Since his store is on or near the street in Jefferson that the narrator calls "Nigger Row," it's possible that Sonny Barger is black, but more likely that he is one of Jefferson's white small businessmen who cater to poor people of both races - like Willy in his drugstore (234). The fact that Barger sells the narrator a bottle of "Jamaica ginger" - a legal form of alcohol - suggests a seedy kind of establishment (234).
The town marshal helps Uncle Willy's self-appointed guardians try to control him. In Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions the "marshal" is a peace officer whose jurisdiction is the town of Jefferson. In Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions the "marshal" is a peace officer whose jurisdiction is the town of Jefferson.
Mrs. Hovis alternates with Mrs. Merridew in staying with Willy "day and night" for three days as part of the plan to keep him away from morphine (229). It seems likely that, like Merridew, she is a member of Reverend Schultz's congregation.
In this story the man who takes Darl Bundren in handcuffs to the mental hospital is described as "a fat deputy sheriff that was smoking a cigar" (228); he did not appear in Faulkner's original account of this event, at the end of the novel As I Lay Dying (1930).
Darl Bundren is major character in As I Lay Dying (1930). His inability to fit into the conventional world anticipates Uncle Willy's story in some respects. In both that novel and this story, Darl is forcibly taken to what the narrator of "Uncle Willy" refers to as "the asylum at Jackson" (228) - though in the earlier text he is escorted by two state agents rather than a single deputy sheriff.
The crusade against Willy's behavior is led by two female members of Reverend Schultz's congregation: Mrs. Merridew and Mrs. Hovis. But at the beginning of the story the narrator identifies "the good women in Jefferson" as the people who are to blame for "driving Uncle Willy out of town," and thus for the narrator's own choice to follow him (225). At times he seems to see "good women" and white women as essentially synonymous.
This icon represents the adults in "Mr. Miller's men's Bible class" at Reverend Schultz's church (228). These males do not seem to play any role in the church's campaign to reform Willy.
The narrator's "Mamma" appears in the text only as the person Mrs. Merridew phones to complain about Willy's new wife (236). Her son does not describe her own reaction to Mrs. Merridew's rage.
"Papa," as the narrator calls his father, is a "lawyer" (236). Although he does not share any of the self-righteousness of the women who want to save Willy from his vices, he does participate in Mrs. Merridew's campaign to force Willy's wife to leave town, and in Job's attempt to keep Willy from flying his airplane. He calls Willy a "lunatic" (239) and blames the old man for the narrator's various forms of truancy; the narrator himself repeatedly rejects both those interpretations.
