Unnamed Members of Mob

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Unnamed Members of Mob
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Unnamed Members of Mob
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Multi Gender Group
Class: 
MultiClass Group
Rank: 
Secondary
Vitality: 
Alive
Biography: 

The white people who crowd into Jefferson's main streets in anticipation of the arrival of a lynch mob from Beat Four are from everywhere in Yoknapatawpha except Beat Four. It begins to form on Sunday morning, with a small group made up of young men from town. As it grows larger through that day and into Monday afternoon, it seems to be dominated by country people: "the men and the women and not one child, the weathered country faces and sunburned necks and backs of hands, the clean faded tieless earthcolored shirts and pants and print cotton dresses thronging the Square" (133). Not one child does not mean no boys, "boys who should have been in school at this hour" (179). And there are still many townspeople in it, from just about every class: "merchants and cotton-buyers and automobile dealers and the younger men who were the clerks in the stores and cotton offices and salesrooms and mechanics in the garages and filling stations" (177). Along with young children, apparently there are no professional men in this mob: "the doctors and lawyers and ministers" are explicitly excluded (177). Technically, this is not a lynch mob - according to narrator, they don't intend to kill Lucas themselves but are there "to see that Beat Four should not fail its white man's high estate" (134). To Chick, it becomes a surreal "Face" that looms over his longing to believe in his neighbors (178). When this crowd somehow learns that Lucas is not the killer, it disperses quickly, leaving Chick and Gavin to argue about what its presence - "perspicuant jocular and without pity" (142) - says about "the whole white foundation of the county" (135).

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Group
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digyok:node/character/8126