Character Keys

These are the six slaves won by Doom in "A Justice" during the steamboat trip back from New Orleans. Two of them, a wife and a husband, play major roles in the story and have their own character entries.

In The Mansion, the first man inside the Baptist church every Sunday morning is "the Negro that fired the furnace" (63).

In Light in August a second "word-of-mouth messenger" brings news of Nathaniel Burden from Old Mexico to the Burdens living somewhere west of St. Louis in 1863. The messenger himself is "going east to Indianny for a spell" (245), so presumably that is where he is from.

In Go Down, Moses a growing number of local men join the hunters at Major de Spain’s camp to see Lion hunt down Old Ben. The men have a stake in the hunt: they “had fed Old Ben corn and shoats and even calves for ten years” (224). They are described as “in their own hats and hunting coats and overalls which any town negro would have thrown away or burned and only the rubber boots strong and sound, and the worn and blueless guns and some even without guns” (224).

The first of the two Negroes who cook for Hightower in Light in August is a woman who is described as a "high brown" (72). She quits after Mrs. Hightower's suicide, when her presence as a woman in his house makes her and Reverend Hightower vulnerable to gossip and vigilante violence (72).

These are the men in Flags in the Dust who stay at the Beard Hotel; they come to Jefferson for various reasons: traveling salesmen, jurors from out of town, weather-stranded countrymen, even two "town young bloods" who keep a room as a place for gambling. Besides Byron Snopes, some - bachelors identified as "clerks, mechanics and such" - live there more permanently (104).

In Flags in the Dust "a negro lad" serves a car that pulls up to the curb outside the drugstore (274). Presumably he fetches something from the soda fountain inside the store, but that is not specified.

When Faulkner returned to the Compson story in the "Appendix" he wrote in 1946, he has Caddy marry again a decade after the collapse of her first marriage. All we know about the unnamed man she marries in Hollywood in 1920 is that he is a "minor movingpicture magnate"; she gets a divorce from him in Mexico in 1925 (332).

For most of Intruder in the Dust the town streets are thronged with people, mostly men, who anticipate the lynching as a kind of drama. It's not clear how many of the men in this mob are residents of Jefferson, rather than country people who've driven into town. At one point, however, the narrator describes the newer residents of Jefferson as a group. They are "prosperous young married couples" with "two children each" and "an automobile" and "memberships in the country club and the bridge clubs and the junior rotary" (118).

In The Mansion this is the policeman who drives Mink out of the train station in Memphis; he is "not in uniform," and much more aggressive than the policeman who drove Mink out of the park (318).

In the fantasies that Ratliff has in The Mansion about how Gavin could be freed from his obsession with Eula's daughter, he speculates that "maybe" Kohl could catch Linda "unawares" and be married to her by a "j.p." (J.P, short for Justice of the Peace, is usually capitalized.)

Although he is not specifically mentioned in The Reivers, the "jailor" in the county sheriff's office in Hardwick can be inferred from the number of times the cells are locked and unlocked while Boon is there (270). The "jailor's wife," on the other hand, is mentioned, though not named (270). (According to the "Corrected Texts" that Noel Polk edited for Vintage International, Faulkner spelled "jailer" with an 'e' in "That Evening Sun," Intruder in the Dust, "An Error in Chemistry" and Requiem for a Nun but with an 'o' in "Monk" and The Reivers.

Intruder in the Dust includes a romantic vignette about the daughter of the man who was the county jailer in 1864. Struck by the appearance of a "ragged unshaven lieutenant" who is leading a defeated Confederate unit past the jail, this "young girl of that time" writes her name with a diamond in "one of the panes of the fanlight beside the door"; "six months later" they are married (49). (This story is told more fully, and shifted to the beginning of the Civil War, in Requiem for a Nun, 1951. There the daughter is named Cecelia Farmer.)

In The Hamlet Cliff Odum helps Mrs. Snopes get the milk separator in Jefferson.

Just before the young woman enters the tent at the end of "Delta Autumn," Ike McCaslin sees, "sitting in the stern" of the boat that brought her to the camp, "a Negro man" (277). The boat is his, and he is the woman's "cousin," though unlike his, her race is not immediately apparent (278). (When Faulkner revised the story for Go Down, Moses, he made the young woman the granddaughter of James Beauchamp, and so made this cousin part of the extended McCaslin-Beauchamp-Edmonds family. For that reason we have a separate entry for him in the database.

In the magazine version of "Delta Autumn," this woman lives in Vicksburg with her family, and was willing to take in her niece after her father's death. When this niece tells Ike McCaslin that her aunt "took in washing," he suddenly realizes the racial nature of the "effluvium" her niece brings with her (278, 277). In the Yoknapatawpha fictions, the women who wash clothes are always Negroes.

The father of the unnamed Negro who marries Fonsiba is only mentioned in passing in Go Down, Moses, but occupies a significant place in the Yoknapatawpha fiction as an African American who served in the Union army. There were in historical fact almost 180,000 'Colored troops' during the Civil War, serving in both non-combat and combat roles, but until recently these men were largely invisible in American representations of that war. This man is the only black "Yankee" soldier in Faulkner's work (261).

This man, identified in As I Lay Dying only as "the white man" (229), nearly gets into a fight with Jewel after Jewel, mistakenly believing he was the person who commented on the smell of Addie’s coffin, swears and throws a wild punch. In response, the man pulls out "an open knife" - but Darl gets him to put it up after Jewel "takes back" what he said (230).

In As I Lay Dying, Vardaman imagines that he can jump from the porch to the barn "like the pink lady in the circus" (54) - an acrobat he has presumably seen at a show in town in the past.

When Vernon Tull arrives at the Bundren house the day after Addie’s death in As I Lay Dying, he finds "about a dozen wagons was already there" (85). These belong to the group of neighbors who attend Addie’s funeral. Before the service they divide themselves into female and male groups: the "womenfolks" wait inside the house while "the men stop on the porch, talking some, not looking at one another" or "sit and squat" a "little piece from the house" (87). When "the women begin to sing," the men move into the house (91).

As the Bundrens enter Jefferson from the south in As I Lay Dying, they pass "negro cabins" along the road (229). As the wagon passes a group of "three negroes" walking on the road, they react with "that expression of shock and instinctive outrage" that has accompanied the Bundrens along their route (229). When one of the men in this group exclaims "Great God . . . what they got in that wagon?" Jewel is incensed (229).

In As I Lay Dying, the marshal of Mottson argues with Anse to get him to move the stinking coffin out of town.

In As I Lay Dying this man owned a drugstore in Jefferson and was also the "pre-1865 owner" of the enslaved man called "Uncle Pete" Gombault (191).

The "mammy" that Vernon Tull speaks of in As I Lay Dying is his biological mother - not a black caregiver or wet nurse, as would be the case with a 'mammy' in an upper class white Yoknapatawpha family. Vernon thinks of her in reference to the hard lot women have in life: she "lived to be seventy and more" having worked everyday of her life and never having been sick (30). At the end of that life she puts on "that lace-trimmed night gown she had had for forty-five years and never wore," lays down, and tells her family "I'm tired" (30).

In As I Lay Dying, Vernon Tull mentions the "last chap" his mother had as he recounts his mother's long life and death (30). That wording implies he had more than one sibling, but there is no way to say how many more.

In As I Lay Dying, both Darl and Cash believe that sex is the reason their brother Jewel sneaks out every night, and each tries to imagine whom he is "rutting" with (131). Darl thinks she is a "girl" he probably knows, but can't "say for sure" which one (132). (It turns out, as Cash says later, that "it aint a woman" at all, 133.)

The man who was Addie Bundren's father is mentioned in only two paragraphs in As I Lay Dying. We learn from several sources that Addie's "people" lived in Jefferson (171), though we are not given any idea where or what their family name was. We are also told that by the time she meets Anse Bundren, all Addie's family are now buried "in the cemetery" in town (171). Her father is the one member of this family who is individuated, though he exists in the novel only as a voice that she remembers saying "that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead" a long time (175).

This is the woman in As I Lay Dying who was going to have a party for which Cora made cakes; when she calls off the party, Cora is left holding the cakes. Cora's daughter Kate describes her, with some bitterness, as one of "those rich town ladies [who] can change their minds," though we have no direct evidence about her social status (7).

Moseley is the Mottson pharmacist who lectures Dewey Dell when she comes to his drug store seeking an abortion. He narrates one chapter in the novel and tells us that he is "a respectable druggist, that’s kept store and raised a family and been a church-member for fifty-six years" (202).

In As I Lay Dying Miss Lawington is the lady in Jefferson who tells Cora Tull about another lady who needs cakes for a party. The fact that the Tulls put "Miss" in front of her name suggests her higher class status (7).

Along with Skeets MacGowan, Jody works as a clerk in Jefferson's drugstore in As I Lay Dying. He serves as a lookout for MacGowan when he is seducing Dewey Dell.

In As I Lay Dying Gillespie is a farmer who lives between Mottson and Jefferson. He agrees to let the Bundrens stop for the night on his property, but when his barn burns down as a result he threatens to sue the family unless they have Darl committed to Jackson - the Mississippi state mental institution.

In As I Lay Dying the second "Mrs. Bundren" is a "duck-shaped woman" (260) from whom Anse borrows shovels to bury Addie and then - to the shock of his remaining children - marries the next morning.

In As I Lay Dying, Jewel is Addie's third - and favorite - child, illegitimately conceived with Reverend Whitfield. We know he is "a head taller than any of the rest" of the family (17), and the other narrators often reference his eyes to describe the intensity of his nature; they "look like pale wood in his high-blooded face" (17). While the Bundren family has always had mules, he worked hard to acquire a horse, which he rides with pride and skill. Throughout the narrative he is quietly, though violently, angry.

Cash is the first-born of Addie and Anse Bundren in As I Lay Dying. He is a good carpenter, who shows his devotion to his mother through his handiwork. He narrates five chapters which become increasingly more developed, beginning with a list of the reasons he made his mothers coffin on the bevel and ending with the final chapter of the novel in which he conveys the denouement of the story in a straightforward, matter of fact way. He is compulsive about his tools, and his narration shows him to be single–minded as he tends to frame everything in the terms of his craft.

In As I Lay Dying, Addie tells Anse Bundren before they marry that "I have people. In Jefferson" - adding when he worries about what such "town folks" will think of him, that "they're in the cemetery" (171). Supposedly re-uniting Addie with her deceased family is the reason for the Bundrens' trek to that same cemetery, but the novel never mentions them again - not even when the Bundrens do finally get to the cemetery.

In attendance at Ab Snopes' trial for burning a barn are a group of men from the neighborhood. The narrative only describes them (three times in two pages) as a set of "grim faces," but their hostility to Snopes is unmistakable (4-5).

Major de Spain's house servant in "Barn Burning" is "an old man with neat grizzled hair, in a linen jacket" (11). He tries to prevent Ab Snopes from entering the De Spain mansion, and then - unsuccessfully - orders Ab to "Wipe yo foots, white man, fo you come in here. Major ain't home nohow" (11). At the end of the story, when Sarty bursts into the mansion to warn Major de Spain, this house servant is the first person that he encounters.

While inside the general store at Ab Snopes' trial in "Barn Burning" are the "grim-faced men" (along with Ab's two sons), just outside on the porch are various "dogs" and this group of "half-grown boys" (5), with one of whom Sarty fights. (See Unnamed Heckler.)

The "men, blue or gray," who were Ab Snopes' adversaries during the Civil War (7). Faulkner's fictions usually distinguish Union from Confederate soldiers, but Ab's war-time activities often made that distinction irrelevant - he had to dodge soldiers in both armies on his private, self-serving missions as a horse thief.

Lizzie is the sister of Lennie Snopes, Abner's wife, who lives with the Snopes family in "Barn Burning." She and Lennie have a close relationship: on the night Ab sets out to burn down De Spain's barn, they "sit side by side on the bed, the aunt's arms around [Sarty's] mother's shoulders" (22). When Ab commands his wife to restrain Sarty to prevent him from warning De Spain, Lizzie sides against Ab, telling Lennie: "Let him go! . . . If he don't go, before God, I am going up there [to De Spain's] myself" (22).

In "A Rose for Emily," the wife of the Baptist minister takes it upon herself to write to summon Emily's Alabama kin.

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In each case it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs. "A Rose for Emily" brings the townspeople as a collection onstage in the story's very first sentence, where the narrator refers to "our whole town" (119).

This man is the character in "A Rose for Emily" who protests, "in diffident deprecation" (122), that the town must do something about the smell coming from the Grierson house.

In "A Rose for Emily," this crew of Negro men come from out of town to pave the town's sidewalks; the "singing" they do "in time to the rise and fall of the picks" [pick-axes] they swing is a source of entertainment to the town boys (124).

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.

Mentioned only once in "A Rose for Emily," the groups of "little boys" who follow Homer and his gang of construction workers as they pave the town's sidewalks are equally fascinated by the white man's profanity and the black men's singing (124).

These young ladies in "A Rose for Emily," the "daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries," are the students to whom Emily Grierson teaches the decorative art of "china-painting" (128).

In "A Rose for Emily," the town druggist reluctantly sells Emily the arsenic she demands. Like so many other men in the story, he seems unable to challenge a lady directly.