I.O. Snopes

Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Fri, 2016-07-22 15:48
Text: 
The Hamlet
Character Key: 
I.O. Snopes
Display Name: 
I.O. Snopes
Sort Name: 
Snopes, I.O.
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Male
Class: 
Poor White
Rank: 
Secondary
Vitality: 
Alive
Family: 
Snopes
Family (new): 
SnopessInH
Occupation: 
Transportation
Specific Job: 
Blacksmith, Schoolteacher
First Mentioned: 
Frenchman's Bend Blacksmith in The Hamlet (Location)
Home: 
Eck Snopes House in The Hamlet (Location)
Other Texts: 
"Mule in the Yard"
"Spotted Horses"
Flags in the Dust
Sanctuary
The Mansion
The Sound and the Fury
The Town
Biography: 

One of the many "cousins" Flem Snopes brings into Frenchman's Bend, I.O. Snopes talks constantly in a mixture of proverbs and cliches with a "talkative weasel's face" (70) and a "harsh and snarling voice" (361). Flem brings him to Yoknapatawpha to replace Varner’s longtime blacksmith, although I.O., who has no experience in the trade, fails miserably. I.O. then becomes Frenchman’s Bend's schoolteacher, another position for which he is also unfit. He tells Ratliff and his cousin Eck that he is "a single man, unfortunately" (225), but three years after he arrives in the hamlet, to everyone else's surprise, his wife and six-month-old child appear; I.O. "looked up and saw her and lit out" (292). (In the next volume of the trilogy I.O. will turn out to be, in fact, a bigamist.)

Note: 
CUT: but settles in, more or less, as a clerk in the Varner's store. I.O. meets and marries a local girl, quickly fathering three children on her. Eventually, however, an apparent first wife arrives on the scene bringing another child of his. By the end of the trilogy, I.O.'s relations within his family and those of the other Snopeses are deeply complicated. Like Flem, he is willing to cheat family and friends. Both men, for instance, have no sympathy for their good-natured cousin Eck. In I.O.’s case, he cons Eck into paying for Ike Snopes' cow and tries unsuccessfully to get Eck to perjure himself at the Snopes trial.
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/10721