Flem Snopes' Grandfather
Character Key Number:
180
Display Name:
Flem Snopes' Grandfather
Sort Name:
Snopes, Grandfather of Flem
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?:
No
Biography:
In The Town Flem tells a furniture store owner in Memphis that he had a grandfather, "because everybody had," adding that he never knew his, but "whoever he was he never owned enough furniture for a room" (233). In The Mansion Mink tells the warden of the penitentiary that his and Flem's "grandpaw had two sets of chillen" (114). Those are the only references in the canon to this ur-Snopes, but from them we can infer that he was poor and married twice. From the Yoknapatawpha fictions as a group we know that he and his wives had a lot of children.