CompsonsInNC

The "man named Compson" who appears in this story as the first Compson in Yoknapatawpha is never given a first name (206), and so it is difficult to know which Compson Faulkner is thinking of. When Faulkner incorporated the story into Requiem for a Nun, he identified him as Jason, the father of General Compson, but elsewhere Jason is the name of the General's grandfather, and the first Compson in Jefferson is identified as either the General (in Absalom!), or (in The Mansion) as one of the Quentins on the family tree (the one who, according to "Appendix Compson," is the son of the first Jason and the father of the General). In any case, here the man named Compson reveals himself to be an ambitious man (he swaps a racehorse with the Chickasaw chief for a square mile of good land), and a skilled leader who knows when to be forceful and when to be sly (he stands up to the party that wants to lynch the bandits, but then keeps the peace by lacing a keg of whiskey with laudanum).