Don Boyd

Character Key Number: 
2712
Display Name: 
Don Boyd
Sort Name: 
Boyd, Don
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

One of the "sons of [Ike McCaslin's] old [hunting] companions" (268), Boyd is a leader of the party of younger hunters in "Delta Autumn"; he has "the youngest face of them all, darkly aquiline, handsome and ruthless and saturnine" (268). The story reveals his ruthlessness in several ways, beginning with his driving and ending with his abandonment of the woman he had an affair with and the child they conceived together. He seems to think money can settle his moral and emotional debts. A veteran of the first World War, he is cynical about America and "women and children" (270), and violates both the game laws and Ike's hunting code when he shoots a female deer with a shotgun. (When Faulkner revised the story for inclusion in Go Down, Moses, the part of Don Boyd was re-assigned to Roth Edmonds.)

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