Unnamed Train Passengers 4

Character Key Number: 
945
Display Name: 
Unnamed Train Passengers 4
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Train Passengers 4
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
No
Biography: 

In the "white only" cars of three trains that Horace takes during his journey to Oxford in Sanctuary he sees sleeping travelers who lie with throats turned upward "as though waiting the stroke of knives"; when some awaken their "puffy faces" and "dead eyes" evoke "the paling ultimate stain of a holocaust" (168). A crying child is said to be "wailing hopelessly" (168). And the man beside whom Horace finds a seat immediately "leans forward and spits tobacco juice between his knees" (168). The "four men" whom Horace sees Clarence Snopes talking with in the smoker car during his return trip from Oxford are simply referred to (175), though under the Jim Crow laws these men are necessarily white.

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