Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Mon, 2016-07-25 16:12
When Mink is jailed in Jefferson, Ratliff invites Mink's wife and two children to stay in the house owned by him and his sister. The two Snopes children are "dressed in cast-off garments of his [Ratliff's] nephews and nieces" (288) when their mother takes them to visit their father in jail.
Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Mon, 2016-07-25 16:07
This icon represents the groups whom the Sheriff and his deputies pass as they bring Mink into town: "children shrieked and played in bright small garments in the sunset and the ladies sat rocking in the fresh dresses of afternoon and the men coming home from work turned into the neat painted gates" (284). These comparatively wealthier, peaceful, domestic groups contrast with Mink Snopes's despair.
Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Mon, 2016-07-25 16:00
As the Sheriff and his deputies take Mink to jail, they see "cotton pickers" working the fields around Whiteleaf store (283); though they are not described, it's likely that the pickers are black.
Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Mon, 2016-07-25 15:54
These are the prisoners in The Hamlet who had been sentenced to "south Mississippi convict camp" (244) in The Hamlet. They are hired "from the State for the price of their board and keep" (262). As convicts, they are forced to work without pay. (Convict labor was once a common part of the penal system in the South.)
Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Mon, 2016-07-25 15:43
A lifelong sharecropper, Mink's father "moved from farm to farm, without himself having been more than fifteen or twenty miles away from any one of them" (261).
Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Mon, 2016-07-25 15:34
A "man-tall, man-grim woman" wearing a "faded wrapper" (219), Mrs. Littlejohn is the proprietor and manager of the two-story boarding house in Frenchman's Bend. She provides kindness and various kinds of support for those whom she believes are deserving, such as Ike Snopes or Mrs. Armstid, or to the injured Henry Armstid. Typically, she is a silent observer of the behavior of the men around her, as when she quietly goes about doing her washing while observing the sale of the spotted ponies.