Ike Snopes

Text: 
Character Key: 
Display Name: 
Ike Snopes
Sort Name: 
Snopes, Ike
AKA: 
Isaac
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Male
Class: 
Poor White
Rank: 
Secondary
Vitality: 
Alive
Family: 
Snopes
Family (new): 
Occupation: 
Domestic Service
Biography: 

Isaac "Ike" Snopes is the cognitively limited cousin of Flem and Mink. At 14, he is a "hulking figure" in "bursting overalls" (94) who works around Mrs. Littlejohn's hotel as a kind of janitor. With Flem as his official guardian, Ike is referred to as an "idiot" and "creature" with a "mowing and bobbing head" and a "Gorgon-face" that "had been blasted empty and clean forever of any thought, the slobbering mouth in its mist of soft gold hair" (95). Faulkner's account of Ike's romantic relationship with Jack Houston’s cow is both grotesque and affecting; his vision of her beauty parodies sentimental literature and yet possesses mythic proportions. When the boy looks into the "mild enormous moist and pupilless" eyes of the cow and sees "himself in twin miniature" - and so sees himself "contemplating what those who looked at Juno saw" (201).

Disability: 
cognitively disabled
speech impaired
mobility impaired
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

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