Unnamed Jefferson Townspeople 18

Character Key Number: 
905
Display Name: 
Unnamed Jefferson Townspeople 18
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Jefferson Townspeople 18
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In almost every instance it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs. According to Go Down, Moses, the people of Jefferson turn the event in which "the white and the negro cousins [Ike McCaslin and Lucas Beauchamp] went side by side to the bank that morning" into a piece of local lore, part of "the minor annals of the town" (105).