Nathaniel Burden
Character Key Number:
752
Display Name:
Nathaniel Burden
Sort Name:
Burden, Nathaniel
Parent Character Key:
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?:
Yes
Biography:
Joanna Burden's father in Light in August. He is the only son of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline. Like his father, he runs away from home as a teenager. In the far west he meets Juana, and they have a son, Calvin Burden II, born out of wedlock in 1854. With his father and son he moves to Jefferson in 1866, "to help with the freed negroes" (251). After they are killed, he buries them in secret a half mile from his house, and it is in that hidden cemetery that he tells Joanna (daughter of his second marriage, to an unnamed woman from New England) about the divine "curse" that falls on everyone as a result of slavery (252).