Aleck Sander

Aleck Sander is not a first and last name, but the way this character's given name, Alexander, is spoken. He is the son of Paralee, the Mallison and Stevens family cook, whose last name never appears either. He is also the companion of the novel's hero, Chick Mallison. The two are the same age, sixteen, but Aleck is black, and thus their relationship is inescapably constrained by what the novel calls the "pattern of Negro behavior" decreed by southern society (24). When they eat together it's in Paralee's cabin, not the Mallison house (in Sheriff Hampton's house Aleck is left in the kitchen to eat by himself while Chick eats with the other whites in the dining room, 111); when they hunt, Chick carries a rifle and Aleck a homemade "tapstick" (5); Chick goes to "school," Aleck goes to the "Negro school" (126). Aleck steps far outside those patterns, however, when he courageously accompanies Chick and Miss Habersham into Beat Four, to exhume the body of a white man in order to save a black man's life, proving to be very valuable on that mission. Afterwards he largely disappears from the story, but in the novel's middle chapters Aleck represents an important challenge to racial stereotypes.