicted in Sanctuary, this "turnkey" shows considerable solicitude for him, buying cigarettes for him with the money Popeye gives him, but also sharing information about the murdered man and even, on the day of his execution, trying to give Popeye his change (312).

1916 Unnamed Tulane Student

In Sanctuary, as he tells the men at the Old Frenchman place about his troubles with Little Belle's behavior, Horace mentions a young man whom she apparently met on the train coming "home from school" four days before the novel begins (14). She defends her relationship with him by telling Horace that "he goes to Tulane" (14). Though Horace's objectivity on the subject of Little Belle is not to be trusted, this particular unnamed young man seems to be one of several or perhaps many whom she has brought home; Horace sums them up as "Louis or Paul or Whoever" (13).

1915 Unnamed Train Passengers 5

In Sanctuary Horace sees Clarence Snopes talking with "four men" in the smoker car on the train from Oxford to Holly Springs (175).

1914 Unnamed Train Passengers 3

In Sanctuary the only occupants of the waiting room at the train station when Horace gets there early in the morning are a couple. The man is characterized by the "overalls" he wears and the "rumpled coat" he carries (167). The woman wears a "calico dress," a "dingy shawl and a new hat" and carries both a parcel and "a straw suitcase" (167).

1913 Unnamed Official on Train

The "official" on the train in Sanctuary who "shakes his fist" at Temple for jumping off at Taylor may be the conductor, or perhaps a chaperone from the college (36).

1912 Unnamed Temporary Deputies

In Sanctuary there are "two temporary deputies" at the "entrance to the square" just before Lee is lynched, but although the implication is that they have been deputized to help keep order, they are nowhere to be seen when the lynching occurs (293).

1911 Unnamed Telegraph Operator 4

One of the two judges at the horse race in The Reivers is named "Ed" (260). We are assuming he is the judge who is first referred to only as "the night telegraph operator at the depot" (229), but it's just as possible that the first name of Mr. McDiarmid, the other judge, is Ed.

1910 Unnamed Telegraph Operator 3

In The Mansion the night telegraph operator lets Mink sleep in the station's waiting room.

1909 Unnamed Telephone Operator 3

The central office telephone operator - hence called "Central" in The Mansion, at one time a familiar way of referring to telephone operators (413) - who connects Ratliff's long-distance call from Parchman to Gavin Stevens in Jefferson.

1908 Unnamed Telephone Operator 2

One of the three people in Alabama who testify against Popeye at his trial for a murder he did not commit in Sanctuary is "a telephone girl" (311). We learn nothing about her or her testimony, or whether she is sincerely mistaken.

1907 Unnamed Telephone Operator 1

This telephone operator is heard in Sanctuary as "a detached Delsarte-ish voice" that informs Horace his call to Miss Reba has ended (268). (Francois Delsarte was a Frenchman whose instructions for proper pronunciation became famous at the end of the 19th century.)

1906 Unnamed Suitors of Little Belle

In Sanctuary Horace refers to the various young men who have been calling on his step-daughter Little Belle as "Louis or Paul or Whoever" (13). Horace seems to believe there have been many such suitors, "alert and a little impatient," sharing the hammock in the grape arbor with her in ways he finds very disconcerting (13-14), but Horace's ideas about Belle's sexuality are hardly reliable.

1905 Unnamed Store Clerks

In Sanctuary, in order to try to find out where Narcissa went after he sees her in "disappear into a door" in town, Horace asks all the clerks "within the radius of where she must have turned" if they've seen her (261).

1904 Unnamed Negro Station Porter

The "negro with a broom" in Sanctuary whom Gowan encounters when he wakes up in the Oxford train station is astonished at the young white man's disheveled appearance (35).

1903 Unnamed Spectators in Courtroom 1

Sanctuary describes the people who watch Lee Goodwin's trial from Horace's perspective as he enters the courtroom. From this point of view they are a collection of "heads": "bald heads, gray heads, shaggy heads and heads trimmed to recent feather-edge above sun-baked necks, oiled heads above urban collars and here and there a sunbonnet or a flowered hat" (281). The details suggest that the crowd is mostly male, but drawn from almost all the local social classes. There is, however, no suggestion that any of these people aren't white.

1902 Unnamed Shoppers in Pensacola

In Sanctuary the "customers" in the "self-service" Pensacola grocery store are seen "moving slowly along a railing in single file" (306).

1901 Unnamed Guests at Popeye's Birthday Party

In Sanctuary the people who attend the "children's party" that the wealthy woman in Pensacola holds for Popeye are referred to simply as "guests," and not described at all (309).

1900 Unnamed Rich Woman

In Sanctuary, the woman who owns the limousine in which Popeye's grandmother leaves him becomes a kind of godmother to the child, making sure Popeye gets medical attention and often bringing him "to her home in afternoons and for holidays" (308). The narrative does not explain her motives in trying to help, but does show how they come to grief when her attempt to give him a birthday party is defeated by his violent antisocial behavior. Even after Popeye is sent to "a home for incorrigible children" (309), this woman continues to help Popeye's mother support herself (309).

1899 Unnamed People in Oxford 2

Sanctuary refers generically to the various residents of Oxford who see Temple in the evenings, as she hurries to or from a date. The group includes "townspeople taking after-supper drives," "bemused faculty-members" and graduate students (28).

1898 Unnamed People in Downtown Memphis 1

Chapter 21 of Sanctuary describes the various people whom Virgil and Fonzo see in the train station and on the streets of Memphis when they arrive in the city. None are given any individuality, but they are identified as "a stream of people" who "jostle" the newcomers in the depot, where they are also beset by cabmen and a redcap, and, in the Hotel Gayoso and another, unnamed hotel, a porter, bellboys, and "people sitting among the potted plants" in hotel lobbies (188-90).

1897 Unnamed Residents of Memphis' Restricted District

Sanctuary describes the people who live in "the restricted district" of Memphis through which Red's funeral procession passes in terms of their "faces," which "peer from beneath lowered shades" as it goes by (249). While it is not absolutely clear what "restricted district" refers to, the point of this passage seems to be to juxtapose two worlds in Memphis: the underworld and the respectable (but intimidated) citizenry.

1896 Unnamed Post Office Clerk

The man who works as a clerk in the university branch of the post office in Sanctuary is described as "young," with a "dull face," "horn[-rimmed] glasses" and "meticulous" hair (171). He tells Horace that Temple Drake has quit school. (Less than a decade before he wrote Sanctuary Faulkner himself had been the clerk in this post office.)

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).

1894 Unnamed People outside Dumfries

As Popeye and Temple approach the town of Dumfries in Sanctuary, they begin seeing other people on the road, though the narrative refers to them in a complex series of phrases. In some cases it cites the means of transportation rather than the people: "pleasure cars Sunday-bent," "Fords and Chevrolets," "now and then a wagon or a buggy" (139). The only occupants specifically mentioned are "swathed women" in the "occasional larger car" and "wooden-faced country people" in trucks (139).

1893 Unnamed Negro Servant in Pensacola

In Sanctuary this servant works for the unnamed wealthy woman who befriends Popeye's mother. She is not specifically referred to as a Negro, but since nearly all the domestic servants in the fictions are black, we have chosen to identify her that way.

1892 Unnamed Pensacola Policeman

The policeman in Sanctuary from whom Popeye's grandmother asks for a match thinks her irrational statements (including the ominous "I bring down the house") are a deliberate effort at humor (307). He tells her three times that she "ought to be in vaudeville."

1891 Unnamed Patrons at the Grotto Club

These are the various dancers and gamblers "at the crap table" (237) who are at the Grotto club the night Popeye takes Temple there in Sanctuary. The dancers are summed up in the phrase about the "movement of feet, the voluptuous hysteria of muscles warming the scent of flesh, of the blood" (233).

1890 Unnamed Parisian Women

Santuary's final scene "in the Luxembourg Gardens" in Paris includes a brief reference to "women [who] sit knitting in shawls" (316).

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