Character Keys

This character 'appears' in "Knight's Gambit" by way of one of Faulkner's typical negative formulations, in the middle of a sentence that develops the idea that Sebastian Gualdres is a "stranger" in Yoknapatawpha by noting that, when locals visit him at the Backus-Harriss Plantation, they are "guests not of the woman who owned the place and whose family name they had known all her life and her father's and grandfather's too" - that is, they are his guests (174). But the point here is that this woman - Mrs.

In "Knight's Gambit" Harriss rents the plantation he inherits from his father-in-law to this "caretaker," a man who "didn’t even live in the county" but commutes from Memphis except during planting and harvest season, when he camps out in one the abandoned Negro cabins (159-60).

During the chess game with Uncle Gavin, the narrator in "Knight's Gambit" compares his thinking to that of "airmen," who measure duration "by contiguous and not elapsed time" (184).

What Gavin Stevens in "Knight's Gambit" somewhat facetiously calls the "second" "American Expeditionary Force in France" that "began to land in Europe in 1919" are the many Americans who toured or moved to Europe in the years after the First World War (256). The "first" A.E.F., of course, were the one million soldiers in the U.S. Army who landed in France to join the British and French forces fighting Germany; they had returned home by 1919.

While hunting for the first time in Go Down, Moses Ash is talking about this "new light-colored woman who nursed next door to Major de Spain's" when he is surprised by a yearling bear in the path (309). It's clear that this young "nurse" - that is, wet nurse - has caught his eye, but nothing else about her is known. Our decision to identify her as biracial is based on the way 'light-colored' or '-complexioned' is used elsewhere in the fictions.

According to "Knight's Gambit," the elements of the uniform worn by the pilots of the Royal Air Force - "the blue of Britain and the hooked wings of a diving falcon and the modest braid of rank: but above all the blue, the color the shade which the handful of Anglo Saxon young men had established and decreed as [a] visual synonym of glory" - became so celebrated that "an association of American haberdashers or gents' outfitters had adopted it as a trade slogan" (206).

Harry Wong is not a character in "Knight's Gambit" but one of the three hypothetical men whom Gavin Stevens uses to represent the veterans of World War I: Gavin says, "I am no more just John Doe of Jefferson, Mississippi; I am also . . . Harry Wong of San Francisco" (243).

In "Knight's Gambit" Charles Mallison refers by name to the conductor of the train that takes him from training through Jefferson on his way to Texas: "Mr McWilliams, the conductor, was standing at the vestibule steps with his watch in his hand" (255).

Charley Longfeather is not a character in "Knight's Gambit" but is one of the three hypothetical men that Gavin Stevens uses to represent the veterans of World War I: Gavin says, “I am no more just John Doe of Jefferson, Mississippi; I am also . . . Charley Longfeather of Shoshone, Idaho” (243).

Melissa Hogganbeck is a history teacher at the Jefferson Academy that Charles Mallison attends in "Knight's Gambit." Her "tireless cultured educated 'lady's' voice" makes it hard for him to endure the class which she "now called World Affairs with capitals on both” (209). She also teaches American History before 1865 at "the Academy" to Linda Snopes in The Town (301). If either she or her grandfather, who is also mentioned in the novel, are related to Boon Hogganbeck, who appears in seven Yoknapatawpha fictions, the texts give no hint of it.

John Doe is not a character in "Knight's Gambit" but a name Gavin Stevens uses to represent the shared experience of the veterans of World War I. Talking about these survivors Gavin says: "I am no more just John Doe of Jefferson, Mississippi," than the other vets from around the country (243).

In "Knight's Gambit" Miss Cayley explains that before her marriage her "mother was a Mossop" (193).

In "Knight's Gambit" Hence Cayley is the father of the "country girl" (192) who's been dating Max Harriss; according to her, "he dont think Max is any good" (193). His farm is "about two miles" from the Harriss place (192).

According to Intruder in the Dust, old houses like Miss Habersham's "still seem to be spellbound by the shades of women, old women still spinsters and widows waiting . . . waiting for the slow telegraph to bring them news of Tennessee and Virginia and Pennsylvania battles" (117).

In Intruder in the Dust these "bachelor truck drivers" live in town in rented rooms and take their baths in the barbershop (39).

Like the other black inhabitants of Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha, the "street department crews" are no where to be seen on the Monday after Lucas is arrested, though this doesn't prevent the narrator of Intruder in the Dust from describing their usual employment: "flushing the pavement with hoses and sweeping up the discarded Sunday papers and empty cigarette packs" (119). One irony of Intruder is that the absence of the black population results in the narrative describing them in more detail than any other Yoknapatawpha fiction provides.

This "old lady, dead now" is called a "spinster" by the narrator of Intruder in the Dust. She was "a neighbor" of Chick Mallison, who baked treats for "all the children on the street" and taught them to play a card game that she made sure she won (58).

According to Intruder in the Dust, Mondays through Fridays these "owner-contractor-operators" drive the buses that carry the children of the county to school in town, but on Saturdays and holidays they turn the buses into "pay-passenger transport," charging the country people a fare to bring them to Jefferson (132).

In Intruder in the Dust these three "youngish white men from the crew of a nearby sawmill" are all "a little drunk" in Fraser's store when Lucas Beauchamp enters (18). One of them, with "a reputation for brawling and violence," is more than a little racist: he goes after Lucas for his attitude, calling him "biggity" among other names (18, 19). (This crew is probably entirely different from the "[saw]mill crew" who are hired three years later by the Vinson and Crawford Gowrie.)

The man who photographed Lucas and Molly for the studio portrait that Chick sees in their cabin in Intruder in the Dust is not described, but at Lucas' insistence he did take Molly's headrag off.

In Intruder in the Dust, "every tenant and renter and freeholder white or black in the neighborhood" would find a reason to go to the crossroads store on Saturdays, "quite often to buy something" but also often just to visit with each other (18).

According to Gavin Stevens in Intruder in the Dust, "all the men" who first came to Jefferson worked together to build it, "to shape a land for their posterity" (49); according to this account, "the jailer then" or the "innkeeper or farrier or vegetable peddler" could be "what the lawyer and planter and doctor and parson called a gentleman" (49). This definition of "all the men" leaves out the ones who were enslaved.

The Negro servants who work for the white population of Jefferson are almost completely invisible in Intruder in the Dust. This is by their own actions: anxious about what might happen after Lucas is arrested for killing a white man, they stop going outside, even to work. But their absence provokes two descriptions of who they are, or at least what they look like, under conventional circumstances. On Sunday morning Chick imagines the "housemaids or cooks in their fresh Sunday aprons" on the porches of their employers' homes (38).

In Intruder in the Dust a steady stream of Negroes goes in and out of the house of the fortune-teller Mrs. Downs "all day long and without doubt most of the night" (69).

According to Sheriff Hampton in Intruder in the Dust, Jake Montgomery's Tennessee roadhouse was closed by the police after "a man went and got killed in it one night two-three years ago" (112-13).

Boon Hogganbeck's "mother's mother" was a "Chickasaw woman" (91). Boon and his Chickasaw grandmother are mentioned in a number of Faulkner texts, but the only mention of his mother in the fictions is the passing acknowledgment paid her in this phrase in Intruder in the Dust. From the other texts, however, we can safely infer that she - and her never mentioned father, and Boon's never mentioned father - were white.

The narrator of Intruder in the Dust calls the Jefferson high school football team that travels to Mottstown "the regular team" (121), which presumably means the varsity. After their victory, three of them return to Jefferson in the car that Chick's mother hired.

This is "the fourth" 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).

This is "the second" 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 we only hear the voice of this "young man" in the car that circles the Square on Sunday night: "no words, not even a shout: a squall significant and meaningless" (48).

In Intruder in the Dust Chick compares the way Lucas Beauchamp dresses when he comes to town in his necktie and vest to the appearance of "the merchants and doctors and lawyers" who work in Jefferson (24). One of these merchants owns "the plate glass window" that the out-of-town architect once crashed his car into (53).

The Mallisons hire men at two different points in Intruder in the Dust to drive Mrs. Mallison. This driver takes her and her son Chick out to the Mallison farm. Drivers in the Yoknapatawpha fictions are typically black, but by not identifying this one as a Negro, the brief description of him - "a man from the garage" (70) - suggests he is more likely to be white.

These unmarried "garage hands" in Intruder in the Dust live in town in rented rooms and take their baths in the barbershop (39).

In Intruder in the Dust this woman started a feud over a "church bazaar" baking prize with "another lady" in Frenchman's Bend (227). When she reported that the other woman's husband was making and selling whiskey, Sheriff Hampton had to intervene. As these details suggest, the narrative uses the title "Frenchman's Bend lady" sarcastically (227).

The father of the "boy" who goes rabbit hunting with Chick and Aleck in Intruder in the Dust is "one of Edmonds' tenants," i.e. a share cropper on the Edmonds plantation (4).

There is a judge named Maycox mentioned in Intruder in the Dust, but Maycox lives in Jefferson. This unnamed judge, whom Gavin Stevens tells Lucas is the one who will preside over his murder trial, doesn't "live within fifty miles of Yoknapatawpha" (63). Presumably like the District Attorney who Gavin says will prosecute the case, this judge works out of the larger Mississippi town or city that the novel calls Harrisburg, and travels to smaller places like Jefferson for regular court sessions.

The first small mob that spills into the Square on Sunday morning in Intruder in the Dust includes several of the young men whom Chick saw and heard in the barbershop earlier that day, including this "oiler from the cotton gin" (42).

"The counterman" at Jefferson's all-night cafe is mentioned only briefly in Intruder in the Dust, and neither named nor described (207). Because Faulkner makes no mention of his race, we assume he is white.

The man who owns the timber that Vinson and Crawford Gowrie are harvesting in Intruder in the Dust is first referred to as "Uncle Sudley Workitt" (215), and later identified as the boys' mother's "second or fourth cousin or uncle or something" (217). He is described as "an old rheumatic man" and "half blind" (219).

Chick speculates in Intruder in the Dust that the wife of Constable Skipworth probably served supper to Lucas during the time he was in her house.

In Intruder in the Dust Uncle Hogeye Mosby is mentioned as an epileptic "from the poorhouse" whose public seizures always attract spectators (180).

In Intruder in the Dust Maycox is the local judge whom Gavin Stevens says will have to "issue an order" to exhume the body in Vinson Gowrie's grave (107), but Sheriff Hampton realizes that won't be necessary.

A "countryman" who only moved to Jefferson within the year, Mr. Lilley owns "a small shabby side street grocery whose customers were mostly Negroes" (46). In Intruder in the Dust he tells Gavin that if a lynch party needs any help, to let him know.

Jefferson's daytime marshal in Intruder in the Dust, charged with helping the sheriff maintain order in the town. Among his duties is directing traffic so that the town's white school children can safely "cross the street" (133). His last name points to the fact that he is "a Beat Four Ingrum come to town as the apostate sons of Beat Four occasionally did" (133).

This character's name reflects what is probably just be Faulkner's forgetfulness about recurring characters, though he may have had a reason for over-writing the Worshams with the Habershams between 1942 and 1948. In any case, the character named Belle Worsham in Go Down, Moses is the daughter of a man who left her a "decaying house" in Jefferson (260, 356); the same character is named Eunice Habersham in Intruder in the Dust, where the narrative points out that the house she lives in "had not been painted since her father died" (74).

The oldest of Nub Gowrie's six sons in Intruder in the Dust. Twenty years ago he "wrenched himself free" of his father, got married and became the manager of a cotton plantation near Vicksburg, Mississippi (160).

In Intruder in the Dust Bryan is the third of Hub Gowrie's six sons, Bryan is the one who runs the "family farm which fed them all" (161).

In Intruder in the Dust Bilbo Gowrie and his brother Vardaman are identical twins, "identical as two clothing store dummies" (159) or "two clothes pins on a line" (160). The novel consistently 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.

Mrs. Gowrie, born Amanda Workitt, is Nub's wife and the mother of his six sons in Intruder in the Dust. She is buried in the cemetery next to Caledonia chapel, and from her headstone we learn that she was born in 1878 and died in 1926 (99). That is all the novel explicitly says about her, but "Workitt" appears in the novel on the list of the most common family names in Beat Four (28).