Although his name is never mentioned in the text, the narrator of this story is Bayard Sartoris, the son of John Sartoris and grandson of Rosa Millard. As Colonel Sartoris's only son, Bayard appears or is mentioned in a total of sixteen Yoknapatawpha fictions. Faulkner probably expected most of his readers to identify him here on the basis of the seven Unvanquished stories that were published in the mid-1930s, which he also narrates.
This icon represents the first Union troops to appear in Jefferson, a "Yankee scouting patrol" that was apparently looking for General Compson "over a year ago" (675). That would have been before April, 1861 - implausibly early in the Civil War for Union troops to be moving through Mississippi.
This icon represents the "whole regiment of Yankee cavalry" that, according to Ab Snopes, is "half a mile down the road" from the Sartoris place (674). A Union regiment could be as large as 1000 men.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sun, 2017-06-25 10:41
Located at Varner's Crossroads (288), the only store in Frenchman's Bend is one of the many properties owned by Will Varner. The store is both the place where the many tenant farmers on other Varner lands are expected to buy all their supplies, and the hub of the hamlet's social life. The gallery (or front porch) of the store appears to be constantly occupied by a number of men who never buy anything, but are simply there for conversation. In his hypothetical account of Mrs.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-06-24 18:26
A "one-room schoolhouse which was an integer of old Varner's princedom - an integer not because old Varner or anyone else in Frenchman's Bend considered that juvenile education filled any actual communal lack or need, but simply because his settlement had to have a going schoolhouse to be complete" (38-39). One of the school's teachers was called Professor, "provided of course he wore trousers" (38). Another was I.O. Snopes.
