Character Keys

Shreve is Quentin Compson's Canadian roommate at Harvard in two of Faulkner's greatest novels: The Sound and the Fury (where his last name is MacKenzie) and Absalom, Absalom! (where it's McCannon). In the first novel he's largely defined by his concern for Quentin's well-being, which apparently leads some of their fellow students in the novel (and has definitely led a few critics writing about the novel) to speculate that the bond between them may be homoerotic.

While drinking moonshine with Young Bayard and Hub in Flags in the Dust, V.K. Suratt tells them about the time Doctor Peabody amputated his "granpappy's laig," using whiskey as the anesthetic (136).

In Flags in the Dust, Dr. Peabody's household of black servants includes, to quote his dehumanizing description of them, "six or seven registered ones" as well as "a new yearlin' every day or so" (303). Like Abe, the only servant who is named, their main task seems to be assisting the gentlemen and ladies who come to fish at the doctor's pond.

Referred to in Flags in the Dust as "a sort of patriarch" among the Negro tenants on the Sartoris estate, and described as old enough to be "stooped with time," he owns the facilities - the mill and mule that grind the sugar cane and the kettle in which the juice is boiled - for making molasses (288).

In The Town Ratliff calls the first man sent to Jefferson by the company that insures the bond on Mayor de Spain a "pleasant young feller" who realizes at the end of "one quick horrified day" that settling Gavin's law suit calls for someone with more experience (87).

The Town refers to the "Yankee raiders" who were present in Mississippi during the Civil War as the stuff of "legend" - the legend of the treasure that remains hidden where the plantation owners supposedly buried their "money and plate" to keep them safe from these invaders (8). (In earlier Yoknapatawpha fictions, the Sartorises did bury their silver and Union troops did dig it up.)

In The Town it is the wife of the furniture salesman in Memphis who knows what kind of furniture Flem wants for his new house, and she provides it. She is mentioned again as "the Memphis expert" who "learns Eula" what the home of a bank vice president should contain (173).

In "Mule in the Yard" and again in The Town a fire engine full of "volunteer fire fighters" arrives too late to save Mrs. Hait's house, although the men are in time to "fling her dishes and furniture up and down the street" in the attempt (258, 252).

According to Ratliff's account in The Town, "there's a thousand extry young fellers all new and strange and interesting and male" at the University of Mississippi (271). Ratliff believes that among these young men might be Linda's future husband. Flem later thinks about this group as "a thousand young men, all bachelors and all male" - and a threat to his financial interest in Linda (304). (The University of Mississippi began admitting women in 1882.)

In The Town these two men attempt to help Gavin Stevens stand up after Manfred de Spain strikes him down (79).

In The Town Miss Vaiden Wyott's colleague is watching when Wallstreet proposes to Miss Vaiden (153).

In The Town Charles notes that Jefferson's Episcopal church, "the oldest extant building in town," and perhaps "the finest too," was "built by slaves" (321).

Like other Indian tribes in the old South, the Indians of Yoknapatawpha own slaves in various Faulkner fictions. The slaves of the Chickasaw who appear in "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun are specifically referred to as the slaves of Mohataha, Ikketubbe's mother who rules the tribe in those texts. In the short story and in Act I of the novel, these enslaved people purchase items at the Indian agency-store in the settlement (17).

In The Town, I.O. Snopes refers, resentfully, to the men who own the railroad he regularly sues as "them cold hard millionaire railroad magnits" (i.e. magnates, 260)" - because when Mannie Hait's husband was killed on the track, they awarded all of the indemnity to her.

According to The Town, the members of the Presbyterian and the Episcopalian churches in Jefferson constitute the two oldest congregations in the county, dating from "before the county was a County and Jefferson was Jefferson" (321).

These are the "two more boys" whom Wall Snopes hires in The Town to help his brother, Admiral Dewey, deliver newspapers and "handbills" around Jefferson (135).

Only referred to generically in The Town as "the oil company," these faceless men "cuss Mr [Eck] Snopes" for his foolishness in blowing himself and one of their tanks up, but also give his widow $1000, "even if she had married a fool" (117).

In The Town these undescribed Northern tourists admire Jefferson's Episcopal church and photograph it. Charles wonders at their attitude toward the church, "since they themselves had burned it and blown it up with dynamite in 1863" (321). As a Southerner, he's using a generic idea of 'Yankees' - whether Union troops in the Civil War or Northern tourists in the mid-20th century.

After Matt Levitt's departure in The Town, Linda begins to go to and from school "with another girl who lived on the same street" (222).

Although he's usually the first employee off the train when it arrives in Jefferson, in The Town this porter on the train carrying Byron's children lets the conductor and the flagman exit the train first (377).

Although they are unseen in The Town, Charles knows there are "pullman porters" on the train that arrives in Jefferson in Chapter 24 (377). Shortly after the Civil War a white man named George Pullman designed the original sleeper cars for passenger trains, and hired blacks, in many cases former slaves, to serve as the attendants in those cars.

In The Town this "houseman in a white coat" performs general duties in for Manfred de Spain's house, and lives in Manfred's "late father's big wooden house" (14).

In The Town the Jefferson hotel porter named Samson works with someone whom Ratliff refers to as "Samson's least boy," whose one action in the novel is carrying a newspaper for the white bondsman when he leaves the hotel (103). It's not clear what "least boy" means - perhaps he is a bellboy at the hotel or possibly he is Samson's youngest son.

This entry represents the men in The Town - described simply as "a few more men" - who watch the fight that Buddy McCallum arranges between his son Anse and Matt Levitt (207). Since Matt is from town and Anse from the country, these men could be from anywhere in Yoknapatawpha.

Byron Societies were originally literary groups that met to read and discuss the works of George Gordon, Lord Byron. By the time of The Town, the Jefferson version of the Byron Society was essentially a social club for upper and middle class women. Like the Cotillion Club, membership in the Society confers social prestige.

Chick's father in The Town - Charles Mallison, Sr. - owns the town livery stable. He notes that because so "many of my customers use horses and mules for a living," it would be bad for his business if he owned an automobile (65).

In The Town, along with the Episcopalian minister Mr. Thorndyke, these three "pastors" - identified as "the Methodist, the Baptist, the Presbyterian" - call on Gavin Stevens at the request of their congregations to offer Gavin their assistance with Eula's memorial service. Gavin calls them all "Doctor" (359), but in the distribution of names Charles' narration clearly distinguishes between the Episcopalian and the other three; Charles calls Thorndyke as "our" pastor - i.e.

A secret fraternal order originating in medieval ritual, the Masons advocate charity and obedience. In The Town Eck Snopes was an active member among the Frenchman's Bend Masons, and Will Varner encouraged the Masons in Jefferson to find an appropriate job for Eck after his neck was broken. When Eck dies, the Masonic Lodge buries him, displaying their ritual "aprons" and "signs" at his funeral (117).

This woman in The Town - identified by Charles' narrative only as "the first lady" (53) - reproves Maggie Mallison for calling on Eula Snopes.

This principal awards Wallstreet Panic Snopes his diploma in The Town.

In The Town Gavin nags the Italian consul in New Orleans in an attempt to hasten the arrival of the medallion containing Eula's "carved marble face" (368).

In Chapter 17 of The Town Gavin refers, hypothetically, to "some dedicated enthusiast panting for martyrdom in the simple name of Man" whom Flem could get to "shoot old Will some night" (302). The context suggests that this potential solution to Flem's problem is invented by Gavin as much if not more than by Flem.

Unlike the other drivers in The Town, this one is imaginary. In his hypothetical account of Flem's trip to Frenchman's Bend in Chapter 17, Gavin describes the man who drives him as an outsider: his car "would not bear Yoknapatawpha County license plates" (305). (In Chapter 18, Ratliff describes how he himself drove Flem on that trip.)

This unnamed grocery store owner in The Town is young Wallstreet Panic Snopes' employer. In time, Wall becomes his partner.

According to The Town, before the Civil War, Willy Christian's grandfather owned Walter's grandfather. The employer-employee relationship described in the novel between Willy and Walter has affinities with this master-slave relationship. (See also Hoke Christian's entry in this index. He is Willy's father in the story "Uncle Willy," and may have been the man Faulkner was thinking of when he created a grandfather for Willy.)

Ratliff reports to Gavin in The Town that Will Varner had three biracial concubines, "the first Negroes in that section of the county and for a time the only ones he would permit there, by whom he now had grandchildren" (289).

When he becomes vice president of the bank in The Town, Flem employs this salesman in a Memphis furniture store to provide him with appropriate home furnishings.

Gavin counts on these friends who live in New York to help Linda during her move to Greenwich Village. Ratliff says, "Lawyer had it all arranged, friends he knowed in Harvard to meet the train at the depot and take care of her, get her settled and ever thing" (367).

Uncle Billy's Frenchman's Bend Masons are in charge of Eck Snopes' funeral in The Town. (The first American chapters of the social order known as Freemasonry were organized in Pennsylvania in the early 18th century. Many of the Founders of the Revolutionary era were Freemasons, which is why the U.S. dollar includes masonic symbolism. Not long after the Revolution ended there were 'lodges' in all the states, but I confess it's surprising to think that such a small and impoverished place as Frenchman's Bend had its own chapter.)

In The Town this girl is discovered in an "empty cotton house" having sex with "schoolmaster" Snopes (43). (See also the Unnamed Eleven-Year-Old Girl who appears in The Mansion, and may be the same character.)

'Fish grabbling' means catching fish underwater with one's bare hands. That's what these men in The Town are doing when they find Mink Snopes' shotgun in the slough where he had thrown it. (See also Unnamed Negro Who Finds Gun in this index.)

The federal drug inspectors who audit the narcotics in Uncle Willy's drugstore in The Town criticize him for his poor security of the morphine (163).

In The Town Ratliff mentions "the directors of the Bank of Jefferson" - the other bank in town, rival to the Sartoris Bank - when he tells Gavin about Wallstreet Panic Snopes' business plans (152): they apparently authorized a loan to him.

In The Town Ratliff claims it was "the depot agent" who sent I.O. Snopes a printed train schedule - though he may have done that himself. (In "Mule in the Yard" the local man who sends I.O. the schedule is identified as the "town wag.") It is definitely an agent at the station, and so presumably the same man, who takes Flem Snopes' payment for freight charges on Eula's medallion.

In Chapter 17 of The Town Gavin refers several times to the people who owe Flem Snopes money. He describes them variously as people owing "sums ranging from twenty-five cents to five dollars" (291); as people "who had been paying [Flem] the usury on five or ten or twenty dollar loans" (295); and as people against whom Flem holds "a usurious note or mortage" (299).

In The Town, Gavin refers to the women - groups of "four or five or six ladies in sunbonnets" who live on "back-country roads" (240) - as the customers to whom Ratliff sells sewing machines, and from whom he has learned how to listen. Gavin's use of "ladies" is generous; these are the wives of the poor farmers who inhabit Yoknapatawpha's "back-country" in the fictions.

After Linda Snopes stops going out with Matt Levitt in The Town, he replaces her with "a country girl he had found somewhere" (206).

Ab Snopes' Civil War wound was never received in battle, or even from a Yankee, but Faulkner provides several different accounts of the Confederate who shot him while he was stealing a horse and left him with a lifelong limp. In "Barn Burning" that man is identified as "a Confederate provost's man" (5). We are assuming this is the same person who shoots him in two other texts, which provide slightly different versions of Ab's wounding.

None of these people are mentioned as individuals in The Town, but Gavin and Charles pay a visit to this community, where the local population was "having some kind of a squabble over a drainage tax suit" (181).