Birdsong

Submitted by ekp23@cornell.edu on Mon, 2013-03-25 11:26
Text: 
"Pantaloon in Black"
Character Key: 
Birdsong
Display Name: 
Birdsong
Sort Name: 
Birdsong
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Male
Class: 
Lower Class
Rank: 
Secondary
Vitality: 
Dies
Occupation: 
Production
Specific Job: 
Night-watchman at the Sawmill
First Mentioned: 
Sawmill Where Rider Works in "Pantaloon in Black" (Location)
Cause of Death: 
Murder
Real?: 
No
Other Texts: 
Go Down, Moses
Biography: 

He is the white night-watchman at the mill and has run a crap game using "crooked dice" for fifteen years in which he cheats the black mill workers out of some of their weekly pay. He is part of a large family clan; as the deputy sheriff says, "It’s more of them Birdsongs than just two or three. . . . There’s forty-two active votes in that connection" (252). Birdsong is repeatedly referred to in the narrative as "the white man" who carries a "heavy pistol in his hip pocket" (250-51).

Note: 
nightwatchman, murder, family clan, kin, Birdsongs, gambler, hustler, gun Also, should consider including "Birdsong" in list of Faulkner families. Currently only the well-heeled, recurring families are accounted for, but Faulkner makes much of the "clan" of Birdsongs here, and it seems unwise to ignore the looming presence of the hill people in Faulkner's fiction.
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/2220