Character Keys

This "solid, well-to-do farmer, husband and father" from Frenchman's Bend is Gavin Stevens' client in "Tomorrow" (90). There is no way to determine if he is Odum or Homer or Cal, or yet a different member of the Bookwright|Bookright family. This Bookwright turned himself in after shooting Buck Thorpe to keep him from eloping with his daughter; the story begins during his trial for that crime.

Like her husband, Mrs. Houston is mentioned in all three novels in the Snopes trilogy. Her story is essentially the same: within a year of their marriage, she is killed by his horse, a dangerous stallion. But her maiden name changes, from Lucy Pate (in The Hamlet) to Letty Bookright (in The Town), as does the brief biography provided in those first two volumes, and as do the details of her death. She comes into focus most vividly in The Hamlet. Her essential role in the trilogy is to be the reason why Houston is a widower.

In Light in August it is this cousin of Nathaniel Burden who finds a bride in New Hampshire for him. Since the other New England relatives of the Burdens are named Burrington, we presume that's also this cousin's last name.

Juana is the Hispanic wife of Nathaniel Burden and the mother of Calvin Burden II in Light in August. Born in Mexico, she waits a dozen years to get married and legitimize her child. In 1866 she comes to Jefferson with her husband and father-in-law. She dies not long after her son is killed by Colonel Sartoris, though in the account of her family that Joanna - who is named after her - gives Joe Christmas, she does not mention the cause of Juana's death.

She is one of three daughters of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline in Light in August. "Vangie" is presumably a nickname for "Evangeline," which is her mother's name. Unlike their older brother Nathaniel, who is dark like their mother, all three daughters have blue eyes.

The relatives of Joanna Burden who remain in New Hampshire in Light in August are named Burrington. Her nephew Nathaniel - he has the same name as her great-grandfather - offers a $1000 reward for her killer after he is informed about her murder.

Joanna Burden's father in Light in August. He is the only son of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline. Like his father, he runs away from home as a teenager. In the far west he meets Juana, and they have a son, Calvin Burden II, born out of wedlock in 1854. With his father and son he moves to Jefferson in 1866, "to help with the freed negroes" (251).

Colonel Sartoris' killing of two Northerners during Reconstruction is told four times in the fictions. The first time, in Flags in the Dust, Will Falls refers to them as "them two cyarpet-baggers" (23). They are given names in Light in August, where the same event is retold from Joanna Burden's perspective. The younger of these men is her half-brother, Calvin Burden II; Joanna calls him "a boy who had never even cast his first vote" (249).

In The Town, Buck Connors II is the son of Marshal Buck Connors and friends with Chick Mallison. Chick remembers him as one of the group of boys who dared each other during the hunting party that takes place at Harrykin Creek. (The Marshal name is elsewhere spelled 'Conner,' but here both father and son are 'Connors.')

In "Shall Not Perish," the wife of Solon Quick lives with him on a farm in Frenchman's Bend. She also rides to Jefferson in the bus that he drives, paying the same fare as all the other riders. The money she uses is "egg-money," that is, money she makes from selling the eggs that her chickens lay (111).

Mrs. Ben Quick makes a very brief appearance in "Tomorrow" when Isham Quick refers to "the dishes and skillet [that] mammy" let Fentry have while he lived in the boiler room at the sawmill (105).

In "Tomorrow" Isham Quick is the son of proprietor of Quick's Mill. Isham is the first on the scene after Bookwright shoots and kills Buck Thorpe, and helps to reconstruct the story of Buck and Jackson Longstreet for Chick Mallison and Gavin Stevens.

In "Spotted Horses" the oldest child of the Armstids is named Ina May. She is "about twelve" (178), and takes care of her younger siblings while her mother is shuttling back and forth to Mrs. Littlejohn's. According to Mrs. Armstid "Ina May bars the door" and keeps "the axe in bed with her" while her mother is away (179). When The Hamlet retells this story the Armstids' twelve-year-old daughter is not named, but she plays the same offstage role, guarding over the "littlest ones" with an axe through the nights her mother is away (347).

In "Tomorrow," Mr. Holland is the foreman of the jury that cannot reach a verdict in the Bookwright murder trial; Chick recognizes him as the man arguing in exasperation with Mr. Fentry.

In "Smoke," Cornelia Holland is the daughter and only child of Mr. Mardis. She marries Anselm Holland (Senior). She bears him twin sons - Anselm (Junior) and Virginius - of whom the former "was said to have been the mother’s favorite" (4). Her father's property is held in her name after his death. She dies of unspecified causes when her sons are still children, though the narrator and others believe "her life had been worn out by the crass violence of [her husband,] an underbred outlander" (4).

In "Smoke," the older Anselm Holland is what the people of Yoknapatawpha consider an "outlander" (4) - i.e. someone who was not only born outside the county, but who remains estranged from the community no matter how long he or she lives there. Of an unremittingly violent, misanthropic, and crass nature, he alienates his sons, desecrates the graves in the Mardis Cemetery, and allows his sons’ rightful inheritance of farm and house to go to ruin for spite.

The mother of Aleck Sander - named Paralee in Intruder in the Dust and Guster in The Town - has been a servant in the Stevens-Mallison household for a long time, perhaps her entire life. She lives in a cabin behind the white family's house. Like her employer, Maggie Mallison, she is protective about her own child, but she is also a kind of 'mammy' to Chick Mallison. She is never given a last name, but the earlier novel mentions her father Ephriam, and the later novel gives her a husband (Big Top) and another son (Top, or Little Top).

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.)

The 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson led the country into the First World War and was still in office when Rafe MacCallum mentions his name, disparagingly, in Flags in the Dust (122). He is mentioned again in The Mansion, where the U.S. Declaration of War against Germany on April 2, 1917, is referred to as "the President's declaration" (204). In the aftermath of World War I, Wilson was one of the key promoters of the League of Nations.

Will Legate appears in four fictions, primarily as an accomplished hunter. He is a member of the Yoknapatawpha hunting party in "Delta Autumn" and again in Go Down, Moses, a son of one of Ike's "old companions, whom he had taught" the discipline of hunting (268, 320).

"Whitfield's cabin" is the first "church" in Yoknapatawpha (213, 23), and presumably the Whitfield who lives there is an ancestor of the "Reverend Whitfield" who is an important character in As I Lay Dying and also appears in several other fictions. Although this original Whitfield is only mentioned in "A Name for the City" and Requiem for a Nun, it seems safe to say that he is not a full-time preacher, but a settler who holds lay services in his cabin.

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 Unvanquished" - both the story and the novel with that title - includes an unusual reference to "white women" and "Negroes" (149, 93). The text brings these two groups together as the people in Yoknapatawpha who are equally threatened by the existence of Grumby's gang of "Independents" - though the "white women" are "frightened" while the Negroes are "tortured" (149, 93), and that it's hard to see what place Negro women occupy in this phrasing.

In "Raid" and then again in The Unvanquished, this woman informs Rosa Millard that she and her party have entered Mississippi.

This character is created in "That Evening Sun" by Mr. Compson, either because of his assumptions about someone like Jesus, or because he desires to reassure Nancy that Jesus won't return; she is the new wife that Jesus has married in St Louis (295).

These are "the white men" from whom Charles E. C-V. Bon, a "white-colored man" (167) with a "coal black" wife (166) in Absalom!, deliberately provokes a racial reaction: they refuse to believe he was "a negro," believing instead that his relationship with her proves that he was "besotted" by "sexual perversion" (167).

In Intruder in the Dust Lucas commissions "a white boy . . . on a mule" to carry the gallon bucket of molasses he is giving Chick into town (22).

These are the Union forces serving under General Smith in "My Grandmother Millard" who retreat ignobly in the face of a charge by a much smaller Confederate unit led by Lieutenant Backhouse. It's not clear how large Smith's unit is, but it includes the "outpost" that Backhouse attacks, a "main unit," and a troop of "cavalry" who screen the retreat (692).

This second set of Yankees described in "My Grandmother Millard" seems to be an irregular, possibly even a renegade group: the "six men in blue" who charge on horseback onto the Sartoris property (676). They are armed with a battering ram because their mission is pillage rather than combat (674). Bayard describes their "faces" as "unshaven and wan" and their demeanor as "frantically gleeful"; their slovenliness suggests a lower class background and their glee an undisciplined lust for plunder (676).

In "Ambuscade" and again in The Unvanquished, this is the first group of Yankee soldiers to appear in Yoknapatawpha. In "Raid" Louvinia remembers their arrival, and Rosa's note to their colonel identifies them as a regiment from Ohio. To Ringo they look like "the whole [Union] army" (10), but it's more likely they comprise a single regiment of cavalry - or less.

In both "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished this sergeant serving in the Union cavalry unit Rosa Millard encounters in Alabama objects to his young Lieutenant's decision to honor the requisition she carries.

In "Retreat" and again in The Unvanquished, this is the Union soldier who was captured by the Confederate unit camped outside Jefferson; according to its captain, this prisoner was sure that Sartoris had more than a thousand men in his troop.

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).

The officer in "My Grandmother Millard" who leads the "first Yankee scouting party" to appear in Jefferson is obviously a gentleman: when told by Aunt Roxanne, one of the Compson's slaves, that a woman is in the privy behind the Compson house, he begs Roxanne's pardon, "raises his hat and even backs [his] horse a few steps" before turning away and ordering his men to leave (675).

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 "Mr. Gillespie's boy" Mack helps his father and the Bundrens move Addie's coffin into the barn, and then later works to help save the Gillespies' livestock from the fire in the barn (216). During the fireVardaman notes that his legs "fuzz" in the moonlight (216).

In As I Lay Dying, Vardaman is the fifth and youngest child of Anse and Addie Bundren. He narrates ten chapters in which we follow the progression of a child's grieving process after the death of a parent. He also reveals poignant and specific examples of the poverty in which he resides. He is described by the other narrators as very small. (Vardaman is named after James K. Vardaman, who served one term each as Mississippi's Governor [1904-1908] and Senator [1913-1919]; he was a militant white supremacist whom his supporters called "The Great White Chief.")

Dewey Dell is the fourth child and only daughter of Addie and Anse Bundren in As I Lay Dying. Cora Tull calls her a "tom-boy girl" (8); several male characters comment on how "pretty" she is, "in a kind of sullen, awkward way" (199). Unknown to anyone but her brother Darl and Lafe, her sexual partner, she is pregnant and wants to go to Jefferson to get an abortion. She is able to communicate with Darl without words and she narrates four chapters in the novel.

In As I Lay Dying, Anse's mother is mentioned in passing by Doctor Peabody. As he climbs the steep slope up to the Bundren house, Peabody wonders "how his mother ever got up to birth him" (42).

As at Ab Snopes' first (criminal) trial, at the second (civil) trial in "Barn Burning," in a second country store, there is again a crowd of men in attendance. Their faces this time are described as "quiet, watching" (17).

The sheriff never appears in "Dry September," but is mentioned by Hawkshaw when he tries to prevent the lynching: "Let's get the sheriff and do this thing right" (172). (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions. Obviously in some of these cases - at least when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment - Faulkner may be thinking of the same unnamed character, or one of the half dozen "Sheriff Hampton"s who also appear in the fictions, but from the texts themselves there is no way to establish that.)

In both "The Unvanquished" and the chapter titled "Riposte in Tertio" in The Unvanquished Granny passes this unnamed sentry en route to her encounter with Colonel Newberry.

In "Miss Zilphia Gant" Zilphia's grotesque childhood is set against the normal lives of other Jefferson children, "all the boys and girls" who go to school (372) and who run, for example, "with random shouts back and forth at recess" (371). As they grow up, these children "fall into inevitable pairs," courting and marrying (374).

Among the various kinds of jailed prisoners mentioned in "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun are "runaway slaves who were captured in the settlement" (202, 6). Runaway slaves in the period before the Civil War are very rare in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. The story does not say where these slaves escaped from. Instead, it notes that the "single wooden bar" across the door of the jail effectively keeps them from escaping again (202, 6).

Although the narrator of "Centaur in Brass" says that "we" often saw Mrs. Snopes working in her husband's restaurant, he later suggests that most of the customers there were men from the surrounding countryside. Major Hoxey eats there, but he looks out of place "among the collarless shirts and the overalls and the grave, country-eating faces" of the other diners (151).