The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

She listens and asks questions as her husband tells the story of meeting Lena and Byron on the road to Tennessee. Like her husband, she seems to enjoy their intimacy and the comedy of Byron's attempted intimacies with Lena.

The father of the woman whom Reverend Hightower marries is also a minister, and a teacher at the seminary where she and Hightower meet.

The men who are Hightower's teachers at the seminary are also Presbyterian ministers. Hightower's decision to marry is based in part on the fact that "most of the faculty were married" (480).

Also referred to as "the hierarchate of the Church" (482), the "elders" at Hightower's seminary, "the high and sanctified men who are the destiny of the church" (478), are the men whom he has to convince to send him to Jefferson.

According to the report that reaches the Hightower's house during the Civil War, this "Yankee officer" shoots and kills Pomp, Gail Hightower's father's personal slave, "to protect his own life" when Pomp attacks him "with a shovel" (477).