Unnamed Father of Luster

Character Key Number: 
68
Display Name: 
Unnamed Father of Luster
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Father of Luster
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

In The Sound and the Fury Dilsey refers to someone she calls "pappy" when she threatens Luster: "You just wait till your pappy come home" (59). This is the novel's only reference to the man who is Luster's father. In the account of the Compsons and the Gibsons that Faulkner wrote 16 years after The Sound and the Fury was published - familiarly known as "Appendix Compson" - Faulkner says that Frony "married a pullman porter and went to St Louis to live" (343). Faulkner may be thinking of these two men as one character, but the novel's reference to Jefferson rather than Memphis as his "home" suggests otherwise. We are assuming this man is Frony's first husband, but the only thing we know for sure is that he is Luster's "pappy."