Clarence Eggleston Snopes

Clarence Snopes is a particularly venal member of the Snopes family, that "vast sprawling clan of a family or even tribe" (88). "As a young man" he led a gang of "cousins and toadies" who "fought and drank and beat Negroes and terrified young girls" (89), until Billy Varner had him appointed a constable. While working for the law, he joined and became a leader of the "Ku Klux Klan" (130), until for political reasons he became "its mortal enemy," the "dedicated champion of a cause" (131). His real cause, however, is his own success; again for reasons of expediency, he joins another white supremacist organization called "the Silver Shirts" while also teaching a Sunday School class in the Baptist Church (132). The narrator treats Clarence's rise as a nightmare perversion of the American dream: he "uses and betrays and makes capital of everything he ever touched" (138). Most pointedly, his success as a demagogue epitomizes the dark side of government "by the people." After 25 years in the state legislature, he is as "ruthless" and ambitious as ever (132); his plan to run for Congress provides the occasion for Faulkner's story.