Character Keys

The Chickasaw were one of several tribes that were displaced by President Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. In "Appendix Compson," Faulkner indicates the enduring consequences of that removal, referring to the Chickasaw people in Oklahoma as "the homeless descendants of the dispossessed" (326).

The officers of the law in Jason Compson IV's entry in "Appendix Compson" are described from the anxious perspective of his own criminality: when his niece takes the money he's been embezzling, he cannot turn to them for help recovering it without admitting more of his affairs than he cares to, and yet he chafes at paying for a police force that he characterizes as existing in "parasitic and sadistic idleness" (342).

The "dispossessed" king for whom in "Appendix Compson" the grandfather of the first Compson in Yoknapatawpha fought (325) is Charles Edward Stuart, who spent most of his life in exile but claimed to be the rightful king of Britain as part of the Jacobite line of Catholic monarchs. His hope of claiming the throne ended in 1746, when the Jacobites were defeated in a final battle in Scotland. Charles himself is perhaps best remembered for a romantic escape through the Scottish countryside after that loss.

"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.

The unnamed secessionists with whom Charles Stuart Compson is associated in "Appendix Compson" endeavored to "secede the whole Mississippi Valley from the United States and join it to Spain" (327). The plotters are headed by General James Wilkinson, whose real-life attempts to sell land to Spain were backed by a number of prominent Kentuckians.

There are two references in "Appendix Compson" to the slaves who lived in Yoknapatawpha before the Civil War. The term "slaves" appears only in reference to the "shiftless slaves" owned by the descendants of the Chickasaw tribe who remain in the region after the Indian Removal (329). But the Compson family, like the other "masters of plantations" in Yoknapatawpha, owned a number of slaves as well (328).

In Go Down, Moses Roscius (spelled "Roskus" by Buck McCaslin in the plantation ledger, 252) is one of the slaves that "Carothers McCaslin inherited" and brought with him to Yoknapatawpha from Carolina (249). He is the husband of Phoebe (spelled "Fibby" in the ledger, 252), and was like her manumitted when Old Carothers died in 1837. According to the ledger, despite being free he "Dont want to leave," and he remains on the plantation until his death four years later (252).

In "An Error in Chemistry" Bryan Ewell is a deputy sheriff whom the sheriff orders to guard Wesley Pritchel's house after Pritchel has locked himself in his room (122). (Bryan may be related to Walter Ewell, who appears in six other fictions, but there is no mention of any relationship.)

Joel Flint, the protean villain in "An Error in Chemistry," used to work in carnivals. At one point he was known as Signor Canova, a master of illusion. After abandoning the Canova persona, Flint started working in other circuses, serving as "bandsman, ringman, Bornean wild man" (134). Eventually, his role in traveling carnivals was as a pitch man with a "roulette wheel wired against imitation watches and pistols which would not shoot" (134).

The unnamed wife of Wesley Pritchel was the mother of four children. She is already dead when "An Error in Chemistry" begins.

In "An Error in Chemistry" a group of "archaeologists from the State University" dig up Native American relics from Pritchel's clay pit until he runs them off with a shotgun (119).

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.'

In "An Error in Chemistry" these three men from an unidentified place in the North want to buy Wesley Pritchel's farm in order to use the clay from the clay-pit to "manufacture some kind of road material" (119).

The character whom the narrator of "A Courtship" refers to twice as "old David Colbert" (365, 374) is presumably based on a real historical figure, Levi Colbert. The son of white father from North Carolina and a Chickasaw mother, he grew up among the Indians. Among the real Chickasaws (unlike Faulkner's) kinship was defined in matrilineal terms, and through his mother's lineage and his own accomplishments Colbert eventually became head chief of the Chickasaw nation - or as the story says about "David," "the chief Man of all the Chickasaws in our section" (365).

In "A Courtship," Log-in-the-Creek is the only one of the Chickasaw young men who does not stop courting Herman Basket's sister after Ikkemotubbe's interest in her becomes known. His unheroic name seems to fit his apparently negligible character: he cannot hold his liquor, and he "raced no horses and fought no cocks and cast no dice" (364).

Although his name evokes the way enslaved Negroes were often named, Sylvester's John is actually one of the young Chickasaw men who are interested in Herman Basket's sister in "A Courtship" - until it becomes clear that Ikkemotubbe wants her. After that, he is one of the young men who willingly help Ikkemotubbe's courtship.

The "boy slave who turned the wheel" is the steersman on Studenmare's steamboat (366). His age is not given, but the narrator of "A Courtship" notes that he is "not much more than half as big as Captain Studenmare" (366).

The father of the Chickasaw Indian who narrates "A Courtship" advises Ikkemotubbe about the best strategy for courting Herman Basket's sister, and helps Owl-by-Night look for Ikkemotubbe's horse. Along with "the young men," he also stokes the fire in the steamboat at the end of the story (380), which leaves open a possibility that the text never develops: perhaps like Ikkemotubbe, the narrator's father "went away" from the plantation (362).

The phrase the narrator of "A Courtship" uses to describe Herman Basket's sister - "she walks in beauty" - sounds faintly 'Indian' but is actually borrowed from Lord Byron (362). Or "sat in it, that is," he adds - which sounds pretty risque, though becomes less so when he adds that she doesn't walk at all "unless she had to" (362). Like Eula Varner in Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, she is lazy and slovenly but exercises an irresistible power over all the men who see her. While she is at the center of the story's courtship plot, she does not actually speak a single word in it.

"Dead" before "A Courtship" begins, this man is mentioned as the original owner of the "shotgun" that Herman Basket's aunt threatens to use on her niece's suitors (368).

In "A Courtship," this woman is the great-aunt of the second cousin of Herman Basket's aunt (363). As the wife of the "chief Man of the Chickasaws" (365), she would have a lot of status. From her, Herman Basket's aunt acquires both a "silver wine pitcher" (363) and a belief in her own family's superiority.

In The Town Big Top is Guster's husband and father to Aleck Sander and Little Top. Only his name appears in the narrative (55).

The Confederate officer Faulkner calls "Armstead" in Intruder in the Dust (190) is undoubtedly Lewis Armistead, who commanded one of the brigades in Pickett's division that led the famous charge against the Yankee army on the last day of the battle of Gettysburg. Armistead along with some of his unit advanced further in that attack than any other rebels; he was mortally wounded just as he reached the stone wall that marked the Union lines.

In Intruder in the Dust Chick recalls Ephriam, Paralee's father, "an old man, a widower," living in her cabin and walking the roads at night: "not going anywhere, just moving, at times five and six miles from town before he would return at dawn to doze and wake all day" in a rocking chair (61). By consulting a white fortune-teller, Ephriam finds out where Maggie Mallison's lost ring can be found (69). And like Tomey's Turl in the short story "Was," he knows that it's "womens and children" who are best at getting uncommon things done (70).

In Intruder in the Dust Doyle Fraser is "a youngish active man" (20) who works as a clerk in the country store owned by his father, Adam Fraser. Doyle steps in to prevent a white man from attacking Lucas with a plow singletree.

The "Garnett" referred to by Gavin in Intruder in the Dust in his nostalgic reference to the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg is General Richard Garnett, whose Confederate brigade led Pickett's disastrous charge against the center of the Union lines (190). He was trying to compensate for a stain on his military record when, feverish and injured, he insisted on leading his men from the front, on horseback. He was killed just before reaching the enemy lines.

Vardaman Gowrie and his brother Bilbo are identical twins, "identical as two clothing store dummies" (159) or "two clothes pins on a line" (160). Intruder in the Dust treats them identically too. "About thirty, a head taller than their father," their faces are "surly quick-tempered and calm" (160), though they act together with energy in the search for their murdered brother's body.

Crawford Gowrie, the intruder behind the title of Intruder in the Dust, never directly appears in the narrative, but the details of his biography are memorable. Second of Hub Gowrie's six sons, he deserted from the U.S. Army on the day before World War I ended, hid for eighteen months "in a series of caves and tunnels in the hills" of Yoknapatawpha, was captured after a gunfight with authorities, served a year in prison, worked out of Memphis either as a rum-runner or a strike-breaker, then returned to Beat Four, reportedly to "more or less settle down" (161).

Vinson, the 28-year-old white man whose murder launches Intruder in the Dust, is the youngest of Nub and Amanda Gowrie's six sons. The only one "with an aptitude for trading and for money," he can write checks that the local banks will honor and is "said to own several small parcels" of Yoknapatawpha farmland (162). The business he is engaged in at the time of his death is harvesting timber in partnership with his brother Crawford.

In other Yoknapatawpha fictions Gavin Stevens is the elected "County Attorney" who prosecutes even murder cases, but in Intruder in the Dust Gavin says that Lucas' trial will be handled by a "District Attorney": "it's the District Attorney that'll hang you or send you to [prison]," he warns Lucas (58), and this D.A. doesn't live "within fifty miles of Yoknapatawpha" (63). He is presumably referring to the man he later identifies by name as Jim Halladay, who works out of a town or city called Harrisburg, which is "sixty miles" from Jefferson (107).

The "Kemper" mentioned in Intruder in the Dust is General James Kemper (190). His Confederate brigade was part of Pickett's division in the famous charge on the last day of the battle of Gettysburg. He was seriously wounded during the attack, and carried the bullet that struck him for the rest of his life.

Mr. Lilley's wife does not appear in Intruder in the Dust, but he cites her - "my wife aint feeling good tonight" - when he explains to Gavin why he isn't going to the Square to join the lynch mob (47).

"A shoestring timber-buyer from over in Crossman County" (102), Jake Montgomery comes to Yoknapatawpha in Intruder in the Dust as Vinson and Crawford Gowrie's partner in the lumber-harvesting business. The son of a farmer, his checkered past includes running a roadhouse in Tennessee that is shut down by the police. Even as a corpse he gets around.

Yoknapatawpha constables are stationed in each of the county's five Beats. They are paid "a dollar a prisoner every time [they] deliver a subpoena or serve a warrant" (62). Skipworth, the sheriff's constable who lives in and represents the law in Beat Four in Intruder in the Dust, is described as "a little driedup wizened stonedeaf old man not much larger than a boy" (37), but he is brave enough to take Lucas into custody to protect the black man from the anger of a white crowd, and to keep him locked in his house overnight until the Sheriff can get there.

The "Wilcox" that Gavin refers to in Intruder in the Dust is General Cadmus Wilcox, commander of a Confederate brigade that took part in Pickett's Charge during the battle of Gettysburg (190).

In Intruder in the Dust the hills in the Beat Four section of the county remind Chick Mallison that his ancestors came to Yoknapatawpha from Scotland by way of Carolina. If Chick is thinking specifically of his maternal ancestors, these people would belong on the Stevens family tree. But he could instead (or also) be thinking of his Mallison ancestors.

In Intruder in the Dust the person who intends to buy the lumber that the Gowries are harvesting - "the lumber's ultimate consignee," as Gavin Stevens puts it (223) - lives in Memphis.

Intruder in the Dust mentions this young woman who, as both Chick's mother and her own once did, attends college at Sweetbriar, in Virginia.

According to Sheriff Hampton in Intruder in the Dust, Jake Montgomery's "pa" owns a "farm over beyond Glasgow" (113).

In Intruder in the Dust Chick gets to play in a varsity football game in Mottstown when this "regular player" cannot (121). He may not be able to play due to injury, or academic ineligibility, or an over-protective mother - the narrator offers all three possibilities.

Referred to as "another lady" in Intruder in the Dust this woman angers another woman in Frenchman's Bend, apparently by winning a baking competition (227). Her husband is locally well-known and -patronized as a maker of moonshine whiskey. The narrative's use of "lady" is clearly sarcastic.

The gun with which Vinson Gowrie was shot in Intruder in the Dust was "an automatic pistol" taken from a German officer captured by Buddy McCallum during World War I (161).

The Mallisons hire men at two different points in Intruder in the Dust to drive Mrs. Mallison. This one drives her to Mottstown to watch her son play football.

The real name of the writer whom Gavin Stevens calls "a sound sensitive lady poet of the time of my youth" (191) in Intruder in the Dust is Djuna Barnes, well known in the years after World War I as part of the Modernist movement in the arts. Today she is best known as the author of the lesbian novel Nightwood (1936), but she was also a visual artist, a journalist and, as Gavin's description says, a poet. The lines he quotes are taken, with a line omitted, from Barnes' poem "To the Dead Favourite of Liu Ch'e" (1920).

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).

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).

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).

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.

In Intruder in the Dust this "mother" is mentioned only as one possible reason why a starting player on the Jefferson high school football team won't play in the game against Mottstown (121).