The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Whitfield is the local preacher in Frenchmen’s Bend. According to Cora Tull, "Brother Whitfield [is] a godly man if ever one breathed God's breath" (167). Whitfield himself would agree: the one section he narrates begins by proclaiming how he "emerged victorious" after wrestling with Satan (177), finds himself sustained by "His hand" (God's, that is), and "knows that forgiveness is mine" (178). At the end he takes it as a sign of God's favor that he need not confess his sin to his congregation. Addie loved him. Most readers, however, see him as a self-righteous hypocrite.

Uncle Billy Varner is a kind of veterinarian as well as a farmer in Frenchman’s Bend and a neighbor present at the services for Addie after her death. When Peabody is unavailable Uncle Billy comes to tend to Cash after the river accident “with his satchel of horse-physic” (185). (He appears or is mentioned in 9 Yoknapatawpha fictions, in 2 of them as "Uncle Billy," and in 7 as "Will.")

When Vernon Tull arrives at the Bundren house the day after Addie’s death, he finds "about a dozen wagons was already there" (85). These belong to the group of neighbors who attend Addie’s funeral. Before the service they divide themselves into female and male groups: the "womenfolks" wait inside the house while "the men stop on the porch, talking some, not looking at one another" or "sit and squat" a "little piece from the house" (87). When "the women begin to sing," the men move into the house (91).

Armstid is a neighbor of the Bundren's. He is generous with his belongings and his time. In the chapter he narrates he gives perspective on the mule deal Anse makes with Snopes and he gives us the lay of the land with regard to the flood.

Young Lon Quick is a neighbor to the Bundren family and finds Dr. Peabody’s buckboard "upside down straddle of the ditch about a mile from the spring" (85). Darl calls him "little Lon" once, to distinguish him from his father (161).

Lon Quick, senior, is mentioned by his son, also named Lon, when he tells Samson that he sold Jewel his horse. He is apparently quite adept at telling the time: "Lon Quick could look even at a cloudy sky and tell the time to ten minutes. Big Lon I mean, not little Lon" (161).

Anse's mother is mentioned in passing by Doctor Peabody. As he climbs the steep slope up to the Bundren house, Peabody wonders "how his mother ever got up to birth him" (42).

Vernon Tull mentions the "last chap" his mother had as he recounts his mother's long life and death (30). That wording implies he had more than one sibling, but there is no way to say how many more.

Vernon Tull mentions his father - or rather, remembers his mother's reference to his "pa" (30) - as he recounts his mother's long life and death.

The "mammy" that Vernon Tull speaks of is his biological mother - not a black caregiver or wet nurse, as would be the case with a 'mammy' in an upper class white Yoknapatawpha family. Vernon thinks of her in reference to the hard lot women have in life: she "lived to be seventy and more" having worked everyday of her life and never having been sick (30). At the end of that life she puts on "that lace-trimmed night gown she had had for forty-five years and never wore," lays down, and tells her family "I'm tired" (30).