Character Keys

The oldest of the "three pickaninnies" who live with their parents in the lonely cabin where Young Bayard spends Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in Flags in the Dust; she wears "greasy, nondescript garments, her wool twisted into tight knots of soiled wisps of colored cloth" (364).

Driving out to the Caledonia cemetery on the Monday morning in Intruder in the Dust, Chick sees only a single Negro: a man plowing one of the fields along the road, "the face black and gleam[ing] with sweat and passionate with effort, tense concentrated and composed" (145). The white boy and the black man look "eye to eye into each other's face before the Negro looks away" (145).

In The Town young Bayard has to swerve his car to avoid hitting this "Negro family in a wagon" (124). (In Faulkner's first account of this accident, in Flags in the Dust, Bayard swerves to avoid a white man driving a Ford.)

Light in August does not make clear how many people are in the "negro church" that Christmas enters during his flight across the county, but "the congregation" includes the women who "shriek" at his abrupt entrance (one of whom identifies him as "the devil!" 322), the "deacons" who go up to him and try to talk with him (323), and the "men" who, believing that Christmas is white, hold back Pappy Thompson's grandson Roz to keep him from attacking Christmas after he has struck the seventy-year-old man down (323).

While their mothers are washing clothes in the branch, these "chillen," as Luster calls them in The Sound and the Fury, are playing in the water (14).

"Red Leaves" refers to the children of the slaves as "pickaninnies" twice: first when the servant sees them in the quarters, "naked in the dust" (328), and at the end, when he imagines the quarters and "the pickaninnies like ebony toys in the dust" (340).

As Ratliff puts it in The Mansion, the "Negro" whom Manfred de Spain hires to drive him as President of the bank wears a "white coat and a showfer's cap" (174).

In Sanctuary this driver gives Popeye's grandmother "half a dollar" after he interprets her demand for it as a new system for paying for groceries (306).

The Negro chauffeur in Flags in the Dust who offers to fetch Miss Jenny's driver Simon from the kitchen at the Mitchell house is "clad in army o.d. and a pair of linoleum putties" (30). ("O.d." is a military way of saying 'olive drab.')

Major de Spain's unnamed house servant is the only black character in "Shall Not Perish." Even though Mrs. Grier twice asks de Spain "what is your Negro's name?," and after the second question the Major actually "calls the name," the narrator never tells us what it is (109). The narrator does, however, note that the man moves "without making any more noise than a cat" when he takes away the pistol from the top of the coffin (109).

In The Mansion this "Negro boy on [a] bicycle" is the first person Mink sees when he finally reaches Jefferson (451). He gives Mink directions to Flem Snopes' place.

In Absalom! this is the "negro boy" who is playing with Bon's son "outside the gates" at Sutpen's when Clytemnestra drives him away (158).

In The Reivers this "Negro boy" at the McCaslin-Edmonds plantation holds the reins of Zack Edmonds' horse while Edmonds himself is in the house (62).

In the chapter titled "Was" in Go Down, Moses this enslaved boy on the Beauchamp plantation blows the fox horn announcing dinner time. Cass Edmonds thinks the boy is "about his size" (11).

This unnamed "Negro boy" is a slave owned by Doctor Holston in "My Grandmother Millard" (675).

According to Sanctuary, "at almost any hour of the twenty-four" Negroes "might be seen" entering the house of the "half-crazed white woman" who reputedly sells them "spells" - i.e. magic potions (200-01). Many of them arrive at her house in "a wagon or a buggy," suggesting that they live in the country, not the town.

In "Mule in the Yard" I.O. Snopes shoulders his way through this "throng of Negroes" at the grocery store (259).

In "Death Drag," "a Negro or two" are among the first people to reach the airplane after it lands at the town airport (186).

This man appears in Young Bayard's thoughts as he derides himself for running away after his grandfather's death in Flags in the Dust: "You made a nigger sneak your horse out to you" (333). The novel elides the event Bayard is remembering, so we don't know anything more about the man.

In "That Evening Sun" an unnamed and undescribed Negro tells Nancy that Jesus has returned from Memphis.

The narrator in "A Courtship" who tells the story of Ikkemotubbe, David Hogganbeck and Herman Basket's sister tells us very little about himself. It's highly likely that he is male, though that is not definitively said. He is an Indian: his use of "us" to refer to the Chickasaws and his reference to "my father's house" (369) locate him inside Issetibbeha's tribe, as does his diction, for example when he calls the helmsman on the steamboat the "boy slave who turned the wheel" (366) or uses "moons and moons" as a temporal reference (377).

At the end of "Smoke" the story's narrator identifies himself as a member of the grand jury that hears Gavin Stevens's explanation of Anse Holland and Judge Dunkenfield's murders ("we, the jury," 27). Hence, although we don't know his name, because Mississippi juries at this time were exclusively white and male, we do know his race and sex. He is recounting the events from "six months" after the murder of Old Anse (4), and therefore probably not long after the murder of Judge Dukinfield.

The narrator of "Hair" never gives us his name, but we do know he has a daughter and that he's from a town that's similar to the "North Mississippi and Alabama" (137) towns he visits as a salesman. After leaving his position as a bookkeeper for a bank, he took to the road selling a "line of work shirts and overalls" (137). He is curious about people, and what little he reveals about his opinions of their behavior suggests misogynistic thinking: "all women are born with the badness in them" (133).

The narrator of "Centaur in Brass" remains unnamed. (When Faulkner develops the episode in The Town, Chick Mallison retells the story as he heard it from his cousin Gowan.) This narrator, like that of "A Rose for Emily," refers to himself in the first-person plural, "we believed," "our ears," etc. (149, 150), and serves as a kind of communal voice for "our town" (149); but he also occupies a privileged narrative position as one of four people who know what the water tower means to Flem Snopes, "that it is his monument, or that it is a monument at all" (149).

The unnamed narrator of "Ad Astra" served during World War I as an American flying in a British squadron (408). In his only explicit references to himself, he talks about the "pleasant" but tense feeling that precedes the moment "in combat" when "you know something is about to happen" (421). Until the last pages of the story he remains a silent witness to the events, but he reports what the others say and do clearly and without bias.

While "Lawyer" Stevens and Sheriff Hampton seem to take charge of the events in Jefferson in Intruder in the Dust, the narrative does remind readers that the town and county have the usual elected officials. The out-of-town architect who wants to buy the jail door takes his request to "the mayor and the alderman and at last the board of supervisors" (54). And Hampton does say he got the mayor's permission to give the night marshal Monday night off (216).

In The Town these "folks are still going home from the second running of the picture show" when they see two strange men in Christian's drugstore (162).

Sitting in the Square in Intruder in the Dust, Chick watches the "crowd" of movie-goers exit the theater, "blinking into the light," "bringing back into the shabby earth a fading remnant of the heart's celluloid and derring dream" (33).

In Sanctuary Lee Goodwin's career as a soldier included service along the Mexican border and in the Philippines as a cavalry sergeant and, after doing time in Leavenworth for killing another soldier, as an infantry private in World War I. Sometime before the novel begins he has somehow made his way to Frenchman's Bend, where he lives in the Old Frenchman place with Ruby Lamar and their sickly infant, and earns his living making whiskey which he sells to locals and to the speakeasies of Memphis.

In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the moonshiner from whom Rider buys whiskey is described as "an unshaven white man" standing at the door of "a hut, a hovel" in the river swamp (246, 140). He is repeatedly referred to as "the white man" during the exchange with Rider. But he expresses concern about Rider's state of mind, and tries to "give" him a pint if Rider will give back the gallon he just bought for "four silver dollars" (246, 140).

In Light in August this is the fellow minister who takes the hymn book from Hightower and conducts Mrs. Hightower's funeral.

Through the window of her mother's shop in "Miss Zilphia Gant" Zilphia watches her former schoolmates "fall into inevitable pairs" - i.e. begin dating - and notes that some of them end up at "the minister or the church," i.e. getting married (374). She may be thinking of an actual "minister" or using the term figuratively.

In "All the Dead Pilots" the undescribed minister who officiated at Sartoris' funeral may have been a military chaplain.

In "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun this inhabitant of the settlement is sent to the "post-office-store" to "fetch the old Carolina lock from the latest Nashville mail-pouch" (202, 6).

In "That Will Be Fine" Georgie's mother theorizes that "most other men were prejudiced against Uncle Rodney, why she didn't know" (267).

These are the unnamed men in "An Error in Chemistry" who came to the narrator's grandfather's house to socialize and drink cold toddies.

In Light in August during the last year of his relationship with Joanna Joe goes "every week or so" to Memphis, "where he betrays her with other women, women bought for a price" (263).

On their way through the streets to the railroad depot the adventurers in The Reivers are questioned by a policeman who "knew Miss Corrie" and "apparently" Sam Caldwell as well (138). He lets them proceed without incident.

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.

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).

In Sanctuary the town's night marshal, who tries unsuccessfully to disperse the mob that has gathered to lynch Lee Goodwin, is identified by his accoutrements: "a broad pale hat, a flash light, a time clock and a pistol" (294).

In Intruder in the Dust Jefferson's night marshal is referred to only as the "nocturnal counterpart" of Willy Ingrum, the day marshal (206). To make sure residents can reach him, his office telephone is "connected to a big burglar alarm bell on the outside wall" (207).

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.

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).

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.)

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.

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).

In "Vendee" and again in The Unvanquished, what Bayard first sees as a "thing hanging over the middle of the road from a limb" is quickly and chillingly recognized as the body of "an old Negro man, with a rim of white hair and with his bare toes pointing down and his head on one side like he was thinking about something quiet" (111, 177). Grumby has apparently lynched him to serve as a graphic warning to the boys: pinned to his corpse is a badly written note telling them to "Turn back" (111, 177).

In Sanctuary the first Leavenworth lawyer whom Ruby hires to secure Lee's release from prison allows her to pay him with sex, but never tells her that he cannot do "anything for a federal prisoner" (277).